1.
Classical Greece
–
Classical Greece was a period of around 200 years in Greek culture. This Classical period saw the annexation of much of modern-day Greece by the Persian Empire, Classical Greece had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire and on the foundations of western civilization. Much of modern Western politics, artistic thought, scientific thought, theatre, literature, in the context of the art, architecture, and culture of Ancient Greece, the Classical period, sometimes called the Hellenic period, corresponds to most of the 5th and 4th centuries BC. The Classical period in this sense follows the Archaic period and is in turn succeeded by the Hellenistic period and this century is essentially studied from the Athenian outlook because Athens has left us more narratives, plays, and other written works than the other ancient Greek states. From the perspective of Athenian culture in Classical Greece, the period referred to as the 5th century BC extends slightly into the 4th century BC. In this context, one might consider that the first significant event of this occurs in 508 BC, with the fall of the last Athenian tyrant. However, a view of the whole Greek world might place its beginning at the Ionian Revolt of 500 BC. The Persians were defeated in 490 BC, the Delian League then formed, under Athenian hegemony and as Athens instrument. Athens excesses caused several revolts among the cities, all of which were put down by force. After both forces were spent, a brief peace came about, then the war resumed to Spartas advantage, Athens was definitively defeated in 404 BC, and internal Athenian agitations mark the end of the 5th century BC in Greece. Since its beginning, Sparta had been ruled by a diarchy and this meant that Sparta had two kings ruling concurrently throughout its entire history. The two kingships were both hereditary, vested in the Agiad dynasty and the Eurypontid dynasty, according to legend, the respective hereditary lines of these two dynasties sprang from Eurysthenes and Procles, twin descendants of Hercules. They were said to have conquered Sparta two generations after the Trojan War, in 510 BC, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow their king, the tyrant Hippias, son of Peisistratos. Cleomenes I, king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy headed by Isagoras, but his rival Cleisthenes, with the support of the middle class and aided by democrats, took over. Cleomenes intervened in 508 and 506 BC, but could not stop Cleisthenes, through his reforms, the people endowed their city with isonomic institutions — i. e. with equal rights for all —and established ostracism. The isonomic and isegoric democracy was first organized into about 130 demes, the 10,000 citizens exercised their power as members of the assembly, headed by a council of 500 citizens chosen at random. The territory of the city was divided into thirty trittyes as follows, ten trittyes in the coastal region ten trittyes in the ἄστυ. A tribe consisted of three trittyes, selected at random, one each of the three groups
Classical Greece
–
The
Parthenon, in Athens, a temple to
Athena
Classical Greece
–
Statue of
King Leonidas of Sparta
Classical Greece
–
Cities at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War
2.
Bow and arrow
–
The bow and arrow is a projectile weapon system that predates recorded history and is common to most cultures. Archery is the art, practice, or skill of applying it, a bow is a flexible arc that shoots aerodynamic projectiles called arrows. A string joins the two ends of the bow and when the string is drawn back, the ends of the bow are flexed, when the string is released, the potential energy of the flexed stick is transformed into the kinetic energy of the arrow. Archery is the art or sport of shooting arrows from bows, today, bows and arrows are used primarily for hunting and for the sport of archery. Someone who makes bows is known as a bowyer, and one who makes arrows is a fletcher —or in the case of the manufacture of arrow heads. The bow and arrow appears around the transition from the Upper Paleolithic to the Mesolithic, at the site of Nataruk in Turkana County, Kenya, obsidian bladelets found embedded in a skull and within the thoracic cavity of another skeleton, suggest the use of stone-tipped arrows as weapons. After the end of the last glacial period, use of the bow seems to have spread to every inhabited continent, including the New World, the oldest extant bows in one piece are the elm Holmegaard bows from Denmark which were dated to 9,000 BCE. High-performance wooden bows are made following the Holmegaard design. Microliths discovered on the south coast of Africa suggest that arrows may be at least 71,000 years old, the bow was an important weapon for both hunting and warfare from prehistoric times until the widespread use of gunpowder in the 16th century. Organised warfare with bows ended in the mid 17th century in Europe, the British upper class led a revival of archery from the late 18th century. Sir Ashton Lever, an antiquarian and collector, formed the Toxophilite Society in London in 1781, under the patronage of George, the basic elements of a bow are a pair of curved elastic limbs, traditionally made from wood, joined by a riser. Both ends of the limbs are connected by a known as the bow string. By pulling the string backwards the archer exerts compressive force on the section, or belly, of the limbs as well as placing the outer section, or back. While the string is held, this stores the energy released in putting the arrow to flight. The force required to hold the string stationary at full draw is used to express the power of a bow. Other things being equal, a draw weight means a more powerful bow. The various parts of the bow can be subdivided into further sections, the topmost limb is known as the upper limb, while the bottom limb is the lower limb. At the tip of each limb is a nock, which is used to attach the bowstring to the limbs, the riser is usually divided into the grip, which is held by the archer, as well as the arrow rest and the bow window
Bow and arrow
–
A modern reconstruction, in fiberglass and wood, of a historical
composite bow
Bow and arrow
–
Scythians shooting with bows,
Panticapeum (modern
Kertch), 4th century BCE.
Bow and arrow
–
Polychrome small-scale model of the archer XI of the west pediment of the
Temple of Aphaea, ca. 505–500 BCE.
3.
Cupid and Psyche
–
Cupid and Psyche is a story originally from Metamorphoses, written in the 2nd Century AD by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis. It concerns the overcoming of obstacles to the love between Psyche and Cupid or Amor, and their union in a sacred marriage. Although the only extended narrative from antiquity is that of Apuleius, Eros, since the rediscovery of Apuleiuss novel in the Renaissance, the reception of Cupid and Psyche in the classical tradition has been extensive. The story has been retold in poetry, drama, and opera, and depicted widely in painting, sculpture, Psyches Roman name through direct translation is Anima. The tale of Cupid and Psyche is placed at the midpoint of Apuleiuss novel, the novel itself is a first-person narrative by the protagonist Lucius. Transformed into a donkey by magic gone wrong, Lucius undergoes various trials and adventures, Psyches story has some similarities, including the theme of dangerous curiosity, punishments and tests, and redemption through divine favor. As a structural mirror of the plot, the tale is an example of mise en abyme. The happy ending for Psyche is supposed to assuage Charites fear of rape, there were once a king and queen, rulers of an unnamed city, who had three daughters of conspicuous beauty. The youngest and most beautiful was Psyche, whose admirers, neglecting the worship of the love goddess Venus, instead prayed. It was rumored that she was the coming of Venus. Venus is offended, and commissions Cupid to work her revenge, Cupid instead scratches himself with his own dart, which makes any living thing fall in love with the first thing it sees. As soon as Cupid scratches himself he falls deeply in love with Psyche, although her two humanly beautiful sisters have married, the idolized Psyche has yet to find love. Her father suspects that they have incurred the wrath of the gods, Psyche is arrayed in funeral attire, conveyed by a procession to the peak of a rocky crag, and exposed. Marriage and death are merged into a rite of passage. Zephyr the West Wind bears her up to meet her match, and deposits her in a lovely meadow. The transported girl awakes to find herself at the edge of a cultivated grove, exploring, she finds a marvelous house with golden columns, a carved ceiling of citrus wood and ivory, silver walls embossed with wild and domesticated animals, and jeweled mosaic floors. A disembodied voice tells her to make herself comfortable, and she is entertained at a feast that serves itself, although fearful and without sexual experience, she allows herself to be guided to a bedroom, where in the darkness a being she cannot see makes her his wife. She gradually learns to look forward to his visits, though he always departs before sunrise and forbids her to look upon him, and soon she becomes pregnant
Cupid and Psyche
–
Psyche and Amor, also known as Psyche Receiving Cupid's First Kiss (1798), by
François Gérard: a symbolic butterfly hovers over Psyche in a moment of innocence poised before sexual awakening.
Cupid and Psyche
–
Psyche Honoured by the People (1692–1702) from a series of 12 scenes from the story by
Luca Giordano
Cupid and Psyche
–
Psyche's Wedding (
Pre-Raphaelite, 1895) by
Edward Burne-Jones
Cupid and Psyche
–
Psyche Showing Her Jewelry to Her Sisters (
Neoclassical, 1815–16),
grisaille wallpaper by
Merry-Joseph Blondel
4.
Mars (mythology)
–
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Mars was the god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in only to Jupiter and he was the most prominent of the military gods in the religion of the Roman army. Most of his festivals were held in March, the named for him, and in October. Under the influence of Greek culture, Mars was identified with the Greek god Ares, whose myths were reinterpreted in Roman literature and art under the name of Mars. But the character and dignity of Mars differed in fundamental ways from that of his Greek counterpart, Mars was a part of the Archaic Triad along with Jupiter and Quirinus, the latter of whom as a guardian of the Roman people had no Greek equivalent. Mars altar in the Campus Martius, the area of Rome that took its name from him, was supposed to have been dedicated by Numa, the peace-loving semi-legendary second king of Rome. Although Ares was viewed primarily as a destructive and destabilizing force, Mars represented military power as a way to secure peace, in the mythic genealogy and founding myths of Rome, Mars was the father of Romulus and Remus with Rhea Silvia. Like Ares who was the son of Zeus and Hera, Mars is usually considered to be the son of Jupiter, however, in a version of his birth given by Ovid, he was the son of Juno alone. Jupiter had usurped the mothers function when he gave birth to Minerva directly from his forehead, to restore the balance, Flora obtained a magic flower and tested it on a heifer who became fecund at once. She then plucked a flower ritually using her thumb, touched Junos belly, Juno withdrew to Thrace and the shore of Marmara for the birth. Ovid tells this story in the Fasti, his poetic work on the Roman calendar. In the earliest Roman calendar, March was the first month, Ovid is the only source for the story. The consort of Mars was Nerio or Nerine, Valor and she represents the vital force, power and majesty of Mars. Her name was regarded as Sabine in origin and is equivalent to Latin virtus, in the early 3rd century BC, the comic playwright Plautus has a reference to Mars greeting Nerio, his wife. A source from late antiquity says that Mars and Nerine were celebrated together at a festival held on March 23, in the later Roman Empire, Nerine came to be identified with Minerva. Nerio probably originates as a personification of Mars power, as such abstractions in Latin are generally feminine. Her name appears with that of Mars in an archaic prayer invoking a series of abstract qualities, the influence of Greek mythology and its anthropomorphic gods may have caused Roman writers to treat these pairs as marriages. The union of Venus and Mars held greater appeal for poets and philosophers, in Greek myth, the adultery of Ares and Aphrodite had been exposed to ridicule when her husband Hephaestus caught them in the act by means of a magical snare
Mars (mythology)
–
A 1st-century Mars found in the
Forum of Nerva (Capitoline Museums, Rome)
Mars (mythology)
–
Marcus Aurelius (
head covered) sacrificing at the Temple of Jupiter
Mars (mythology)
–
Wall painting (mid-1st century AD) from which the House of Venus and Mars at
Pompeii takes its name
Mars (mythology)
–
She-wolf and twins from an altar to Venus and Mars
5.
Venus (mythology)
–
Venus is the Roman goddess whose functions encompassed love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity and victory. In Roman mythology, she was the mother of the Roman people through her son, Aeneas, Julius Caesar claimed her as his ancestor. Venus was central to religious festivals, and was revered in Roman religion under numerous cult titles. The Romans adapted the myths and iconography of her Greek counterpart Aphrodite for Roman art, in the later classical tradition of the West, Venus becomes one of the most widely referenced deities of Greco-Roman mythology as the embodiment of love and sexuality. It has connections to venerari and venia through a common root in an Indo-European *wenes- or *u̯enis. Their common Proto-Indo-European root is assumed as *wen- or *u̯en- to strive for, wish for, desire, Venus has been described as perhaps the most original creation of the Roman pantheon, and an ill-defined and assimilative native goddess, combined with a strange and exotic Aphrodite. The ambivalence of her persuasive functions has been perceived in the relationship of the root *venes- with Latin venenum, in the sense of a charm, in myth, Venus-Aphrodite was born of sea-foam. Roman theology presents Venus as the yielding, watery female principle, essential to the generation and her male counterparts in the Roman pantheon, Vulcan and Mars, are active and fiery. Venus absorbs and tempers the male essence, uniting the opposites of male and female in mutual affection and she is essentially assimilative and benign, and embraces several otherwise quite disparate functions. She can give military victory, sexual success, good fortune, in one context, she is a goddess of prostitutes, in another, she turns the hearts of men and women from sexual vice to virtue. Images of Venus have been found in murals, mosaics. Petronius, in his Satyricon, places an image of Venus among the Lares of the freedman Trimalchios lararium, prospective brides offered Venus a gift before the wedding, the nature of the gift, and its timing, are unknown. Some Roman sources say that girls who come of age offer their toys to Venus, it is unclear where the offering is made, in dice-games, a popular pastime among Romans of all classes, the luckiest, best possible roll was known as Venus. Venus signs were for the most part the same as Aphrodites, Venus statues, and her worshipers, wore myrtle crowns at her festivals. Likewise, Roman folk-etymology transformed the ancient, obscure goddess Murcia into Venus of the Myrtles, myrtle was thought a particularly potent aphrodisiac. The female pudendum, particularly the clitoris, was known as murtos, as goddess of love and sex, Venus played an essential role at Roman prenuptial rites and wedding nights, so myrtle and roses were used in bridal bouquets. Marriage itself was not a seduction but a condition, under Junos authority. Venus was also a patron of the ordinary, everyday wine drunk by most Roman men and women, in the rites to Bona Dea, a goddess of female chastity, Venus, myrtle and anything male were not only excluded, but unmentionable
Venus (mythology)
–
Venus on seashell, from the Casa di Venus,
Pompeii. Before 79 AD.
Venus (mythology)
–
Marcus Aurelius (
head covered) sacrificing at the Temple of Jupiter
Venus (mythology)
–
Bronze figurine of Venus,
Lyon (Roman
Lugdunum)
Venus (mythology)
–
Remains of the
Temple of Venus Genetrix in the
Forum of Caesar, Rome.
6.
Eros
–
In Greek mythology, Eros was the Greek god of sexual attraction. Some myths make him a god, while in other myths. He was one of the winged love gods, Erotes, Eros appears in ancient Greek sources under several different guises. In the earliest sources, he is one of the gods involved in the coming into being of the cosmos. But in later sources, Eros is represented as the son of Aphrodite, whose mischievous interventions in the affairs of gods and mortals cause bonds of love to form, a cult of Eros existed in pre-classical Greece, but it was much less important than that of Aphrodite. However, in antiquity, Eros was worshiped by a fertility cult in Thespiae. In Athens, he shared a very popular cult with Aphrodite, according to Hesiod, one of the most ancient of all Greek sources, Eros was the fourth god to come into existence, coming after Chaos, Gaia, and Tartarus. However, Parmenides, one of the philosophers, makes Eros the first of all the gods to come into existence. The Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries featured Eros as a very original god, aristophanes, influenced by Orphism, relates the birth of Eros, At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night, Darkness, and the Abyss. Earth, the Air and Heaven had no existence and he mated in the deep Abyss with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light. In later myths, he was the son of the deities Aphrodite and Ares, Eros was associated with athleticism, with statues erected in gymnasia, and was often regarded as the protector of homosexual love between men. Eros was depicted as carrying a lyre or bow and arrow. He was also depicted accompanied by dolphins, flutes, roosters, roses, “We must have a word with Aphrodite. Let us go together and ask her to persuade her boy, if that is possible, to loose an arrow at Aeetes’ daughter, Medea of the spells, and make her fall in love with Jason. ”He smites maids’ breasts with unknown heat. Once, when Venus’ son was kissing her, his quiver dangling down, in fact the wound was deeper than it seemed, though unperceived at first. Enraptured by the beauty of a man, Eros drove Dionysos mad for the girl with the delicious wound of his arrow, then curving his wings flew lightly to Olympus. And the god roamed over the hills scourged with a greater fire. ”The story of Eros and Psyche has a tradition as a folktale of the ancient Greco-Roman world long before it was committed to literature in Apuleius Latin novel. The novel itself is written in a picaresque Roman style, yet Psyche retains her Greek name, Eros and Aphrodite are called by their Latin names, and Cupid is depicted as a young adult, rather than a child
Eros
–
The Eros Farnese, a
Pompeiian marble thought to be a copy of the colossal Eros of
Thespiae by
Praxiteles
Eros
–
A
Red-Figure Plate with Eros as a youth making an offering. (c. 340-320 BC)
Walters Art Museum,
Baltimore.
