Mars of Todi
The so-called Mars of Todi is a near life-sized bronze warrior, dating from the late 5th or early 4th century BC, produced in Etruria for the Umbrian market. It was found on the slope of Mount Santo; the bronze warrior was an expensive votive offering made at a religious sanctuary to Laran, the Etruscan god of war. It had been buried in antiquity ritually, left undisturbed until its discovery in 1835, it is an example of the highest-quality "prestige" works from Etruria found in Umbria during this period, came from a workshop in Orvieto. Velzna was known for its bronze sculptures, more than 2,000 of which were looted by the Romans in 265 BC; the work is a "typical military figure" with "conspicuously Etruscan" facial features. It is an Etruscan realization of Greek formal Classicism, makes use of the contrapposto posture; the figure held a patera in his extended right hand, a spear in the left. His helmet is missing, but his intricate body armor, depicted with "pedantic accuracy," is one of the best examples showing what lamellar plate armor from the period looked like.
The dedication is inscribed on the skirt of the breastplate. It is written in Umbrian in Etruscan characters and marks the beginning of the epigraphic tradition in this part of Umbria; the man dedicating it, has a name, Celtic in origin, an indication of Tuder's "cosmopolitian" character in the Archaic period. The inscription reads Ahal Trutitis dunum dede, "Ahal Trutitis gave gift"; the sculpture is held by the Museo Etrusco Gregoriano of the Vatican
Typhon
Typhon Typhoeus, Typhaon or Typhos, was a monstrous serpentine giant and one of the most deadly creatures in Greek mythology. According to Hesiod, Typhon was the son of Tartarus; however one source has Typhon as the son of Hera alone, while another makes Typhon the offspring of Cronus. Typhon and his mate Echidna were the progenitors of many famous monsters. Typhon attempted to overthrow Zeus for the supremacy of the cosmos; the two fought a cataclysmic battle, which Zeus won with the aid of his thunderbolts. Defeated, Typhon was buried underneath Mount Etna, or the island of Ischia. Typhon mythology is part of the Greek succession myth, which explained how Zeus came to rule the gods. Typhon's story is connected with that of Python, both stories derived from several Near Eastern antecedents. Typhon was identified with the Egyptian god of destruction Set. In accounts Typhon was confused with the Giants. According to Hesiod's Theogony, Typhon was the son of Gaia and Tartarus: "when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, huge Earth bore her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite".
The mythographer Apollodorus adds that Gaia bore Typhon in anger at the gods for their destruction of her offspring the Giants. Numerous other sources mention Typhon as being the offspring of Gaia, or "earth-born", with no mention of Tartarus. However, according to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Typhon was the child of Hera alone. Hera, angry at Zeus for having given birth to Athena by himself, prayed to Gaia and the Titans, to give her a son stronger than Zeus slapped the ground and became pregnant. Hera gave the infant Typhon to the serpent Python to raise, Typhon grew up to become a great bane to mortals. Several sources locate Typhon's birth and dwelling place in Cilicia, in particular the region in the vicinity of the ancient Cilician coastal city of Corycus; the poet Pindar calls Typhon "Cilician," and says that Typhon was born in Cilicia and nurtured in "the famous Cilician cave", an apparent allusion to the Corycian cave in Turkey. In Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, Typhon is called the "dweller of the Cilician caves", both Apollodorus and the poet Nonnus have Typhon born in Cilicia.
The b scholia to Iliad 2.783, preserving a Orphic tradition, has Typhon born in Cilicia, as the offspring of Cronus. Gaia, angry at the destruction of the Giants, slanders Zeus to Hera. So Hera goes to Zeus' father Cronus and Cronus gives Hera two eggs smeared with his own semen, telling her to bury them, that from them would be born one who would overthrow Zeus. Hera, angry at Zeus, buries the eggs in Cilicia "under Arimon", but when Typhon is born, now reconciled with Zeus, informs him. According to Hesiod, Typhon was "terrible and lawless", immensely powerful, on his shoulders were one hundred snake heads, that emitted fire and every kind of noise: Strength was with his hands in all that he did and the feet of the strong god were untiring. From his shoulders grew a hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues, from under the brows of his eyes in his marvellous heads flashed fire, fire burned from his heads as he glared, and there were voices in all his dreadful heads.
The Homeric Hymn to Apollo describes Typhon as "fell" and "cruel", like neither gods nor men. Three of Pindar's poems have Typhon as hundred-headed, while a fourth gives him only fifty heads, but a hundred heads for Typhon became standard. A Chalcidian hydria, depicts Typhon as a winged humanoid from the waist up, with two snake tails below. Aeschylus calls Typhon "fire-breathing". For Nicander, Typhon was a monster of enormous strength, strange appearance, with many heads and wings, with huge snake coils coming from his thighs. Apollodorus describes Typhon as a huge winged monster, whose head "brushed the stars", human in form above the waist, with snake coils below, fire flashing from his eyes: In size and strength he surpassed all the offspring of Earth; as far as the thighs he was of human shape and of such prodigious bulk that he out-topped all the mountains, his head brushed the stars. One of his hands reached out to the west and the other to the east, from them projected a hundred dragons' heads.
From the thighs downward he had huge coils of vipers, which when drawn out, reached to his head and emitted a loud hissing. His body was all winged: unkempt hair streamed on the wind from his head and cheeks; the most elaborate description of Typhon is found in Nonnus's Dionysiaca. Nonnus makes numerous references to Typhon's serpentine nature, giving him a "tangled army of snakes", snaky feet, hair. According to Nonnus, Typhon was a "poison-spitting viper", whose "every hair belched viper-poison", Typhon "spat out showers of poison from his throat.