Eros
–
Eros depicted as an adult male,
Attic red-figure bobbin (c. 470–450 BC).
Eros
–
This Roman Eros once rode a dolphin, a common convention for 1st century CE depictions of the deity.
Walters Art Museum,
Baltimore.
7.
Classical mythology
–
Classical mythology or Greco-Roman mythology is both the body of and the study of myths from the ancient Greeks and Romans as they are used or transformed by cultural reception. Along with philosophy and political thought, mythology represents one of the major survivals of classical antiquity throughout later Western culture, the Greek word mythos refers to the spoken word or speech, but it also denotes a tale, story or narrative. Classical myths are also alluded to in scientific naming, particularly in astronomy, chemistry, and biology, and in the theory of Freud. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, when Latin remained the dominant language in Europe for international educated discourse, mythological names almost always appeared in Latinized form. With the Greek revival of the 19th century, however, Greek names began to be used more often, classical mythology is a term often used to designate the myths belonging to the Greek and Roman traditions. A classical myth as it appears in later Western culture is usually a syncretism of various versions from both Greek and Latin sources. Greek myths were narratives related to ancient Greek religion, often concerned with the actions of gods and other supernatural beings, major sources for Greek myths include the Homeric epics, that is, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Known versions are preserved in sophisticated literary works shaped by the artistry of individuals and by the conventions of genre, or in vase painting. In these forms, mythological narratives often serve purposes that are not primarily religious, such as entertainment and even comedy, Roman myths have a dynamic relation to Roman historiography, as in the early books of Livys Ab urbe condita. The literary collection of Greco-Roman myths with the greatest influence on later Western culture was the Metamorphoses of the Augustan poet Ovid. The myths as they appear in popular culture of the 20th and 21st centuries often have only a tangential relation to the stories as told in ancient Greek and Latin literature
Classical mythology
–
Le Rapt d'Europe ("The Abduction of
Europa," 1750) by
Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (
Dallas Museum of Art)
8.
Lust
–
Lust is an emotion or feeling of intense desire in the body. The lust can take any form such as the lust for sex and it can take such mundane forms as the lust for food as distinct from the need for food. Lust is a psychological force producing intense wanting for an object, Lust holds a critical position in the philosophical underpinnings of Buddhist reality. It is named in the second of the Four Noble Truths, there is a natural way to eliminate all suffering from ones life. The Noble Eightfold Path is that way, Lust is thus the ultimate cause of general imperfection and the most immediate root cause of a certain suffering. The passionate desire for either non-existence or for freedom from lust is a common misunderstanding, beholding an endless knot puts one, symbolically, in the position of the one with the right worldview, representing that person who attains freedom from lust. In existence are four kinds of things that engender the clinging, rituals, worldviews, pleasures, in English-speaking countries, the term lust is often associated with sexual desire, probably because of this verse. But just as the English word was originally a term for desire. The LSJ lexicon suggests set ones heart upon a thing, long for, covet, desire as glosses for ἐπιθυμέω, while coveting your neighbors wife may involve sexual desire, its unlikely that coveting a neighbors house or field is sexual in nature. And in most New Testament uses, the same Greek word, ἐπιθυμέω, does not have a clear sexual connotation. Luke 22, 15-16, And he said them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer, for I say unto you, I shall not eat it. Acts 20,33, I coveted no mans silver, or gold, ye yourselves know that these hands ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me. Luke 15, 14-16, And when had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that country, and he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat, Pope John Paul II said that lust devalues the eternal attraction of male and female, reducing personal riches of the opposite sex to an object for gratification of sexuality. Lust is considered by Catholicism to be a desire for sexual pleasure. In Catholicism, sexual desire in itself is good, and is considered part of Gods plan for humanity, however, when sexual desire is separated from Gods love, it becomes disordered and self-seeking. The Latin for extravagance – was used by St Jerome to translate a variety of sins, including drunkenness. Gregory the Great placed Luxuria as one of the seven sins, narrowing its scope to disordered desire
Lust
–
Detail: Luxuria (Lust), in
The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things, by
Hieronymus Bosch.
Lust
–
A demon
satiating his lust in a 13th-century manuscript.
Lust
–
Romanesque capital representing lust.
Lust
–
Goya 's
Man Mocked by Two Women (Dos Mujeres y un hombre), c. 1820.
9.
Interpretatio graeca
–
It is thus a comparative methodology that looks for equivalencies and shared characteristics. Interpretatio romana is comparative discourse in reference to ancient Roman religion and myth, both the Romans and the Gauls reinterpreted Gallic religious traditions in relation to Roman models, particularly Imperial cult. …The meaning of a deity is his or her character as it unfolded in myths, hymns, rites. This character makes a deity comparable to other deities with similar traits, the similarity of gods makes their names mutually translatable. … The practice of translating the names of the created a concept of similarity. Pliny the Elder expressed the translatability of deities as different names to different peoples and this capacity made possible the religious syncretism of the Hellenistic era and the pre-Christian Roman Empire. Herodotus was one of the earliest authors to engage in this form of interpretation, in his observations regarding the Egyptians, he establishes Greco-Egyptian equivalents that endured into the Hellenistic era, including Amon/Zeus, Osiris/Dionysus, and Ptah/Hephaestus. Some pairs of Greek and Roman gods, such as Zeus and Jupiter, are thought to derive from a common Indo-European archetype, some deities dating to Romes oldest religious stratum, such as Janus and Terminus, had no Greek equivalent. Other Greek divine figures, most notably Apollo, were adopted directly into Roman culture, the phrase interpretatio romana was first used by the Imperial-era historian Tacitus in the Germania. Tacitus reports that in a grove of the Nahanarvali, a priest adorned as a woman presides. Elsewhere, he identifies the god of the Germans as Mercury. Some information about the deities of the ancient Gauls, who left no written literature other than inscriptions, is preserved by Greco-Roman sources under the names of Greek, a large number of Gaulish theonyms or cult titles are preserved, for instance, in association with Mars. As with some Greek and Roman divine counterparts, the similarities between a Gallic and a Roman or Greek deity may reflect a common Indo-European origin. Lugh was identified with Mercury, Nodens with Mars as healer and protector, in some cases, however, a Gallic deity is given an interpretatio romana by means of more than one god, varying among literary texts or inscriptions. These tendencies extended to cross-cultural identifications, in the Eastern empire, the Anatolian storm god with his double-headed axe became Jupiter Dolichenus, a favorite cult figure among soldiers. Roman scholars such as Varro interpreted the monotheistic god of the Jews into Roman terms as Caelus or Jupiter Optimus Maximus, some Greco-Roman authors seem to have understood the Jewish invocation of Yahweh Sabaoth as Sabazius. Interpretatio germanica is the practice by the Germanic peoples of identifying Roman gods with the names of Germanic deities, according to Rudolf Simek, this occurred around the 1st century of the common era, when both cultures came into closer contact. This is also the case with Saturn in some West Germanic languages, such as the English Saturday, the West Frisian Saterdei, the Low German Saterdag and the Dutch zaterdag all meaning Saturns day
Interpretatio graeca
–
The goddess
Isis (seated right) welcoming the
Greek heroine Io into Egypt, as depicted in a Roman wall painting from
Pompeii
Interpretatio graeca
–
Gilt bronze head from the cult statue of Sulis Minerva from the
Temple at Bath
Interpretatio graeca
–
Jupiter Ammon (terracotta of Hellenistic style, 1st century AD)
Interpretatio graeca
–
Worshipper before Zeus-Serapis-
Ohrmazd (Bactria, 3rd century AD)
10.
Ancient Greek art
–
The rate of stylistic development between about 750 and 300 BC was remarkable by ancient standards, and in surviving works is best seen in sculpture. There were important innovations in painting, which have to be reconstructed due to the lack of original survivals of quality. The art of ancient Greece is usually divided stylistically into four periods, the Geometric, Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic. The Geometric age is dated from about 1000 BC, although in reality little is known about art in Greece during the preceding 200 years. The 7th century BC witnessed the development of the Archaic style as exemplified by the black-figure style of vase painting. From some point in the 1st century BC onwards Greco-Roman is used, in reality, there was no sharp transition from one period to another. Forms of art developed at different speeds in different parts of the Greek world, strong local traditions, and the requirements of local cults, enable historians to locate the origins even of works of art found far from their place of origin. Greek art of various kinds was widely exported, the whole period saw a generally steady increase in prosperity and trading links within the Greek world and with neighbouring cultures. The survival rate of Greek art differs starkly between media and we have huge quantities of pottery and coins, much stone sculpture, though even more Roman copies, and a few large bronze sculptures. Almost entirely missing are painting, fine metal vessels, and anything in perishable materials including wood, the stone shell of a number of temples and theatres has survived, but little of their extensive decoration. By convention, finely painted vessels of all sorts are called vases, sculptural or architectural pottery, also very often painted, are referred to as terracottas, and also survive in large quantities. In much of the literature, pottery means only painted vessels, pottery was the main form of grave goods deposited in tombs, often as funerary urns containing the cremated ashes, and was widely exported. Other colours were limited, normally to small areas of white. Within the restrictions of these techniques and other conventions, vase-painters achieved remarkable results, combining refinement. White ground technique allowed more freedom in depiction, but did not wear well and was made for burial. Conventionally, the ancient Greeks are said to have made most pottery vessels for everyday use, not for display. Most surviving pottery consists of vessels for storing, serving or drinking liquids such as amphorae, kraters, hydria, libation bowls, oil and perfume bottles for the toilet, jugs, painted vessels for serving and eating food are much less common. Painted pottery was affordable even by people, and a piece decently decorated with about five or six figures cost about two or three days wages
Ancient Greek art
–
Late Geometric
pyxis,
British Museum
Ancient Greek art
–
7th-century BC plate with
sphinx from
Rhodes,
Louvre
Ancient Greek art
–
Interior (
tondo) of a red figure
kylix, depicting
Herakles and
Athena, by Phoinix (potter) and
Douris (painter), c. 480-470 BC,
Antikensammlungen Munich
11.
Hellenistic period
–
It is often considered a period of transition, sometimes even of decadence or degeneration, compared to the enlightenment of the Greek Classical era. The Hellenistic period saw the rise of New Comedy, Alexandrian poetry, the Septuagint, Greek science was advanced by the works of the mathematician Euclid and the polymath Archimedes. The religious sphere expanded to include new gods such as the Greco-Egyptian Serapis, eastern deities such as Attis and Cybele, the Hellenistic period was characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization which established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa. This resulted in the export of Greek culture and language to new realms. Equally, however, these new kingdoms were influenced by the cultures, adopting local practices where beneficial, necessary. Hellenistic culture thus represents a fusion of the Ancient Greek world with that of the Near East, Middle East and this mixture gave rise to a common Attic-based Greek dialect, known as Koine Greek, which became the lingua franca through the Hellenistic world. Scholars and historians are divided as to what event signals the end of the Hellenistic era, Hellenistic is distinguished from Hellenic in that the first encompasses the entire sphere of direct ancient Greek influence, while the latter refers to Greece itself. The word originated from the German term hellenistisch, from Ancient Greek Ἑλληνιστής, from Ἑλλάς, Hellenistic is a modern word and a 19th-century concept, the idea of a Hellenistic period did not exist in Ancient Greece. Although words related in form or meaning, e. g, the major issue with the term Hellenistic lies in its convenience, as the spread of Greek culture was not the generalized phenomenon that the term implies. Some areas of the world were more affected by Greek influences than others. The Greek population and the population did not always mix, the Greeks moved and brought their own culture. While a few fragments exist, there is no surviving historical work which dates to the hundred years following Alexanders death. The works of the major Hellenistic historians Hieronymus of Cardia, Duris of Samos, the earliest and most credible surviving source for the Hellenistic period is Polybius of Megalopolis, a statesman of the Achaean League until 168 BC when he was forced to go to Rome as a hostage. His Histories eventually grew to a length of forty books, covering the years 220 to 167 BC, another important source, Plutarchs Parallel Lives though more preoccupied with issues of personal character and morality, outlines the history of important Hellenistic figures. Appian of Alexandria wrote a history of the Roman empire that includes information of some Hellenistic kingdoms, other sources include Justins epitome of Pompeius Trogus Historiae Philipicae and a summary of Arrians Events after Alexander, by Photios I of Constantinople. Lesser supplementary sources include Curtius Rufus, Pausanias, Pliny, in the field of philosophy, Diogenes Laertius Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is the main source. Ancient Greece had traditionally been a collection of fiercely independent city-states. After the Peloponnesian War, Greece had fallen under a Spartan hegemony, in which Sparta was pre-eminent but not all-powerful
Hellenistic period
–
The
Nike of Samothrace is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of
Hellenistic art.
Hellenistic period
–
Alexander fighting the Persian king
Darius III. From the
Alexander Mosaic,
Naples National Archaeological Museum.
Hellenistic period
–
Alexander's empire at the time of its maximum expansion.
12.
Art history
–
Art history is the study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i. e. genre, design, format, and style. This includes the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture as well as the minor arts of ceramics, furniture. As a term, art history encompasses several methods of studying the arts, in common usage referring to works of art. One branch of this area of study is aesthetics, which includes investigating the enigma of the sublime, technically, art history is not these things, because the art historian uses historical method to answer the questions, How did the artist come to create the work. Who were his or her teachers, who were his or her disciples. What historical forces shaped the artists oeuvre, and How did he or she and the creation, in turn, affect the course of artistic, political, and social events. It is, however, questionable whether many questions of this kind can be answered satisfactorily without also considering basic questions about the nature of art, unfortunately the current disciplinary gap between art history and the philosophy of art often hinders this inquiry. Art history is not only a biographical endeavor, Art historians often root their studies in the scrutiny of individual objects. They thus attempt to answer in historically specific ways, questions such as, what meaning did this object convey. Did the artist meet their goals well, the historical backbone of the discipline is a celebratory chronology of beautiful creations commissioned by public or religious bodies or wealthy individuals in western Europe. Such a canon remains prominent, as indicated by the selection of objects present in art history textbooks, nonetheless, since the 20th century there has been an effort to re-define the discipline to be more inclusive of non-Western art, art made by women, and vernacular creativity. Art history as we know it in the 21st century began in the 19th century but has precedents that date to the ancient world, advances in photographic reproduction and printing techniques after World War II increased the ability of reproductions of artworks. Such technologies have helped to advance the discipline in profound ways, the study of visual art thus described, can be a practice that involves understanding context, form, and social significance. Art historians employ a number of methods in their research into the ontology, Art historians often examine work in the context of its time. In short, this approach examines the work of art in the context of the world within which it was created, Art historians also often examine work through an analysis of form, that is, the creators use of line, shape, color, texture, and composition. This approach examines how the artist uses a picture plane or the three dimensions of sculptural or architectural space to create his or her art. The way these individual elements are employed results in representational or non-representational art, is the artist imitating an object or image found in nature. The closer the art hews to perfect imitation, the more the art is realistic, is the artist not imitating, but instead relying on symbolism, or in an important way striving to capture natures essence, rather than copy it directly
Art history
–
Venus de Milo on display at the
Louvre.
Art history
–
History of art
Art history
–
Giorgio Vasari,
Self-portrait c.1567
Art history
–
Anton von Maron, Portrait of
Johann Joachim Winckelmann, 1768
13.
Erotes (mythology)
–
The Erotes are a collective of winged gods associated with love and sexual intercourse in Greek mythology. They are part of Aphrodites retinue, Erotes is the plural of Eros, who as a singular deity has a more complex mythology. Other named Erotes are Anteros, Himeros, Hedylogos, Hymenaios, Hermaphroditus, the Erotes became a motif of Hellenistic art, and may appear in Roman art in the alternate form of multiple Cupids or Cupids and Psyches. In the later tradition of Western art, erotes become indistinguishable from figures also known as Cupids, amorini, the erotes are a group of winged gods in Classical mythology. They are associated with love and sexual desire, and form part of Aphrodites retinue, the individual erotes are sometimes linked to particular aspects of love, and are often associated with same-sex desire. Sometimes the erotes are regarded as manifestations of a singular god, stories of the erotes mischief or pranks were a popular theme in Hellenistic culture, particularly in the 2nd century BCE. Spells to attract or repel erotes were used, in order to love or the opposite. Different erotes represented various facets of love or desire, such as unrequited love, the erotes were usually portrayed as nude, handsome, winged youths. The earliest known sculptured friezes depicting a group of erotes and winged maidens driving chariots pulled by goats, were created to decorate theatres in ancient Greece in the 2nd century BCE, the representation of erotes in such friezes became common, including erotes in hunting scenes. Due to their role in the mythological pantheon, the erotes representation is sometimes purely symbolic or they may be portrayed as individual characters. The presence of erotes in otherwise non-sexual images, such as of two women, has interpreted to indicate a homoerotic subtext. In the cult of Aphrodite in Anatolia, iconographic images of the goddess with three erotes symbolized the three realms over which she had dominion, the Earth, sky, and water, groups of numerous erotes are portrayed in ancient Greek and Roman art. In addition, a number of named gods have been regarded as erotes, sometimes being assigned particular associations with aspects of love, Anteros was the god of requited love, literally love returned or counterpart love. He punished those who scorned love and the advances of others, Anteros was the son of Ares and Aphrodite in Greek mythology, and given to his brother Eros as a playmate because the latter was lonely. In another version, Anteros arose from mutual feelings between Poseidon and Nerites, physically, Anteros was depicted as similar to Eros in every way, though sometimes with longer hair and butterfly wings. He has been described as armed with either a club or arrows of lead. Originally, Eros was the god of, love, and intercourse, in later myths, he was the son of the deities Aphrodite and Ares, it is the Eros of these later myths who is one of the erotes. Eros was associated with athleticism, with statues erected in gymnasia, Eros was depicted as often carrying a lyre or bow and arrow
Erotes (mythology)
–
Anteros, popularly called Eros, by
Alfred Gilbert, 1885; from the Shaftesbury Memorial in
Piccadilly Circus.
Erotes (mythology)
–
Hermaphroditos and the erotes, Onyx cameo, Alexandria, 1st century BCE
Erotes (mythology)
–
Eros. Attic red-figure bobbin, ca. 470–450 BCE.
Erotes (mythology)
–
Statue of Pothos at the Centrale Montemartini
14.
Ancient Roman art
–
Roman art refers to the visual arts made in Ancient Rome and in the territories of the Roman Empire. Roman art includes architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work, sculpture was perhaps considered as the highest form of art by Romans, but figure painting was also very highly regarded. Roman coins were an important means of propaganda, and have survived in enormous numbers, other perishable forms of art have not survived at all. Stylistic eclecticism and practical application are the hallmarks of much Roman art, though very little remains of Greek wall art and portraiture, certainly Greek sculpture and vase painting bears this out. These forms were not likely surpassed by Roman artists in fineness of design or execution. As another example of the lost Golden Age, he singled out Peiraikos, whose artistry is surpassed by only a very few. ”The adjective vulgar is used here in its original meaning, the Greek antecedents of Roman art were legendary. In the mid-5th century BC, the most famous Greek artists were Polygnotos, noted for his murals, and Apollodoros. In sculpture, Skopas, Praxiteles, Phidias, and Lysippos were the foremost sculptors, Ancient Greek treatises on the arts are known to have existed in Roman times though are now lost. Many Roman artists came from Greek colonies and provinces, the high number of Roman copies of Greek art also speaks of the esteem Roman artists had for Greek art, and perhaps of its rarer and higher quality. One exception is the Roman bust, which did not include the shoulders, the traditional head-and-shoulders bust may have been an Etruscan or early Roman form. Where Greek artists were highly revered in their society, most Roman artists were anonymous, there is no recording, as in Ancient Greece, of the great masters of Roman art, and practically no signed works. Roman culture assimilated many cultures and was for the most part tolerant of the ways of conquered peoples, Roman art was commissioned, displayed, and owned in far greater quantities, and adapted to more uses than in Greek times. Wealthy Romans were more materialistic, they decorated their walls with art, their home with decorative objects, when Constantine moved the capital of the empire to Byzantium, Roman art incorporated Eastern influences to produce the Byzantine style of the late empire. When Rome was sacked in the 5th century, artisans moved to, of the vast body of Roman painting we now have only a very few pockets of survivals, with many documented types not surviving at all, or doing so only from the very end of the period. A succession of dated styles have been defined and analysed by modern art historians beginning with August Mau, there are a number of other parts of painted rooms surviving from Rome and elsewhere, which somewhat help to fill in the gaps of our knowledge of wall-painting. Nothing remains of the Greek paintings imported to Rome during the 4th and 5th centuries, in sum, the range of samples is confined to only about 200 years out of the about 900 years of Roman history, and of provincial and decorative painting. Most of this painting was done using the secco method. There is evidence from mosaics and a few inscriptions that some Roman paintings were adaptations or copies of earlier Greek works
Ancient Roman art
–
Fresco from the
Villa of the Mysteries.
Pompeii, 80 BC
Ancient Roman art
–
Veristic portrait bust of an old man, head covered (
capite velato), either a priest or
paterfamilias (marble, mid-1st century BC)
Ancient Roman art
–
Preparation of an
animal sacrifice; marble, fragment of an architectural
relief, first quarter of the 2nd century CE; from Rome, Italy
Ancient Roman art
–
Pompeian painter with painted statue and framed painting
Pompeii
15.
Western art
–
The art of Europe encompasses the history of visual art in Europe. European prehistoric art started as mobile rock, and cave painting art, written histories of European art often begin with the art of the Ancient Middle East, and the Ancient Aegean civilisations, dating from the 3rd millennium BC. Parallel with these significant cultures, art of one form or another existed all over Europe, wherever there were people, leaving signs such as carvings, decorated artifacts and huge standing stones. Before the 1800s, the Christian church was an influence upon European art. The history of the Church was very much reflected in the history of art, in the same period of time there was renewed interest in heroes and heroines, tales of mythological gods and goddesses, great wars, and bizarre creatures which were not connected to religion. Secularism has influenced European art since the Classical period, while most art of the last 200 years has produced without reference to religion. On the other hand, European art has often influenced by politics of one kind or another, of the state, of the patron. European art is arranged into a number of periods, which, historically. Broadly the periods are, Classical, Byzantine, Medieval, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical, European prehistoric art is an important part of the European cultural heritage. Prehistoric art history is divided into four main periods, Stone age, Neolithic, Bronze age. Most of the artifacts of this period are small sculptures. The oldest European cave art dates back 40,800, rock painting was also performed on cliff faces, but fewer of those have survived because of erosion. One well-known example is the paintings of Astuvansalmi in the Saimaa area of Finland. When Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola first encountered the Magdalenian paintings of the Altamira cave, Cantabria, Spain in 1879, recent reappraisals and numerous additional discoveries have since demonstrated their authenticity, while at the same time stimulating interest in the artistry of Upper Palaeolithic peoples. Cave paintings, undertaken with only the most rudimentary tools, can also furnish valuable insight into the culture, the figures are generally rather sketchily depicted in thin paint, with the relationships between the groups of humans and animals more carefully depicted than individual figures. Other less numerous groups of art, many engraved rather than painted. The Iberian examples are believed to date from a period perhaps covering the Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic. There are human heads and some fully represented animals, but full-length human figures at any size are so rare that their absence may represent a religious taboo, the Minoan culture is regarded as the oldest civilization in Europe
Western art
–
Pierre Mignard,
Clio,
muse of
heroic poetry and
history, 17th century
Western art
–
History of art
Western art
–
Venus of Willendorf.
Western art
–
Minoan Ceramic Art
16.
Classical tradition
–
Philosophy, political thought, and mythology are three major examples of how classical culture survives and continues to have influence. The West is one of a number of world cultures regarded as having a classical tradition, including the Indian, Chinese, Judaic, the study of the classical tradition differs from classical philology, which seeks to recover the meanings that ancient texts had in their original contexts. It examines both later efforts to uncover the realities of the Greco-Roman world and creative misunderstandings that reinterpret ancient values, ideas and aesthetic models for contemporary use. The classicist and translator Charles Martindale has defined the reception of antiquity as a two-way process … in which the present. The beginning of a classical tradition is usually located in the Renaissance. The use and meaning of the tradition may seem, however. The English word tradition, and with it the concept of handing down classical culture, derives from the Latin verb trado, tradere, traditus, in the sense of hand over, hand down. Writers and artists influenced by the tradition may name their ancient models. Often scholars infer classical influence through comparative methods that reveal patterns of thought, unearthing the Past, Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture. Cook, William W. and Tatum, James, african American Writers and Classical Tradition. Shakespeare and the Classical Tradition, An Annotated Bibliography 1961–1991
Classical tradition
–
Vergil leading
Dante on his journey in the
Inferno, an image that dramatizes the continuity of the classical tradition (Dante and Vergil in Hell by
Delacroix, 1823)
Classical tradition
–
Aeneas carrying his father and leading his son from fallen
Troy, a popular image in the Renaissance for the retrieval of the past as a way to make possible the future; the figure of his wife,
Creusa, who did not survive, represents that which was lost (
Federico Barocci, 1598)
Classical tradition
–
Horatio Greenough 's
George Washington (1840), modeled after a
statue of Zeus
17.
Putto
–
A putto is a figure in a work of art depicted as a chubby male child, usually naked and sometimes winged. However, in the Baroque period of art, the putto came to represent the omnipresence of God, a putto representing a cupid is also called an amorino. The more commonly found form putti is the plural of the Italian word putto, the Italian word comes from the Latin word putus, meaning boy or child. Today, in Italian, putto means either toddler winged angel or, rarely, toddler boy. It may have derived from the same Indo-European root as the Sanskrit word putra, Avestan puθra-, Old Persian puça-, Pahlavi pus and pusar, all meaning son. Putti, in the ancient classical world of art, were winged infants that were believed to influence human lives. Putti are a motif found primarily on child sarcophagi of the 2nd century. Since then, Donatello has been called the originator of the putto because of the contribution to art he made in restoring the form of putto. He gave putto a distinct character by infusing the form with Christian meanings, putti also began to feature in works showing figures from classical mythology, which became popular in the same period. Most Renaissance putti are essentially decorative and they ornament both religious and secular works, without taking any actual part in the events depicted in narrative paintings. There are two forms of the putto as the main subject of a work of art in 16th-century Italian Renaissance art, the sleeping putto. So many artists have depicted them that a list would be pointless, but among the best-known are the sculptor Donatello, the two relaxed and curious putti who appear at the foot of Raphaels Sistine Madonna are often reproduced. They also experienced a revival in the 19th century, where they gamboled through paintings by French academic painters. The iconography of putti is deliberately unfixed, so that it is difficult to tell the difference between putti, cupids, and various forms of angels and they have no unique, immediately identifiable attributes, so that putti may have many meanings and roles in the context of art. In popular culture, putto is also used as a decorative art found on buildings, gardens, a putto smoking a cigarette served as the cover art for Van Halens album 1984. A putto is the protagonist of the 2000 third person shooter Messiah, in the British TV series Doctor Who, infants of the species Weeping Angels appear as putti. In the 1st-person shooter Team Fortress 2, the Meet the Pyro video has the BLU Team appear as putti in Pyroland, in the 2003 video game Drakengard, a group of malevolent god-like figures known as the Watchers appear as putti. The historiography of this matter is very short
Putto
–
Sleeping Putto, by
Léon Bazille Perrault, 1882
Putto
–
Sarcophagus of the Museo Pio-Clementino (
Vatican Museums).
Putto
–
Putto on the ceiling of
Stirling Castle.
Putto
–
Tomb and monument of
Ilaria del Carretto by
Jacopo della Quercia, ca. 1413 (plaster cast in Moscow)
18.
Middle Ages
–
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
Middle Ages
–
The
Cross of Mathilde, a
crux gemmata made for
Mathilde, Abbess of Essen (973–1011), who is shown kneeling before the Virgin and Child in the
enamel plaque. The body of Christ is slightly later. Probably made in
Cologne or
Essen, the cross demonstrates several medieval techniques:
cast figurative sculpture,
filigree, enamelling, gem polishing and setting, and the reuse of Classical
cameos and
engraved gems.
Middle Ages
–
A late Roman statue
depicting the four Tetrarchs, now in
Venice
Middle Ages
–
Coin of
Theodoric
Middle Ages
–
Mosaic showing
Justinian with
the bishop of
Ravenna, bodyguards, and courtiers
19.
Renaissance
–
The Renaissance was a period in European history, from the 14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe. This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science, Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, the Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century. Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, the word Renaissance, literally meaning Rebirth in French, first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word also occurs in Jules Michelets 1855 work, Histoire de France, the word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism, however, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were back from Byzantium to Western Europe. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe life as it really was. Others see more competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand, Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia, silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money. Luxuries from the Eastern world, brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa, unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity, Arab logicians had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and the Levant. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Spain and Sicily and this work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history
Renaissance
–
David, by
Michelangelo (
Accademia di Belle Arti,
Florence) is a masterpiece of Renaissance and world art.
Renaissance
–
Renaissance
Renaissance
–
Leonardo da Vinci 's
Vitruvian Man (c. 1490) shows clearly the effect writers of Antiquity had on Renaissance thinkers. Based on the specifications in
Vitruvius '
De architectura (1st century BC), Leonardo tried to draw the perfectly proportioned man.
Renaissance
–
Portrait of a young woman (c. 1480-85) (
Simonetta Vespucci) by
Sandro Botticelli
20.
Allegory
–
As a literary device, an allegory is a metaphor whose vehicle may be a character, place or event, representing real-world issues and occurrences. Many ancient religions are based on astrological allegories, that is, allegories of the movement of the sun, in classical literature two of the best-known allegories are the Cave in Platos Republic and the story of the stomach and its members in the speech of Menenius Agrippa. One of the examples of allegory, Platos Allegory of the Cave. In this allegory, Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained in an all of their lives. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows, using language to identify their world. He tries to tell the people in the cave of his discovery, also allegorical is Ezekiel 16 and 17, wherein the capture of that same vine by the mighty Eagle represents Israels exile to Rome. Allegory has an ability to freeze the temporality of a story, Mediaeval thinking accepted allegory as having a reality underlying any rhetorical or fictional uses. The allegory was as true as the facts of surface appearances, if, then, the Greeks or others say that they were not committed to the care of Peter and his successors, they necessarily confess that they are not of the sheep of Christ. This text also demonstrates the frequent use of allegory in religious texts during the Mediaeval Period, following the tradition, since meaningful stories are nearly always applicable to larger issues, allegories may be read into many stories which the author may not have recognised. This is allegoresis, or the act of reading a story as an allegory. S, lewis and A Kingdom Far and Clear, The Complete Swan Lake Trilogy by Mark Helprin. The story of the apple falling onto Isaac Newtons head is another famous allegory and it simplified the idea of gravity by depicting a simple way it was supposedly discovered. It also made the scientific revelation well known by condensing the theory into a short tale. According to Henry Littlefields 1964 article, L. Yet, George MacDonald emphasised in 1893 that, A fairy tale is not an allegory, I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and this further reinforces the idea of forced allegoresis, as allegory is often a matter of interpretation and only sometimes of original artistic intention. Like allegorical stories, allegorical poetry has two meanings – a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning, some unique specimens of allegory can be found in the following works, Edmund Spenser – The Faerie Queene, The several knights in the poem actually stand for several virtues. Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown, The Devils Staff symbolises defiance of God, the characters names, such as Goodman and Faith, ironically serve as paradox in the conclusion of the story. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter, The scarlet letter symbolises many things, the characters, while developed with interiority, are allegorical in that they represent ways of seeing the world. George Orwell – Animal Farm, The pigs stand for political figures of the Russian Revolution, lászló Krasznahorkai - The Melancholy of Resistance and the film Werckmeister Harmonies, It uses a circus to describe an occupying dysfunctional government
Allegory
–
Allegory of Music by
Filippino Lippi (between 1475 and 1500): The "Allegory of Music" is a popular theme in painting. Lippi uses
symbols popular during the
High Renaissance, many of which refer to Greek mythology.
Allegory
–
Salvator Rosa:
Allegory of Fortune, representing
Fortuna, the Goddess of luck, with the
horn of plenty
Allegory
–
British School 17th century - Portrait of a Lady, Called Elizabeth, Lady Tanfield. Sometimes the meaning of an allegory can be lost, even if art historians suspect that the artwork is an allegory of some kind.
Allegory
–
Allegory of
Arithmetic, by
Laurent de La Hyre, c. 1650
21.
Red-figure pottery
–
Red-figure vase painting is one of the most important styles of figural Greek vase painting. It developed in Athens around 520 BC and remained in use until the late 3rd century BC and it replaced the previously dominant style of black-figure vase painting within a few decades. Its modern name is based on the depictions in red colour on a black background. The most important areas of production, apart from Attica, were in Southern Italy, the style was also adopted in other parts of Greece. Etruria became an important centre of production outside the Greek World, Attic red-figure vases were exported throughout Greece and beyond. For a long time, they dominated the market for fine ceramics, only few centres of pottery production could compete with Athens in terms of innovation, quality and production capacity. Of the red figure vases produced in Athens alone, more than 40,000 specimens, from the second most important production centre, Southern Italy, more than 20,000 vases and fragments are preserved. Starting with the studies by John D. Beazley and Arthur Dale Trendall, some vases can be ascribed to individual artists or schools. The images provide evidence for the exploration of Greek cultural history, everyday life, iconography, red figure is, put simply, the reverse of the black figure technique. Both were achieved by using the three-phase firing technique, the paintings were applied to the shaped but unfired vessels after they had dried to a leathery, near-brittle texture. In Attica, the normal unburnt clay was of orange colour at this stage, the outlines of the intended figures were drawn either with a blunt scraper, leaving a slight groove, or with charcoal, which would disappear entirely during firing. Then the contours were redrawn with a brush, using a clay slip. Occasionally, the decided to somewhat change the figural scene. In such cases the grooves from the original sketch sometimes remain visible, important contours were often drawn with a thicker slip, leading to a slightly protruding outline, less important lines and internal details were drawn with diluted glossy clay. Detail in other colours, like white or red, were applied at this point, the relief line was probably drawn with a bristle brush or a hair, dipped in thick paint. The suggestion of a hollow needle seems somewhat unlikely, the application of relief outlines was necessary, as the rather liquid glossy clay would otherwise have turned out too dull. After the techniques initial phase of development, both alternatives were used, so as to differentiate gradations and details more clearly, the space between figures was filled with a glossy grey clay slip. Then, the vases underwent triple-phase firing, during which the glossy clay reached its characteristic black or black-brown colour through reduction, the new technique had the primary advantage of permitting a far better execution of internal detail
Red-figure pottery
–
Procession of men,
kylix by the
Triptolemos Painter, circa 480 BCE.
Paris:
Louvre
Red-figure pottery
–
The wedding of
Thetis,
pyxis by the
Wedding Painter, circa 470/460 BCE.
Paris:
Louvre
Red-figure pottery
–
black-figure scene on the
Belly Amphora by the Andokides Painter (Munich 2301).
Munich:
Staatliche Antikensammlungen
Red-figure pottery
–
Red-figure scene on the
Belly Amphora by the Andokides Painter (Munich 2301).
Munich:
Staatliche Antikensammlungen
22.
Walters Art Museum
–
The Walters Art Museum, located in Mount Vernon-Belvedere, Baltimore, Maryland, is a public art museum founded and opened in 1934. It holds collections established during the mid-19th Century, located across the back alley, a block south of the Walters mansion on West Monument Street/Mount Vernon Place, on the northwest corner of North Charles Street at West Centre Street. The following year, The Walters reopened its original building after a dramatic three-year physical renovation and replacement of internal utilities. The Archimedes Palimpsest was on loan to the Walters Art Museum from a collector for conservation. This was one of the largest and most comprehensive such releases made by any museum, the Walters collection of ancient art includes examples from Egypt, Nubia, Greece, Rome, Etruria and the Near East. In 1911, Henry Walters purchased almost 100 gold artifacts from the Chiriqui region of western Panama in Central America, the museum owns the oldest surviving Chinese wood-and-lacquer image of the Buddha. It is exhibited in a gallery dedicated solely to this work, the Museum holds one of the largest and finest collections of Thai bronze, scrolls, and banner paintings in the world. Islamic art in all media is represented at the Walters, the Walters Museum owns an array of Islamic manuscripts. Walters Art Museum, MS W.613 contains five Mughal miniatures from a very important Khamsa of Nizami made for the Emperor Akbar, Henry Walters assembled a collection of art produced during the Middle Ages in all the major artistic media of the period. This forms the basis of the Walters medieval collection, for which the Museum is best known internationally. Considered one of the best collections of art in the United States, the Museums holdings include examples of metalwork, sculpture, stained glass, textiles, icons. Sculpted heads from the royal Abbey of St. Denis are rare surviving examples of sculptures that are directly connected with the origins of Gothic art in 12th Century France. An ivory casket covered with scenes of jousting knights is one of about a dozen such objects to survive in the world, many of these works are on display in the Museums galleries. Works in the collection are the subject of active research by the curatorial and conservation departments of the museum. The collection of European Renaissance and Baroque art features holdings of paintings, sculpture, furniture, ceramics, metal work, arms, the museum has one of ten surviving examples of the Sèvres pot-pourri vase in the shape of a ship from the 1750s and 1760s. William and Henry Walters collected works by late 19th Century French academic masters, Henry Walters was particularly interested in the courtly arts of 18th Century France. The museum’s collection of Sèvres porcelain includes a number of pieces that were made for members of the Royal Bourbon Court at Versailles Palace outside of Paris. Portrait miniatures and the examples of works, especially snuffboxes and watches, are displayed in the Treasury, along with some exceptional 19th-
Walters Art Museum
–
North Charles Street original main entrance to the Walters Art Museum
Walters Art Museum
–
Sculpture Garden (central "Great Hall") of the Walters Art Gallery (now Walters Art Museum) in the original Main Building of 1905-1909
Walters Art Museum
–
Sumerian male worshiper, c.2300 BC
Walters Art Museum
–
"
Padiiset's Statue ", illustrates
Canaan -
Ancient Egypt trade, c.1700 B.C. (inscription c.900 B.C.)
23.
Baltimore
–
Baltimore is the largest city in the U. S. state of Maryland, and the 29th-most populous city in the country. It was established by the Constitution of Maryland and is not part of any county, thus, it is the largest independent city in the United States, with a population of 621,849 as of 2015. As of 2010, the population of the Baltimore Metropolitan Area was 2.7 million, founded in 1729, Baltimore is the second largest seaport in the Mid-Atlantic. Baltimores Inner Harbor was once the leading port of entry for immigrants to the United States. With hundreds of identified districts, Baltimore has been dubbed a city of neighborhoods, in the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key wrote The Star-Spangled Banner, later the American national anthem, in Baltimore. More than 65,000 properties, or roughly one in three buildings in the city, are listed on the National Register, more than any city in the nation. The city has 289 properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the historical records of the government of Baltimore are located at the Baltimore City Archives. The city is named after Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, of the Irish House of Lords, Baltimore Manor was the name of the estate in County Longford on which the Calvert family lived in Ireland. Baltimore is an anglicization of the Irish name Baile an Tí Mhóir, in 1608, Captain John Smith traveled 210 miles from Jamestown to the uppermost Chesapeake Bay, leading the first European expedition to the Patapsco River. The name Patapsco is derived from pota-psk-ut, which translates to backwater or tide covered with froth in Algonquian dialect, a quarter century after John Smiths voyage, English colonists began to settle in Maryland. The area constituting the modern City of Baltimore and its area was first settled by David Jones in 1661. He claimed the area today as Harbor East on the east bank of the Jones Falls stream. In the early 1600s, the immediate Baltimore vicinity was populated, if at all. The Baltimore area had been inhabited by Native Americans since at least the 10th millennium BC, one Paleo-Indian site and several Archaic period and Woodland period archaeological sites have been identified in Baltimore, including four from the Late Woodland period. During the Late Woodland period, the culture that is called the Potomac Creek complex resided in the area from Baltimore to the Rappahannock River in Virginia. It was located on the Bush River on land that in 1773 became part of Harford County, in 1674, the General Assembly passed An Act for erecting a Court-house and Prison in each County within this Province. The site of the house and jail for Baltimore County was evidently Old Baltimore near the Bush River. In 1683, the General Assembly passed An Act for Advancement of Trade to establish towns, ports, one of the towns established by the act in Baltimore County was on Bush River, on Town Land, near the Court-House
Baltimore
–
Sixth Regiment fighting railroad strikers, July 20, 1877
Baltimore
Baltimore
–
The
Battle Monument commemorates the
Battle of Baltimore.
Baltimore
–
The
Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, looking west from
Pratt and
Gay streets
24.
Conflation
–
However, if the distinctions between the two concepts appear to be superficial, intentional conflation may be desirable for the sake of conciseness and recall. The result of conflating concepts may give rise to fallacies of ambiguity, for example, the word bat has at least two distinct meanings, a flying animal, and a piece of sporting equipment. If these meanings are not distinguished, the result may be the following categorical syllogism, therefore, some wooden objects are animals. Using words with different meanings can help clarify, or can cause real confusion, english words with multiple meanings can be illustrated by instances in which a motion is merged with or a causation with manner, e. g. The bride floated towards her future, in this example, the bride may, Be married on a boat, airplane, or hot-air balloon, etc. —-not all marriages occur in a church and she could be gracefully walking the aisle towards matrimony. The verb float has multiple meanings, and both meanings in the example may be proper uses of a bride floating toward a future. The manner of the scene, described by further context, would explain the meaning of the sentence. In an alternate example, respect is used both in the sense of recognise a right and have high regard for. We can recognise someones right to the opinion the United Nations is secretly controlled by alien lizards on the moon, without holding this idea in high regard. But conflation of two different concepts leads to the notion that all ideological ideas, should be treated with respect. Conflation in logical terms is very similar to, if not identical to, deliberate Idiom conflation is the amalgamation of two different expressions. In most cases, the results in a new expression that makes little sense literally. All conflations fit into one of two categories, congruent conflations and incongruent conflations. Congruent conflations are the ideal, and more sought-after, examples of the concept. These occur when the two root expressions reflect similar thoughts, for example, look whos calling the kettle black can be formed using the root expressions look whos talking and the pot calling the kettle black. These root expressions really mean the same thing, they are both a way to point out hypocritical behavior. Of course, look whos calling the kettle black does not directly imply anything, an illustrative conflation brings together two Roman Catholic saints named Lazarus
Conflation
–
The 34th G8 Summit at
Toyako, Japan (2008).
Conflation
–
Flag of the
Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, a heraldic emblem which displays conflated or "con-joined" images.
25.
Hesiod
–
Hesiod was a Greek poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded as the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as a persona with an active role to play in his subject. Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs, modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping. The dating of his life is an issue in scholarly circles. Epic narrative allowed poets like Homer no opportunity for personal revelations, however, Hesiods extant work comprises didactic poems in which he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life. There are three references in Works and Days, as well as some passages in his Theogony that support inferences made by scholars. Some scholars have seen Perses as a creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod develops in Works and Days. Gregory Nagy, on the hand, sees both Persēs and Hēsiodos as fictitious names for poetical personae. The family association with Cyme might explain his familiarity with eastern myths, evident in his poems, however, while his poetry features some Aeolisms there are no words that are certainly Boeotian—he composed in the main literary dialect of the time, Ionian. Pausanias asserted that Boeotians showed him an old tablet made of lead on which the Works were engraved. If he did write or dictate, it was perhaps as an aid to memory or because he lacked confidence in his ability to produce poems extempore and it certainly wasnt in a quest for immortal fame since poets in his era had no such notions. However, some suspect the presence of large-scale changes in the text. Possibly he composed his verses during idle times on the farm and he was in fact a misogynist of the same calibre as the later poet, Semonides. He resembles Solon in his preoccupation with issues of good versus evil and how a just and he resembles Aristophanes in his rejection of the idealised hero of epic literature in favour of an idealised view of the farmer. Yet the fact that he could eulogise kings in Theogony and denounce them as corrupt in Works, two different—yet early—traditions record the site of Hesiods grave. This tradition follows a familiar ironic convention, the oracle that predicts accurately after all, the other tradition, first mentioned in an epigram by Chersias of Orchomenus written in the 7th century BC claims that Hesiod lies buried at Orchomenus, a town in Boeotia. Eventually they came to regard Hesiod too as their hearth-founder, later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts. Greeks in the fifth and early 4th centuries BC considered their oldest poets to be Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod
Hesiod
–
The Dance of the Muses at Mount Helicon by
Bertel Thorvaldsen (1807). Hesiod cites inspiration from the
Muses while on Mount Helicon.
Hesiod
–
Hesiod and the
Muse, by
Gustave Moreau. Here he is presented with a
lyre, which contradicts the account given by Hesiod himself, in which the gift was a laurel staff.
Hesiod
–
Modern Mount Helicon—Hesiod once described his nearby hometown,
Ascra, as "cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant."
Hesiod
–
16th-century manuscript of Theogony
26.
Chaos (cosmogony)
–
Chaos refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, or to the initial gap created by the original separation of heaven and earth. Greek χάος means emptiness, vast void, chasm, abyss, from the verb χαίνω, gape, be open, etc. from Proto-Indo-European *ǵheh2n, cognate to Old English geanian, to gape. It may also mean space, the expanse of air, pherecydes of Syros interpretes chaos as water, like something formless which can be differentiated. Hesiod and the Pre-Socratics use the Greek term in the context of cosmogony, Hesiods chaos has been interpreted as a moving, formless mass from which the cosmos and the gods originated. In Hesiods opinion the origin should be indefinite and indeterminate, and it represents disorder, Chaos has been linked with the term tohu wa-bohu of Genesis 1,2. The term may refer to a state of non-being prior to creation or to a formless state, in the Book of Genesis, the spirit of God is moving upon the face of the waters, and the earliest state of the universe is like a watery chaos. The Septuagint makes no use of χάος in the context of creation, instead using the term for גיא, chasm, cleft, in Micah 1,6, a parallel can be found in the Genesis. In the beginning God creates the earth and the sky, the earth is formless and void, and later God divides the waters under the firmament from the waters over the firmament, and calls the firmament heaven. In both cases, chaos referring to a notion of a primordial state contains the cosmos in potentia and this model of a primordial state of matter has been opposed by the Church Fathers from the 2nd century, who posited a creation ex nihilo by an omnipotent God. In modern biblical studies, the chaos is commonly used in the context of the Torah. Parallels between the Hebrew Genesis and the Babylonian Enuma Elish were established by Hermann Gunkel in 1910, besides Genesis, other books of the Old Testament, especially a number of Psalms, some passages in Isaiah and Jeremiah and the Book of Job are relevant. Use of chaos in the sense of complete disorder or confusion first appears in Elizabethan Early Modern English. The motif of Chaoskampf is ubiquitous in myth and legend, depicting a battle of a culture hero deity with a chaos monster, often in the shape of a serpent or dragon. The same term has also extended to parallel concepts in the religions of the Ancient Near East, such as the abstract conflict of ideas in the Egyptian duality of Maat. Early work by German academics such as Gunkel and Bousset in comparative mythology popularized translating the mythological sea serpent as a dragon. Indo-European examples of this mythic trope include Thor vs. Jörmungandr, Tarhunt vs. Illuyanka, Indra vs. Vritra, Fereydun vs. Aži Dahāka, and Zeus vs. Typhon among others. In the Theogony of Hesiod, Chaos is a divine primordial condition, which is the origin of the gods and it seems that in Hesiods opinion, the origin should be indefinite and indeterminate, and it may represent infinite space, or formless matter. The notion of the temporal infinity was familiar to the Greek mind from remote antiquity in the conception of immortality
Chaos (cosmogony)
–
Magnum Chaos represented by
Lorenzo Lotto, at the
Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in
Bergamo.
Chaos (cosmogony)
–
Depiction of the Christianized Chaoskampf: statue of Archangel Michael slaying Satan, represented as a dragon.
Quis ut Deus? is inscribed on his shield.
27.
Gaia (mythology)
–
In Greek mythology, Gaia, also spelled Gaea, is the personification of the Earth and one of the Greek primordial deities. Gaia is the mother of all life, the primal Mother Earth goddess. She is the parent of Uranus, from whose sexual union she bore the Titans and the Giants. Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was Terra, the Greek word γαῖα is a collateral form of γῆ meaning Earth, a word of uncertain origin. R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin, in Mycenean Greek Ma-ka also contains the root ga-. Gaia is the personification of the Earth and these are her offspring as related in various myths, some are related consistently, some are mentioned only in minor variants of myths, and others are related in variants that are considered to reflect a confusion of the subject or association. *Some said that those marked with a * were born from Uranus blood when Cronus castrated him, hesiods Theogony tells how, after Chaos, wide-bosomed Gaia arose to be the everlasting seat of the immortals who possess Olympus above, and the depths of Tartarus below. He then tells that Gaia brought forth her equal Uranus to cover her on every side, Gaia also bore the hills, and Pontus, without sweet union of love. After them was born Cronos the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, as each of the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires were born, Uranus hid them in a secret place within Gaia, causing her great pain. She created a grey flint sickle, and Cronus used the sickle to castrate his father Uranus as he approached Gaia to have sex with her. From Uranus spilled blood, Gaia produced the Erinyes, the Giants, from the testicles of Uranus in the sea came forth Aphrodite. By her son Pontus, Gaia bore the sea-deities Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto, and Eurybia. Because Cronus had learned from Gaia and Uranus that he was destined to be overthrown by one of his children, but when Rhea was pregnant with her youngest child, Zeus, she sought help from Gaia and Uranus. When Zeus was born, Rhea gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling-clothes in his place, which Cronus swallowed, with the help of Gaias advice, Zeus defeated the Titans. But afterwards, Gaia, in union with Tartarus, bore the youngest of her sons Typhon, according to Hyginus, Earth, along with Heaven and Sea were the children of Aether and Day. According to Apollodorus, Gaia and Tartarus were the parents of Echidna, Zeus hid Elara, one of his lovers, from Hera by stowing her under the earth. His son by Elara, the giant Tityos, is sometimes said to be a son of Gaia. Gaia is believed by some sources to be the deity behind the Oracle at Delphi
Gaia (mythology)
–
Gaia, by
Anselm Feuerbach (1875)
Gaia (mythology)
–
Gaia hands her newborn, Erichthonius, to
Athena as Hephaestus watches - an Attic
red-figure stamnos, 470–460 BC
Gaia (mythology)
–
Aion and Gaia with four children, perhaps the personified seasons, mosaic from a Roman villa in
Sentinum, first half of the third century BC, (
Munich Glyptothek, Inv. W504)
28.
Ares
–
Ares is the Greek god of war. He is one of the Twelve Olympians, and the son of Zeus and his sons Phobos and Deimos and his lover, or sister, Enyo accompanied him on his war chariot. In the Iliad, his father Zeus tells him that he is the god most hateful to him, an association with Ares endows places and objects with a savage, dangerous, or militarized quality. His value as a war god is placed in doubt, during the Trojan War, Ares was on the side, while Athena, often depicted in Greek art as holding Nike in her hand. Ares plays a limited role in Greek mythology as represented in literary narratives, though his numerous love affairs. When Ares does appear in myths, he typically faces humiliation and he is well known as the lover of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who was married to Hephaestus, god of craftsmanship. The most famous story related to Ares and Aphrodite shows them exposed to ridicule through the wronged husbands device. The counterpart of Ares among the Roman gods is Mars, who as a father of the Roman people was given a more important, during the Hellenization of Latin literature, the myths of Ares were reinterpreted by Roman writers under the name of Mars. Greek writers under Roman rule also recorded cult practices and beliefs pertaining to Mars under the name of Ares, thus in the classical tradition of later Western art and literature, the mythology of the two figures becomes virtually indistinguishable. The etymology of the name Ares is traditionally connected with the Greek word ἀρή, there may also be a connection with the Roman god of war Mars, via hypothetical Proto-Indo-European *M̥rēs, compare Ancient Greek μάρναμαι, I fight, I battle. Walter Burkert notes that Ares is apparently an ancient abstract noun meaning throng of battle, R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin of the name. The earliest attested form of the name is the Mycenaean Greek
Ares
–
Statue of Ares from
Hadrian's Villa
Ares
–
Vatican, Rome, Italy. Statue of Ares, Scopas' influence. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection
Ares
–
The
Areopagus as viewed from the
Acropolis.
Ares
–
The
Ludovisi Ares, Roman version of a Greek original c. 320 BC, with 17th-century restorations by
Bernini
29.
Aphrodite
–
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. She is identified with the planet Venus, and her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus, as with many ancient Greek deities, there is more than one story about her origins. According to Hesiods Theogony, she was born when Cronus cut off Uranuss genitals and threw them into the sea, according to Homers Iliad, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. In Plato, these two origins are said to be of hitherto separate entities, Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos, Aphrodite had many lovers—both gods, such as Ares, and men, such as Anchises. She played a role in the Eros and Psyche legend, and was lover and surrogate mother of Adonis. Many lesser beings were said to be children of Aphrodite, Aphrodite is also known as Cytherea and Cypris after the two cult sites, Cythera and Cyprus, which claimed to be her place of birth. Myrtle, roses, doves, sparrows and swans were sacred to her, the ancient Greeks identified her with the Ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor. Aphrodite had many names such as Acidalia and Cerigo, each used by a different local cult of the goddess in Greece. The Greeks recognized all of these names as referring to the single goddess Aphrodite, despite the differences in what these local cults believed the goddess demanded of them. The Attic philosophers of the 4th century, however, drew a distinction between a celestial Aphrodite of transcendent principles, and a separate, common Aphrodite who was the goddess of the people, hesiod derives Aphrodite from aphrós sea-foam, interpreting the name as risen from the foam. Michael Janda, accepting this as genuine, claims the birth myth as an Indo-European mytheme. Likewise, Witczak proposes an Indo-European compound *abʰor- very and *dʰei- to shine and it has been argued that etymologies based on comparison with Eos are unlikely since Aphrodites attributes are entirely different from those of Eos or the Vedic deity Ushas. A number of improbable non-Greek etymologies have suggested in scholarship. One Semitic etymology compares Aphrodite to the Assyrian barīrītu, the name of a demon that appears in Middle Babylonian. Hammarström looks to Etruscan, comparing prϑni lord, an Etruscan honorific loaned into Greek as πρύτανις and this would make the theonym in origin an honorific, the lady. Hjalmar Frisk and Robert Beekes reject this etymology as implausible, especially since Aphrodite actually appears in Etruscan in the borrowed form Apru, the medieval Etymologicum Magnum offers a highly contrived etymology, deriving Aphrodite from the compound habrodíaitos, she who lives delicately, from habrós and díaita. The alteration from b to ph is explained as a characteristic of Greek obvious from the Macedonians. Aphrodite is usually said to have been born near her chief center of worship, Paphos, on the island of Cyprus, however, other versions of her myth have her born near the island of Cythera, hence another of her names, Cytherea
Aphrodite
–
Aphrodite Pudica (Roman copy of 2nd century AD),
National Archaeological Museum, Athens
Aphrodite
–
Petra tou Romiou ("The rock of the
Greek "), Aphrodite's legendary birthplace in
Paphos, Cyprus.
Aphrodite
–
The Birth of Venus by
Sandro Botticelli, circa 1485.
Aphrodite
–
Venus and Adonis by
Titian, circa 1554.
30.
Nyx
–
Nyx is the Greek goddess of the night. A shadowy figure, Nyx stood at or near the beginning of creation and mothered other personified deities such as Hypnos and Thanatos and her appearances are sparse in surviving mythology, but reveal her as a figure of such exceptional power and beauty that she is feared by Zeus himself. In Hesiods Theogony, Nyx is born of Chaos, with Erebus, Nyx gives birth to Aether and Hemera. Later, on her own, Nyx gives birth to Moros, Ker, Thanatos, Hypnos, the Oneiroi, Momus, Oizys, the Hesperides, the Moirai, the Keres, Nemesis, Apate, Philotes, Geras, and Eris. In his description of Tartarus, Hesiod locates there the home of Nyx, Hesiod says further that Nyxs daughter Hemera left Tartarus just as Nyx entered it, continuing cyclicly, when Hemera returned, Nyx left. This mirrors the portrayal of Ratri in the Rigveda, where she works in close cooperation, at Iliad 14. 249–61, Hypnos, the minor deity of sleep, reminds Hera of an old favor after she asks him to put Zeus to sleep. He had once before put Zeus to sleep at the bidding of Hera, Zeus was furious and would have smitten Hypnos into the sea if he had not fled to Nyx, his mother, in fear. Homer goes on to say that Zeus, fearing to anger Nyx, held his fury at bay and he disturbed Zeus only a few times after that always fearing Zeus and running back to his mother, Nyx, who would have confronted Zeus with a maternal fury. Nyx took on a more important role in several fragmentary poems attributed to Orpheus. In them, Nyx, rather than Chaos, is the first principle from all creation emerges. Nyx occupies a cave or adyton, in which she gives oracles, cronus – who is chained within, asleep and drunk on honey – dreams and prophesies. Outside the cave, Adrasteia clashes cymbals and beats upon her tympanon, phanes – the strange, monstrous, hermaphrodite Orphic demiurge – was the child or father of Nyx. Nyx is also the first principle in the chorus of Aristophanes The Birds. Here she is also the mother of Eros, the theme of Nyxs cave or mansion, beyond the ocean or somewhere at the edge of the cosmos may be echoed in the philosophical poem of Parmenides. The classical scholar Walter Burkert has speculated that the house of the goddess to which the philosopher is transported is the palace of Nyx, in Greece, Nyx was only rarely the focus of cults. According to Pausanias, she had an oracle on the acropolis at Megara, more often, Nyx lurked in the background of other cults. Thus there was a statue called Nyx in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Spartans had a cult of Sleep and Death, conceived of as twins. Cult titles composed of compounds of nyx- are attested for several deities, most notably Dionysus Nyktelios nocturnal, in 1997, the International Astronomical Union approved the name Nyx for a mons feature on the planet Venus
Nyx
–
La Nuit by
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1883)
Nyx
–
Nyx, as represented in the 10th-century
Paris Psalter at the side of the Prophet
Isaiah
Nyx
–
Roman-era bronze statuette of Nyx
velificans or
Selene (
Getty Villa)
31.
Aether (mythology)
–
Aether /ˈiːθər/ or Aither, in ancient Greece, was one of the primordial deities. Aether is the personification of the upper air and he embodies the pure upper air that the gods breathe, as opposed to the normal air breathed by mortals. Like Tartarus and Erebus, Aether may have had shrines in ancient Greece, in Hesiods Theogony, Aether, was the son of Erebus and Nyx, and the brother of Hemera. The Roman mythographer Hyginus, says Aether was the son of Chaos, started his Fabulae with a strange hodgepodge of Greek and Roman cosmogonies and early genealogies. It begins as follows, Ex Caligine Chaos, Ex Chao et Caligine Nox Dies Erebus Aether. His genealogy looks like a derivation from Hesiod, but it starts with the un-Hesiodic and un-Roman Caligo, darkness probably did occur in a cosmogonic poem of Alcman, but it seems only fair to say that it was not prominent in Greek cosmogonies. Aristophanes states that Aether was the son of Erebus, however, Damascius says that Aether, Erebus and Chaos were siblings, and the offspring of Chronos. According to Epiphanius, the world began as an egg, encircled by Time. Together they constricted the egg, squeezing its matter with great force, after that, the atoms sorted themselves out. The lighter and finer ones floated above and became the Bright Air and the rarefied Wind, while the heavier and denser atoms sank and became the Earth, see also Platos Myth of Er. The fifth Orphic hymn to Aether describes the substance as the high-reigning, ever indestructible power of Zeus, the best element, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East. Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture, gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth, A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press,1996, Two volumes, ISBN 978-0-8018-5360-9, ISBN 978-0-8018-5362-3. Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell,1996, Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press, London, William Heinemann Ltd.1914. Hammond, N. G. L. and H. H. Scullard, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, Second Edition, Hyginus, Gaius Julius, The Myths of Hyginus. Edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence, University of Kansas Press,1960, smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London
Aether (mythology)
–
Aether in battle with a lion-headed
Giant
32.
Eris (mythology)
–
Eris is the Greek goddess of strife and discord. Her name is the equivalent of Latin Discordia, which means discord, Eris Greek opposite is Harmonia, whose Latin counterpart is Concordia. Homer equated her with the war-goddess Enyo, whose Roman counterpart is Bellona, the dwarf planet Eris is named after the goddess, as is the religion Discordianism. She then hurled down bitterness equally between both sides as she walked through the onslaught making mens pain heavier and she also has a son whom she named Strife. Enyo is mentioned in Book 5, and Zeus sends Strife to rouse the Achaeans in Book 11, the most famous tale of Eris recounts her initiating the Trojan War by causing the Judgement of Paris. The hapless Paris, Prince of Troy, was appointed to select the fairest by Zeus, the goddesses stripped naked to try to win Paris decision, and also attempted to bribe him. Hera offered political power, Athena promised infinite wisdom, and Aphrodite tempted him with the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta. While Greek culture placed an emphasis on prowess and power, Paris chose to award the apple to Aphrodite, thereby dooming his city. In Nonnus Dionysiaca,2.356, when Typhon prepares to battle with Zeus, Eris was Typhons escort in the melée, another story of Eris includes Hera, and the love of Polytekhnos and Aedon. They claimed to each other more than Hera and Zeus were in love. This angered Hera, so she sent Eris to rack discord upon them, Polytekhnos was finishing off a chariot board, and Aedon a web she had been weaving. Eris said to them, Whosoever finishes thine task last shall have to present the other with a female servant, but Polytekhnos was not happy by his defeat, so he came to Khelidon, Aedons sister, and raped her. He then disguised her as a slave, presenting her to Aedon, when Aedon discovered this was indeed her sister, she chopped up Polytekhnos son and fed him to Polytekhnos. The gods were not pleased, so turned them all into birds. The Discordian version of Eris is considerably lighter in comparison to the rather malevolent Graeco-Roman original and she told him that She had always liked the Old Greeks, but that they cannot be trusted with historic matters. They were, She added, victims of indigestion, you know, the story of Eris being snubbed and indirectly starting the Trojan War is recorded in the Principia, and is referred to as the Original Snub. The Principia Discordia states that her parents may be as described in Greek legend and she is the Goddess of Disorder and Being, whereas her sister Aneris is the goddess of Order and Non-Being. The concept of Eris as developed by the Principia Discordia is used and expanded upon in the fiction work The Illuminatus
Eris (mythology)
–
Eris on an Attic plate, ca. 575–525 BC
Eris (mythology)
–
El Juicio de Paris by
Enrique Simonet, 1904
Eris (mythology)
–
Golden
apple of discord by
Jakob Jordaens, 1633
Eris (mythology)
–
Das Urteil des Paris by
Anton Raphael Mengs, c. 1757
33.
Zephyros
–
The Spartans were reported to sacrifice a horse to the winds on Mount Taygetus. Astraeus, the deity, and Eos/Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, were the parents of the Anemoi. The daughters of the Anemoi are the Aurae, the deities equivalent to the Anemoi in Roman mythology were the Venti. These gods had different names, but were very similar to their Greek counterparts, borrowing their attributes. Boreas was the Greek god of the north wind and the bringer of winter. Although normally taken as the wind, the Roman writers Aulus Gellius. Boreas is depicted as being strong, with a violent temper to match. He was frequently shown as an old man with shaggy hair and beard, holding a conch shell. Pausanias wrote that Boreas had snakes instead of feet, though in art he was depicted with winged human feet. Boreas two sons Calaïs and Zetes, known as Boreads, were in the crew of the Argo as Argonauts, Boreas was closely associated with horses. He was said to have fathered twelve colts after taking the form of a stallion, to the mares of Erichthonius and these were said to be able to run across a field of grain without trampling the plants. Pliny the Elder thought that mares might stand with their hindquarters to the North Wind and he is said to have fathered three giant Hyperborean priests of Apollo by Chione. Boreas was also said to have kidnapped Orithyia, an Athenian princess, Boreas had taken a fancy to Orithyia and had initially pleaded for her favours, hoping to persuade her. When this failed, he reverted to his temper and abducted her as she danced on the banks of the Ilisos. Boreas wrapped Orithyia up in a cloud, raped her, and with her, from then on, the Athenians saw Boreas as a relative by marriage. When Athens was threatened by Xerxes, the people prayed to Boreas, and when they went home they built the god a shrine by the River Ilissus. The abduction of Orithyia was popular in Athens before and after the Persian War, in these paintings, Boreas was portrayed as a bearded man in a tunic, with shaggy hair that is sometimes frosted and spiked. The abduction was also dramatized in Aeschyluss lost play Oreithyia, in other accounts, Boreas was the father of Butes and the lover of the nymph Pitys
Zephyros
–
Wind rose as known in ancient Greece, created by the scholar
Adamantios Korais around 1796
Zephyros
–
Greco-Buddhist fragment of the wind god Boreas,
Hadda,
Afghanistan
Zephyros
–
Tower of the Winds in ancient
Athens, part of the frieze depicting the Greek wind gods Boreas (north wind, on the left) and Skiron (northwesterly wind, on the right)
Zephyros
–
Zephyrus, the
Greek god of the
west wind and the
goddess Chloris, from an 1875
oil painting by
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
34.
Pausanias (geographer)
–
Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the time of Roman emperors Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece, a work that describes ancient Greece from his first-hand observations. This work provides crucial information for making links between classical literature and modern archaeology, andrew Stewart assesses him as, A careful, pedestrian writer. interested not only in the grandiose or the exquisite but in unusual sights and obscure ritual. He is occasionally careless, or makes unwarranted inferences, and his guides or even his own notes sometimes mislead him, yet his honesty is unquestionable, before visiting Greece, he had been to Antioch, Joppa and Jerusalem, and to the banks of the River Jordan. In Egypt, he had seen the pyramids, while at the temple of Ammon, in Macedonia, he appears to have seen the alleged tomb of Orpheus in Libethra. Crossing over to Italy, he had something of the cities of Campania. He was one of the first to write of seeing the ruins of Troy, Alexandria Troas, Pausanias Description of Greece is in ten books, each dedicated to some portion of Greece. He begins his tour in Attica, where the city of Athens, subsequent books describe Corinthia, Laconia, Messenia, Elis, Achaea, Arcadia, Boetia, Phocis and Ozolian Locris. He famously leaves out key portions of Greece such as Crete, the project is more than topographical, it is a cultural geography. Pausanias digresses from description of architectural and artistic objects to review the mythological and historical underpinnings of the society that produced them and his work bears the marks of his attempt to navigate that space and establish an identity for Roman Greece. He is not a naturalist by any means, though he does from time to comment on the physical realities of the Greek landscape. He notices the pine trees on the sandy coast of Elis, the deer and the boars in the oak woods of Phelloe. Pausanias is most at home in describing the art and architecture of Olympia. Yet, even in the most secluded regions of Greece, he is fascinated by all kinds of depictions of gods, holy relics, Pausanias has the instincts of an antiquary. Some magnificent and dominating structures, such as the Stoa of King Attalus in the Athenian Agora or the Exedra of Herodes Atticus at Olympia are not even mentioned. While he never doubts the existence of the gods and heroes, he criticizes the myths. His descriptions of monuments of art are plain and unadorned and they bear the impression of reality, and their accuracy is confirmed by the extant remains. He is perfectly frank in his confessions of ignorance, when he quotes a book at second hand he takes pains to say so
Pausanias (geographer)
–
Manuscript (1485), of Pausanias' Description of Greece at the
Laurentian Library
35.
Latin literature
–
Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings written in the Latin language. Latin literature was in ways a continuation of Greek literature. Formal Latin literature began in 240 BC, when a Roman audience saw a Latin version of a Greek play, the adaptor was Livius Andronicus, a Greek who had been brought to Rome as a prisoner of war in 272 BC. Andronicus also translated Homers Greek epic the Odyssey into an old type of Latin verse called Saturnian, the first Latin poet to write on a Roman theme was Gnaeus Naevius during the 3rd century BC. He composed a poem about the first Punic War, in which he had fought. Naeviuss dramas were mainly reworkings of Greek originals, but he also created based on Roman myths. Quintus Ennius wrote an epic, the Annals, describing Roman history from the founding of Rome to his own time. He adopted Greek dactylic hexameter, which became the verse form for Roman epics. He also became famous for his tragic dramas, in this field, his most distinguished successors were Marcus Pacuvius and Lucius Accius. These three writers rarely used episodes from Roman history, instead, they wrote Latin versions of tragic themes that the Greeks had already handled. But even when they copied the Greeks, they did not translate slavishly, only fragments of their plays have survived. Considerably more is known about early Latin comedy, as 26 Early Latin comedies are extant –20 of which Plautus wrote, and these men modeled their comedies on Greek plays known as New Comedy. But they treated the plots and wording of the originals freely, Plautus scattered songs through his plays and increased the humor with puns and wisecracks, plus comic actions by the actors. Terences plays were more polite in tone, dealing with domestic situations and his works provided the chief inspiration for French and English comedies of the 17th century AD, and even for modern American comedy. The prose of the period is best known through On Agriculture by Cato the Elder, Cato also wrote the first Latin history of Rome and of other Italian cities. He was the first Roman statesman to put his political speeches in writing as a means of influencing public opinion, Early Latin literature ended with Gaius Lucilius, who created a new kind of poetry in his 30 books of Satires. He wrote in an easy, conversational tone about books, food, friends and this period is usually said to have begun with the first known speech of Cicero and ended with the death of Ovid. Cicero has traditionally been considered the master of Latin prose, Ciceros many works can be divided into four groups, letters, rhetorical treatises, philosophical works, and orations
Latin literature
–
Cicero
Latin literature
–
Roman Orator.
36.
Seneca the Younger
–
Seneca the Younger, fully Lucius Annaeus Seneca and also known simply as Seneca, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and—in one work—humorist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. As a tragedian, he is best-known for his Medea and Thyestes and he was a tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero. He was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, however, some sources state that he may have been innocent. His father was Seneca the Elder, his brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus. Seneca was born in Cordoba in Hispania, and raised in Rome, griffin also infers from the ancient sources that Seneca was born in either 8,4, or 1 BC. She thinks he was born between 4 and 1 BC and was a resident in Rome by AD5, Seneca says that he was carried to Rome in the arms of his mothers stepsister. Griffin says that, allowing for rhetorical exaggeration, means it is fair to conclude that Seneca was in Rome as a small boy. Be that as it may, it is clear that he was in Rome at an early stage in his life. Caligula and Fabius were critics of his works, and Columella, Pliny, Tacitus, from AD54 to 62, Seneca acted as Neros advisor, together with the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus. One byproduct of his influence was that Seneca was appointed consul in 56. Senecas influence was said to have especially strong in the first year. Tacitus and Dio suggest that Neros early rule, during which time he listened to Seneca, however, the ancient sources suggest, over time, Seneca and Burrus lost their influence over the emperor. In 59 they had agreed to Agrippinas murder, and afterward. This may have contributed as well to his own downfall, following Burrus death in 62, Seneca became the subject of criticism by what Tacitus describes as Neros more disreputable advisers. Charges included allegations of excessive wealth, the grandeur of his property, Seneca requested an audience with Nero in which he sought permission to retire from public duties, pleading age and infirmity. The two then parted on apparently warm terms, Seneca subsequently adopted a quiet lifestyle on his country estates, concentrating on his studies and seldom visiting Rome. In AD65, Seneca was caught up in the aftermath of the Pisonian conspiracy, although it is unlikely that Seneca conspired, Nero ordered him to kill himself. Seneca followed tradition by severing several veins in order to bleed to death, a generation after the Julio-Claudian emperors, Tacitus wrote an account of the suicide, which in view of his Republican sympathies is perhaps somewhat romanticized
Seneca the Younger
–
Ancient bust of Seneca, part of the
Double Herm of Socrates and Seneca (
Antikensammlung Berlin)
Seneca the Younger
–
This Baroque marble imaginary portrait bust of Seneca, by an anonymous sculptor of the 17th century (
Museo del Prado).
Seneca the Younger
–
Manuel Domínguez Sánchez, The suicide of Seneca (1871),
Museo del Prado
Seneca the Younger
–
Plato, Seneca, and
Aristotle in a medieval manuscript illustration (c. 1325–35)
37.
Volcanus
–
Vulcan is the god of fire including the fire of volcanoes, metalworking, and the forge in ancient Roman religion and myth. Vulcan is often depicted with a blacksmiths hammer, the Vulcanalia was the annual festival held August 23 in his honor. His Greek counterpart is Hephaestus, the god of fire and smithery, in Etruscan religion, he is identified with Sethlans. The origin of the name is unclear, Roman tradition maintained that it was related to Latin words connected to lightning, which in turn was thought of as related to flames. This interpretation is supported by Walter William Skeat in his dictionary as meaning lustre. It has been supposed that his name was not Latin but related to that of the Cretan god Velchanos, a god of nature, wolfgang Meid has refused this identification as phantastic. More recently this etymology has been taken up by Gérard Capdeville who finds a continuity between Cretan Minoan god Velchanos and Etruscan Velchans, the Minoan gods identity would be that of a young deity, master of fire and companion of the Great Goddess. Christian Guyonvarch has proposed the identification with the Irish name Olcan, vasily Abaev compares it with the Ossetic Wærgon, a variant of the name of Kurdalægon, the smith of the Nart saga. Since the name in its normal form Kurdalægon is stable and has a clear meaning, the Volcanalia sacrifice was offered here to Vulcan, on August 23. Vulcan also had a temple on the Campus Martius, which was in existence by 214 BC, the Romans identified Vulcan with the Greek smith-god Hephaestus. Vulcan became associated like his Greek counterpart with the use of fire in metalworking. A fragment of a Greek pot showing Hephaestus found at the Volcanal has been dated to the 6th century BC, however, Vulcan had a stronger association than Hephaestus with fires destructive capacity, and a major concern of his worshippers was to encourage the god to avert harmful fires. The festival of Vulcan, the Vulcanalia, was celebrated on August 23 each year, during the festival bonfires were created in honour of the god, into which live fish or small animals were thrown as a sacrifice, to be consumed in the place of humans. It is recorded that during the Vulcanalia people used to hang their cloths and this habit might reflect a theological connection between Vulcan and the divinized Sun. Another custom observed on this day required that one should start working by the light of a candle, probably to propitiate a beneficial use of fire by the god. In addition to the Volcanalia of August 23, the date of May 23, a flamen, one of the flamines minores, named flamen Volcanalis was in charge of the cult of the god. The flamen Volcanalis officiated at a sacrifice to the goddess Maia, Vulcan was among the gods placated after the Great Fire of Rome in AD64. In response to the fire, Domitian established a new altar to Vulcan on the Quirinal Hill
Volcanus
–
Vulcan, wearing an
exomis (tunic) and
pilos (conical hat), c. 1st century AD.
Volcanus
–
Marcus Aurelius (
head covered) sacrificing at the Temple of Jupiter
Volcanus
–
Andrea Mantegna: Parnas, Vulcan, god of fire
Volcanus
–
The Forge of Vulcan by
Diego Velázquez, (1630).
38.
Cicero
–
Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, politician, lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul, and constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy family of the Roman equestrian order. According to Michael Grant, the influence of Cicero upon the history of European literature, Cicero introduced the Romans to the chief schools of Greek philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary distinguishing himself as a translator and philosopher. Though he was an orator and successful lawyer, Cicero believed his political career was his most important achievement. During the chaotic latter half of the 1st century BC marked by civil wars, following Julius Caesars death, Cicero became an enemy of Mark Antony in the ensuing power struggle, attacking him in a series of speeches. His severed hands and head were then, as a revenge of Mark Antony. Petrarchs rediscovery of Ciceros letters is often credited for initiating the 14th-century Renaissance in public affairs, humanism, according to Polish historian Tadeusz Zieliński, the Renaissance was above all things a revival of Cicero, and only after him and through him of the rest of Classical antiquity. Cicero was born in 106 BC in Arpinum, a hill town 100 kilometers southeast of Rome and his father was a well-to-do member of the equestrian order and possessed good connections in Rome. However, being a semi-invalid, he could not enter public life, although little is known about Ciceros mother, Helvia, it was common for the wives of important Roman citizens to be responsible for the management of the household. Ciceros brother Quintus wrote in a letter that she was a thrifty housewife, Ciceros cognomen, or personal surname, comes from the Latin for chickpea, cicer. Plutarch explains that the name was given to one of Ciceros ancestors who had a cleft in the tip of his nose resembling a chickpea. However, it is likely that Ciceros ancestors prospered through the cultivation. Romans often chose down-to-earth personal surnames, the family names of Fabius, Lentulus, and Piso come from the Latin names of beans, lentils. Plutarch writes that Cicero was urged to change this name when he entered politics. During this period in Roman history, cultured meant being able to speak both Latin and Greek, Cicero used his knowledge of Greek to translate many of the theoretical concepts of Greek philosophy into Latin, thus translating Greek philosophical works for a larger audience. It was precisely his broad education that tied him to the traditional Roman elite, according to Plutarch, Cicero was an extremely talented student, whose learning attracted attention from all over Rome, affording him the opportunity to study Roman law under Quintus Mucius Scaevola. Ciceros fellow students were Gaius Marius Minor, Servius Sulpicius Rufus, the latter two became Ciceros friends for life, and Pomponius would become, in Ciceros own words, as a second brother, with both maintaining a lifelong correspondence. Cicero wanted to pursue a career in politics along the steps of the Cursus honorum
Cicero
–
A first century AD bust of Cicero in the
Capitoline Museums, Rome
Cicero
–
The Young Cicero Reading by
Vincenzo Foppa (fresco, 1464), now at the
Wallace Collection
Cicero
–
Cicero Denounces Catiline,
fresco by
Cesare Maccari, 1882–88
Cicero
–
Cicero's death (France, 15th century)
39.
Mercury (mythology)
–
Mercury is a major Roman god, being one of the Dii Consentes within the ancient Roman pantheon. He is the god of financial gain, commerce, eloquence, messages/communication, travelers, boundaries, luck, trickery and thieves. He was considered the son of Maia and Jupiter in Roman mythology, in his earliest forms, he appears to have been related to the Etruscan deity Turms, both gods share characteristics with the Greek god Hermes. He is often depicted holding the caduceus in his left hand, similar to his Greek equivalent he was awarded the caduceus by Apollo who handed him a magic wand, which later turned into the caduceus. Mercury did not appear among the di indigetes of early Roman religion. Rather, he subsumed the earlier Dei Lucrii as Roman religion was syncretized with Greek religion during the time of the Roman Republic, starting around the 4th century BC. He was often accompanied by a cockerel, herald of the new day, a ram or goat, symbolizing fertility, like Hermes, he was also a god of messages, eloquence and of trade, particularly of the grain trade. Mercury was also considered a god of abundance and commercial success, particularly in Gaul and he was also, like Hermes, the Romans psychopomp, leading newly deceased souls to the afterlife. Additionally, Ovid wrote that Mercury carried Morpheus dreams from the valley of Somnus to sleeping humans, archeological evidence from Pompeii suggests that Mercury was among the most popular of Roman gods. The god of commerce was depicted on two bronze coins of the Roman Republic, the Sextans and the Semuncia. This is probably because in the Roman syncretism, Mercury was equated with the Celtic god Lugus, Romans associated Mercury with the Germanic god Wotan, by interpretatio Romana, 1st-century Roman writer Tacitus identifies him as the chief god of the Germanic peoples. The Romans also made use of small statues of Mercury. Mercurius Arvernus, a syncretism of the Celtic Arvernus with Mercury, Mercurius Cimbrianus, a syncretism of Mercury with a god of the Cimbri sometimes thought to represent Odin. Mercurius Cissonius, a combination of Mercury with the Celtic god Cissonius, Mercurius Esibraeus, a syncretism of the Iberian deity Esibraeus with the Roman deity Mercury. Esibraeus is mentioned only in an inscription found at Medelim, Portugal, and is possibly the deity as Banda Isibraiegus. Mercurius Gebrinius, a syncretism of Mercury with the Celtic or Germanic Gebrinius, known from an inscription on an altar in Bonn, Mercurius Moccus, from a Celtic god, Moccus, who was equated with Mercury, known from evidence at Langres, France. The name Moccus implies that this deity was connected to boar-hunting, Mercurius Visucius, a syncretism of the Celtic god Visucius with the Roman god Mercury, attested in an inscription from Stuttgart, Germany. Visucius was worshiped primarily in the area of the empire in Gaul
Mercury (mythology)
–
Early Roman bronze statuette of Mercury, found near Huis, France (
British Museum)
Mercury (mythology)
–
Marcus Aurelius (
head covered) sacrificing at the Temple of Jupiter
Mercury (mythology)
–
Hendrik Goltzius: Mercury, with his symbols
Mercury (mythology)
–
Mercury portrait on a bronze
Semuncia (215–211 BC)
40.
Diana (mythology)
–
In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt, the moon, and nature being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was eventually equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy, Diana was worshipped in ancient Roman religion and is revered in Roman Neopaganism and Stregheria. Diana was known to be the goddess of childbirth and women. She was one of the three goddesses, along with Minerva and Vesta, who swore never to marry. Oak groves were especially sacred to her as were deer, according to mythology, Diana was born with her twin brother, Apollo, on the island of Delos, daughter of Jupiter and Latona. She made up a triad with two other Roman deities, Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife, and Virbius, the woodland god. Diana is a form developed from an ancient *divios, corresponding to later divus, dius, as in Dius Fidius, Dea Dia. It is rooted in Indoeuropean *dyw, meaning sky or daylight, from which also derived the name of Vedic god Dyaus and the Latin deus, dies. On the Tablets of Pylos a theonym διϝια is supposed as referring to a deity precursor of Artemis, Modern scholars mostly accept the identification. The ancient Latin writers Varro and Cicero considered the etymology of Dīāna as allied to that of dies, the persona of Diana is complex and contains a number of archaic features. According to Georges Dumézil it falls into a subset of celestial gods. Such gods, while keeping the original features of celestial divinities, the celestial character of Diana is reflected in her connection with light, inaccessibility, virginity, and her preference for dwelling on high mountains and in sacred woods. Diana therefore reflects the world in its sovereignty, supremacy, impassibility. At the same time, however, she is seen as active in ensuring the succession of kings and these functions are apparent in the traditional institutions and cults related to the goddess. This ever open succession reveals the character and mission of the goddess as a guarantor of kingly status through successive generations. Her function as bestower of authority to rule is also attested in the story related by Livy in which a Sabine man who sacrifices a heifer to Diana wins for his country the seat of the Roman empire. Diana was also worshipped by women who wanted to be pregnant or who, once pregnant and this form of worship is attested in archeological finds of votive statuettes in her sanctuary in the nemus Aricinum as well as in ancient sources, e. g. Ovid. According to Dumezil the forerunner of all gods is an Indian epic hero who was the image of the Vedic god Dyaus
Diana (mythology)
–
The
Diana of Versailles, a 2nd-century Roman version in the Greek tradition of iconography
Diana (mythology)
–
Marcus Aurelius (
head covered) sacrificing at the Temple of Jupiter
Diana (mythology)
–
Gallo-Roman bronze statuette of Diana (latter 1st century)
Diana (mythology)
–
Diana (1892 - 93),
Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Bronze,
Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York City.
41.
Anteros
–
Anteros was the son of Ares and Aphrodite in Greek mythology, given as a playmate to his brother Eros, who was lonely – the rationale being that love must be answered if it is to prosper. Alternatively, he was said to have arisen from the love between Poseidon and Nerites. Physically, he is depicted as similar to Eros in every way and he has been described also as armed with either a golden club or arrows of lead. Anteros, with Eros, was one of a host of winged love gods called Erotes, an altar to this god was put up by the metics in Athens in commemoration of the spurned love of the metic Timagoras who was rejected by the Athenian Meles. Upon hearing Timagoras declaration of love for him, the young man mockingly ordered him to throw himself down from the top of a tall rock, seeing Timagoras dead, Meles repented and threw himself down from the same rock. Describing the nature of the emotion, Plato asserts that it is the result of the love for another person. The lover, inspired by beauty, is filled with divine love, as a result, the loved one falls in love with the lover, though the love is only spoken of as friendship. They experience pain when the two are apart, and relief when they are together, the image of the lovers feelings, is anteros. Anteros is the subject of the Shaftesbury Memorial in Piccadilly Circus, London, the memorial is sometimes given the name The Angel of Christian Charity and is popularly mistaken for Eros
Anteros
–
Anteros by
Alfred Gilbert, 1893; from the Shaftesbury Memorial in Piccadilly Circus.
42.
English Renaissance
–
The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century. As in most of the rest of northern Europe, England saw little of these developments until more than a century later. The beginning of the English Renaissance is often taken, as a convenience, to be 1485, when the Battle of Bosworth ended the Wars of the Roses and inaugurated the Tudor Dynasty. Renaissance style and ideas, however, were slow to penetrate England, the English Renaissance is different from the Italian Renaissance in several ways. The dominant art forms of the English Renaissance were literature and music, visual arts in the English Renaissance were much less significant than in the Italian Renaissance. The English period began far later than the Italian, which was moving into Mannerism, in contrast, the English Renaissance can only truly be said to begin, shakily, in the 1520s, and it continued until perhaps 1620. England had a tradition of literature in the English vernacular. Elizabeth herself was a product of Renaissance humanism trained by Roger Ascham, philosophers and intellectuals included Thomas More and Francis Bacon. All the 16th century Tudor monarchs were highly educated, as was much of the nobility, English thought advanced towards modern science with the Baconian Method, a forerunner of the Scientific Method. The language of the Book of Common Prayer, first published in 1549, the portrait miniature had spread all over Europe by the 18th century. The portraiture of Elizabeth I was carefully controlled, and developed into an elaborate and wholly un-realist iconic style, the Elizabethan madrigal was distinct from, but related to the Italian tradition. Thomas Tallis, Thomas Morley, and John Dowland were other leading English composers, the Italian and English Renaissances were similar in sharing a specific musical aesthetic. In the late 16th century Italy was the center of Europe. Lesser, but still large, houses like Little Moreton Hall continued to be constructed and expanded in essentially medieval half-timbered styles until the late 16th century, the few new church buildings were usually still Gothic in style, as in Langley Chapel of 1601. The notion of calling this period The Renaissance is a modern invention, at the same time William Langland, author of Piers Plowman, and John Gower were also writing in English. In the fifteenth century, Thomas Malory, John Lydgate, for this reason, scholars find the singularity of the period called the English Renaissance questionable, C. S. Historians have also begun to consider the word Renaissance as a loaded word that implies an unambiguously positive rebirth from the supposedly more primitive Middle Ages
English Renaissance
–
Young Man Among Roses,
portrait miniature by
Nicholas Hilliard, 1588,
V&A. Believed to be the
Earl of Essex
English Renaissance
–
The Ditchley Portrait of Elizabeth I by the foreign
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, c.1592
English Renaissance
–
Renaissance
English Renaissance
–
William Shakespeare, chief figure of the English Renaissance, as portrayed in the
Chandos portrait (artist and authenticity not confirmed).
43.
Christopher Marlowe
–
Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day and he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowes mysterious early death. Marlowes plays are known for the use of verse and their overreaching protagonists. A warrant was issued for Marlowes arrest on 18 May 1593, no reason was given for it, though it was thought to be connected to allegations of blasphemy—a manuscript believed to have been written by Marlowe was said to contain vile heretical conceipts. On 20 May, he was brought to the court to attend upon the Privy Council for questioning, there is no record of their having met that day, however, and he was commanded to attend upon them each day thereafter until licensed to the contrary. Ten days later, he was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer, whether the stabbing was connected to his arrest has never been resolved. Marlowe was born in Canterbury to shoemaker John Marlowe and his wife Catherine and his date of birth is not known, but he was baptised on 26 February 1564, and is likely to have been born a few days before. Thus, he was just two months older than his contemporary William Shakespeare, who was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. Marlowe attended The Kings School in Canterbury and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, however, his degree was awarded on schedule when the Privy Council intervened on his behalf, commending him for his faithful dealing and good service to the Queen. No direct evidence supports this theory, although the Councils letter is evidence that Marlowe had served the government in some secret capacity, of the dramas attributed to Marlowe, Dido, Queen of Carthage is believed to have been his first. It was performed by the Children of the Chapel, a company of boy actors, the play was first published in 1594, the title page attributes the play to Marlowe and Thomas Nashe. Marlowes first play performed on the stage in London, in 1587, was Tamburlaine the Great, about the conqueror Tamburlaine. It is among the first English plays in verse, and, with Thomas Kyds The Spanish Tragedy. Tamburlaine was a success, and was followed with Tamburlaine the Great, the two parts of Tamburlaine were published in 1590, all Marlowes other works were published posthumously. The sequence of the writing of his four plays is unknown. The Jew of Malta, about a Maltese Jews barbarous revenge against the city authorities, has a prologue delivered by a character representing Machiavelli and it was probably written in 1589 or 1590, and was first performed in 1592. It was a success, and remained popular for the fifty years. The play was entered in the Stationers Register on 17 May 1594, Edward the Second is an English history play about the deposition of King Edward II by his barons and the Queen, who resent the undue influence the kings favourites have in court and state affairs
Christopher Marlowe
–
An anonymous portrait in
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, believed to show Christopher Marlowe.
Christopher Marlowe
–
Marlowe was christened at St George's Church, in
Canterbury.
Christopher Marlowe
–
The corner of Old Court of
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where Marlowe stayed during his studies.
Christopher Marlowe
–
Title page of the earliest published text of
Edward II (1594)
44.
Ben Jonson
–
Benjamin Jonson was an English playwright, poet, actor, and literary critic of the 17th century, whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours, Ben Jonson said that his family originally came from the folk of the Anglo-Scottish border country, which genealogy is attested by the three spindles in the Jonson family coat of arms. One spindle is a heraldic device shared with the Border-country Johnstone family of Annandale. Jonsons clergyman father died two months before his birth, his mother married a master bricklayer two years later, Jonson attended school in St. Martins Lane. Later, a family friend paid for his studies at Westminster School, on leaving Westminster School, Jonson was to have attended the University of Cambridge, to continue his book learning but did not, because of his unwilled apprenticeship to his bricklayer stepfather. According to the churchman and historian Thomas Fuller, Jonson at this time built a wall in Lincolns Inn. After having been a bricklayer, Ben Jonson went to the Netherlands. After his military activity on the Continent, Jonson returned to England and worked as an actor, as an actor, Jonson was the protagonist “Hieronimo” in the play The Spanish Tragedy, by Thomas Kyd, the first revenge tragedy in English literature. Regarding his marriage Jonson described his wife to William Drummond as a shrew, concerning the family of Anne Lewis and Ben Jonson, the St. Martins Church registers indicate that Mary Jonson, their eldest daughter, died in November 1593, at six months of age. Moreover,32 years later, a son, also named Benjamin Jonson. By summer 1597, Jonson had an engagement in the Admirals Men, then performing under Philip Henslowes management at The Rose. John Aubrey reports, on authority, that Jonson was not successful as an actor, whatever his skills as an actor. By this time Jonson had begun to write plays for the Admirals Men. None of his early tragedies survive, however, an undated comedy, The Case is Altered, may be his earliest surviving play. In 1597 a play which he co-wrote with Thomas Nashe, The Isle of Dogs, was suppressed after causing great offence, arrest warrants for Jonson and Nashe were issued by Queen Elizabeth Is so-called interrogator, Richard Topcliffe. Jonson was jailed in Marshalsea Prison and charged with Leude and mutynous behaviour, two of the actors, Gabriel Spenser and Robert Shaw, were also imprisoned. A year later, Jonson was again imprisoned, this time in Newgate Prison. While in jail Jonson converted to Catholicism, possibly through the influence of fellow-prisoner Father Thomas Wright, in 1598 Jonson produced his first great success, Every Man in His Humour, capitalising on the vogue for humorous plays which George Chapman had begun with An Humorous Days Mirth
Ben Jonson
–
Ben Jonson (c. 1617), by
Abraham Blyenberch; oil on canvas painting at the
National Portrait Gallery, London
Ben Jonson
–
Westminster School master
William Camden cultivated the artistic genius of Ben Jonson.
Ben Jonson
–
The Scottish poet
William Drummond of Hawthornden was friend and confidant to Jonson.
Ben Jonson
–
Title page of The Workes of Beniamin Ionson (1616), the first
folio publication that included stage plays
45.
Masque
–
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment that flourished in 16th- and early 17th-century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio. Professional actors and musicians were hired for the speaking and singing parts, in the tradition of masque, Louis XIV of France danced in ballets at Versailles with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully. The masque tradition developed from the elaborate pageants and courtly shows of ducal Burgundy in the late Middle Ages, masques were typically a complimentary offering to the prince among his guests and might combine pastoral settings, mythological fable, and the dramatic elements of ethical debate. There would invariably be some political and social application of the allegory, such pageants often celebrated a birth, marriage, change of ruler or a Royal Entry and invariably ended with a tableau of bliss and concord. Masque imagery tended to be drawn from Classical rather than Christian sources, Masque thus lent itself to Mannerist treatment in the hands of master designers like Giulio Romano or Inigo Jones. The New Historians, in works like the essays of Bevington, in English masques, purely musical interludes might be accompanied by a dumbshow. The rustic presentation of Pyramus and Thisbe as an entertainment in Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream offers a familiar example. Spectators were invited to join in the dancing, at the end, the players would take off their masks to reveal their identities. A descriptive narrative of a processional masque is the masque of the Seven Deadly Sins in Edmund Spensers The Faerie Queene, a particularly elaborate masque, performed over the course of two weeks for Queen Elizabeth, is described in the 1821 novel Kenilworth, by Sir Walter Scott. Later, in the court of James I, narrative elements of the masque became more significant, plots were often on classical or allegorical themes, glorifying the royal or noble sponsor. At the end, the audience would join with the actors in a final dance, Ben Jonson wrote a number of masques with stage design by Inigo Jones. Their works are thought of as the most significant in the form. Sir Philip Sidney also wrote masques, william Shakespeare wrote a masque-like interlude in The Tempest, understood by modern scholars to have been heavily influenced by the masque texts of Ben Jonson and the stagecraft of Inigo Jones. There is also a sequence in his Romeo and Juliet. John Miltons Comus is described as a masque, though it is reckoned a pastoral play. Reconstructions of Stuart masques have been few and far between, part of the problem is that only texts survive complete, there is no complete music, only fragments, so no authoritative performance can be made without interpretive invention. In the 18th-century, masques were even less frequently staged, but because of its ephemeral nature, not a lot of documentation related to masques remains, and much of what is said about the production and enjoyment of masques is still part speculation. While the masque was no longer as popular as it was at its height in the 17th Century, during the late 17th century, English semi-operas by composers such as Henry Purcell had masque scenes inset between the acts of the play proper
Masque
–
Costume for a Knight, by
Inigo Jones: the plumed helmet, the
"heroic torso" in armour and other conventions were still employed for
opera seria in the 18th century.
46.
Piero della Francesca
–
Piero della Francesca was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. As testified by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting is characterized by its humanism, its use of geometric forms. His most famous work is the cycle of frescoes The History of the True Cross in the church of San Francesco in the Tuscan town of Arezzo. He was most probably apprenticed to the local painter Antonio di Giovanni dAnghiari, because in documents about payments it is noted that he was working with Antonio in 1432 and May 1438. Besides, he took notice of the work of some of the Sienese artists active in San Sepolcro during his youth. In 1439 Piero received, together with Domenico Veneziano, payments for his work on frescoes for the church of SantEgidio in Florence, in Florence he must have met leading masters like Fra Angelico, Luca della Robbia, Donatello and Brunelleschi. The classicism of Masaccios frescoes and his figures in the Santa Maria del Carmine were for him an important source of inspiration. Dating of Pieros undocumented work is difficult because his style does not seem to have developed over the years, in 1442 he was listed as eligible for the City Council of San Sepolcro. Three years later, he received the commission for the Madonna della Misericordia altarpiece for the church of the Misericordia in Sansepolcro, in 1449 he executed several frescoes in the Castello Estense and the church of SantAndrea of Ferrara, also lost. His influence was strong in the later Ferrarese allegorical works of Cosimo Tura. Two years later he was in Rimini, working for the condottiero Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, in this sojourn he executed in 1451 the famous fresco of St. Sigismund and Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta in the Tempio Malatestiano, as well as Sigismondos portrait. Thereafter Piero was active in Ancona, Pesaro and Bologna, in 1454 he signed a contract for the Polyptych of Saint Augustine in the church of SantAgostino in Sansepolcro. The central panel of this polyptic is lost and the four panels of the wings, a few years later, summoned by Pope Nicholas V, he moved to Rome, here he executed frescoes in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, of which only fragments remain. Two years later he was again in the Papal capital, for frescoes in Vatican Palace which have also been destroyed, the Baptism of Christ, in The National Gallery in London, was executed around 1460 for the high altar of the church of the Priory of S. Other notable works of Piero della Francescas maturity are the frescoes of the Resurrection of Christ in Sansepolcro, in 1452, Piero della Francesca was called to Arezzo to replace Bicci di Lorenzo in painting the frescoes of the basilica of San Francesco. The work was finished before 1466, probably between 1452 and 1456, the cycle of frescoes, depicting the Legend of the True Cross, is generally considered among his masterworks and those of Renaissance painting in general. The story in these frescoes derives from medieval sources as to how timber relics of the True Cross came to be found
Piero della Francesca
–
A self-portrait, detail from
The Resurrection
Piero della Francesca
–
The
Baptism of Christ, (c. 1450) (
National Gallery, London).
Piero della Francesca
–
St. Sigismund and Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (1451)
Piero della Francesca
–
Legend of the True Cross – the
Queen of Sheba meeting with
King Solomon.
47.
Isidore of Seville
–
He was influential in the inner circle of Sisebut, Visigothic king of Hispania. Like Leander, he played a prominent role in the Councils of Toledo, the Visigothic legislation that resulted from these councils influenced the beginnings of representative government. His fame after his death was based on his Etymologiae, an encyclopedia which assembled extracts of many books from classical antiquity that would have otherwise been lost. Isidore was probably born in Cartagena, Spain, a former Carthaginian colony, to Severianus, both Severianus and Theodora belonged to notable Hispano-Roman families of high social rank. His parents were members of a family who were instrumental in the political-religious manoeuvring that converted the Visigothic kings from Arianism to Catholicism. A younger brother, Saint Fulgentius of Cartagena, served as the Bishop of Astigi at the start of the new reign of the Catholic King Reccared and his sister, Saint Florentina, served God as a nun and allegedly ruled over forty convents and one thousand consecrated religious. This claim seems unlikely, however, given the few functioning monastic institutions in Iberia during her lifetime, Isidore received his elementary education in the Cathedral school of Seville. In this institution, the first of its kind in Iberia, a body of learned men including Archbishop Saint Leander of Seville taught the trivium and quadrivium, Saint Isidore applied himself to study diligently enough that he quickly mastered Latin, and acquired some Greek, and Hebrew. Two centuries of Gothic control of Iberia incrementally suppressed the ancient institutions, classic learning, the associated culture entered a period of long-term decline. The ruling Visigoths nevertheless showed some respect for the trappings of Roman culture. Arianism meanwhile took deep root among the Visigoths as the form of Christianity that they received, scholars may debate whether Isidore ever personally embraced monastic life or affiliated with any religious order, but he undoubtedly esteemed the monks highly. After the death of Saint Leander of Seville on 13 March 600 or 601, on his elevation to the episcopate, he immediately constituted himself as protector of monks. He used all available religious resources toward this end and succeeded, Isidore practically eradicated the heresy of Arianism and completely stifled the new heresy of Acephali at its very outset. Archbishop Isidore strengthened religious discipline throughout his See, Archbishop Isidore also used resources of education to counteract increasingly influential Gothic barbarism throughout his episcopal jurisdiction. His quickening spirit animated the educational movement centered on Seville, Saint Isidore introduced Aristotle to his countrymen long before the Arabs studied Greek philosophy extensively. In 619, Saint Isidore of Seville pronounced anathema against any ecclesiastic who in any way should molest the monasteries, through the enlightened statecraft of his two brothers, the Councils of Seville and Toledo emanated Visigothic legislation which influenced the beginnings of representative government. The Acts of the Council fully set forth the nature of Christ, countering the conceptions of Gregory, based on a few surviving canons found in the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, Saint Isidore is known to have presided over an additional provincial council around 624. The council dealt with a conflict over the see of Ecija, and wrongfully stripped bishop Martianus of his see and it also addressed a concern over Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity by Sisebut failing to present their children for baptism
Isidore of Seville
–
St. Isidore, depicted by
Murillo
Isidore of Seville
–
Statue of Isidore of Seville by
José Alcoverro, 1892, outside the
Biblioteca Nacional de España, in
Madrid.
Isidore of Seville
–
Page of Etymologiae,
Carolingian manuscript (8th century),
Brussels,
Royal Library of Belgium
Isidore of Seville
–
The medieval
T-O map represents the inhabited world as described by Isidore in his
Etymologiae.
48.
Etymologiae
–
Etymologiae, also known as the Origines and usually abbreviated Orig. is an etymological encyclopedia compiled by Isidore of Seville towards the end of his life. Isidore was encouraged to write the book by his friend Braulio, the Etymologies summarized and organized a wealth of knowledge from hundreds of classical sources, three of its books are derived largely from Pliny the Elders Natural History. Isidore acknowledges Pliny, but not his other principal sources, namely Cassiodorus, Servius and Solinus, the work contains whatever Isidore, an influential Christian bishop, thought worth keeping. Etymologiae covers a range of topics. Etymologiae was the most used textbook throughout the Middle Ages and it was so popular that it was read in place of many of the original classical texts that it summarized, so these ceased to be copied and were lost. It was cited by Dante Alighieri, who placed Isidore in his Paradiso, quoted by Geoffrey Chaucer, among the thousand-odd surviving manuscript copies is the 13th-century Codex Gigas, the earliest surviving manuscript, the Codex Sangallensis, preserves books XI to XX from the 9th century. Etymologiae was printed in at least ten editions between 1472 and 1530, after which its importance faded in the Renaissance, the first scholarly edition was printed in Madrid in 1599, the first modern critical edition was edited by Wallace Lindsay in 1911. Etymologiae is less known in modern times, though the Vatican considered naming its author Isidore the patron saint of the Internet. Scholars recognize its importance both for its preservation of texts and for the insight it offers into medieval thought. Isidore of Seville was born around 560 in Spain, under the rule of the Visigoths after the collapse of the Roman empire. His older brother, Leander, the abbot of a Seville monastery, supervised Isidores education, Leander was a powerful priest, a friend of Pope Gregory, and eventually he became bishop of Seville. Leander also made friends with the Visigothic kings sons, Hermenigild, in 586, Reccared became king, and in 587 under Leanders religious direction he became a Catholic, controlling the choice of bishops. Reccared died in 601, not long after appointing Isidore as bishop of Seville, Isidore helped to unify the kingdom through Christianity and education, eradicating the Arian heresy which had been widespread, and led National Councils at Toledo and Seville. Isidore had a friendship with king Sisebut, who came to the throne in 612, and with another Seville churchman, Braulio. Isidore was widely read, mainly in Latin with a little Greek, the classical encyclopedists had already introduced alphabetic ordering of topics, and a literary rather than observational approach to knowledge, Isidore followed those traditions. Isidore became well known in his lifetime as a scholar and he started to put together a collection of his knowledge, the Etymologies, in about 600, and continued to write until about 625. Etymologiae presents in abbreviated form much of that part of the learning of antiquity that Christians thought worth preserving, Etymologies, often very far-fetched, form the subject of just one of the encyclopedias twenty books, but perceived linguistic similarities permeate the work. An idea of the quality of Isidores etymological knowledge is given by Peter Jones, Isidores vast encyclopedia of ancient learning includes subjects from theology to furniture, and provided a rich source of classical lore and learning for medieval writers
Etymologiae
–
Page of Etymologiae,
Carolingian manuscript (8th century),
Brussels,
Royal Library of Belgium
Etymologiae
–
Manuscript page from the start of the Etymologiae, showing the letters of the Greek alphabet. Codex Karolinus, 8th century. Wolfenbüttel digital library.
Etymologiae
–
An early printed edition, by Guntherus Zainer,
Augsburg, 1472. British Library
Etymologiae
–
T and O map from the first printed edition of Etymologiae, XIV: de terra et partibus, representing the inhabited world. Augsburg, 1472. The East is at the top, with Asia occupying the top half of the "globe" (orbis).
49.
Shakespeare
–
William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the worlds pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called Englands national poet, and the Bard of Avon and his extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 38 plays,154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright, Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children, Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a career in London as an actor, writer. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, at age 49, Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories, which are regarded as some of the best work ever produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, in his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and it was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as not of an age, but for all time. In the 20th and 21st centuries, his works have been adapted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship. His plays remain highly popular and are studied, performed. William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden and he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual date of birth unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April. This date, which can be traced back to an 18th-century scholars mistake, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 and he was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, the consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaways neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage, twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596, after the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the bill of a law case before the Queens Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October 1589
Shakespeare
–
The
Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed.
National Portrait Gallery, London.
Shakespeare
–
John Shakespeare's house, believed to be
Shakespeare's birthplace, in
Stratford-upon-Avon.
Shakespeare
–
Shakespeare's coat of arms, as it appears on the rough draft of the application to grant a coat-of-arms to John Shakespeare. It features a spear as a
pun on the family name.
Shakespeare
–
Shakespeare's funerary monument in Stratford-upon-Avon.
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