Myth
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives or stories that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. The main characters in myths are gods, demigods or supernatural humans. Stories of everyday human beings, although of leaders of some type, are contained in legends, as opposed to myths. Myths are endorsed by rulers and priests or priestesses, are linked to religion or spirituality. In fact, many societies group their myths and history together, considering myths and legends to be true accounts of their remote past. In particular, creation myths take place in a primordial age when the world had not achieved its form. Other myths explain how a society's customs and taboos were established and sanctified. There is a complex relationship between recital of myths and enactment of rituals; the study of myth began in ancient history. Rival classes of the Greek myths by Euhemerus and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists and revived by Renaissance mythographers.
Today, the study of myth continues in a wide variety of academic fields, including folklore studies and psychology. The term mythology may either refer to the study of myths in general, or a body of myths regarding a particular subject; the academic comparisons of bodies of myth is known as comparative mythology. Since the term myth is used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrative as a myth can be political: many adherents of religions view their religion's stories as true and therefore object to the stories being characterised as myths. Scholars now speak of Christian mythology, Jewish mythology, Islamic mythology, Hindu mythology, so forth. Traditionally, Western scholarship, with its Judaeo-Christian heritage, has viewed narratives in the Abrahamic religions as being the province of theology rather than mythology. Labelling all religious narratives as myths can be thought of as treating different traditions with parity. Definitions of myth to some extent vary by scholar.
Finnish folklorist Lauri Honko offers a cited definition: Myth, a story of the gods, a religious account of the beginning of the world, the creation, fundamental events, the exemplary deeds of the gods as a result of which the world and culture were created together with all parts thereof and given their order, which still obtains. A myth expresses and confirms society's religious values and norms, it provides a pattern of behavior to be imitated, testifies to the efficacy of ritual with its practical ends and establishes the sanctity of cult. Scholars in other fields use the term myth in varied ways. In a broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story, popular misconception or imaginary entity. However, while myth and other folklore genres may overlap, myth is thought to differ from genres such as legend and folktale in that neither are considered to be sacred narratives; some kinds of folktales, such as fairy stories, are not considered true by anyone, may be seen as distinct from myths for this reason.
Main characters in myths are gods, demigods or supernatural humans, while legends feature humans as their main characters. However, many exceptions or combinations exist, as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Moreover, as stories spread between cultures or as faiths change, myths can come to be considered folktales, their divine characters recast as either as humans or demihumans such as giants and faeries. Conversely and literary material may acquire mythological qualities over time. For example, the Matter of Britain and the Matter of France, seem distantly to originate in historical events of the fifth and eighth-centuries and became mythologised over the following centuries. In colloquial use, the word myth can be used of a collectively held belief that has no basis in fact, or any false story; this usage, pejorative, arose from labeling the religious myths and beliefs of other cultures as incorrect, but it has spread to cover non-religious beliefs as well. However, as used by folklorists and academics in other relevant fields, such as anthropology, the term myth has no implication whether the narrative may be understood as true or otherwise.
In present use, mythology refers to the collected myths of a group of people, but may mean the study of such myths. For example, Greek mythology, Roman mythology and Hittite mythology all describe the body of myths retold among those cultures. Folklorist Alan Dundes defines myth as a sacred narrative that explains how the world and humanity evolved into their present form. Dundes classified a sacred narrative as "a story that serves to define the fundamental worldview of a culture by explaining aspects of the natural world and delineating the psychological and social practices and ideals of a society". Anthropologist Bruce Lincoln defines myth as "ideology in narrative form." The compilation or description of myths is sometimes known as mythography, a term which can be used of a scholarly anthology of myths. Key mythographers in the Classical tradition include Ovid, whose tellings of myths have been profoundingly influential.
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger Lucius Annaeus Seneca and known as Seneca, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, and—in one work—satirist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. Seneca was born in Córdoba in Hispania, raised in Rome, where he was trained in rhetoric and philosophy, his father was Seneca the Elder, his elder brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, his nephew was the poet Lucan. In AD 41, Seneca was exiled to the island of Corsica by the emperor Claudius, but was allowed to return in 49 to become a tutor to Nero; when Nero became emperor in 54, Seneca became his advisor and, together with the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus, provided competent government for the first five years of Nero's reign. Seneca's influence over Nero declined with time, in 64 Seneca was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, in which he was to have been innocent, his stoic and calm suicide has become the subject of numerous paintings. As a writer Seneca is known for his philosophical works, for his plays, which are all tragedies.
His prose works include a dozen essays and one hundred and twenty-four letters dealing with moral issues. These writings constitute one of the most important bodies of primary material for ancient Stoicism; as a tragedian, he is best known for plays such as his Medea and Phaedra. Seneca's influence on generations is immense—during the Renaissance he was "a sage admired and venerated as an oracle of moral of Christian, edification. Seneca was born at Córdoba in the Roman province of Baetica in Hispania, his father was Lucius Annaeus Seneca the elder, a Spanish-born Roman knight who had gained fame as a writer and teacher of rhetoric in Rome. Seneca's mother, was from a prominent Baetician family. Seneca was the second of three brothers. Miriam Griffin says in her biography of Seneca that "the evidence for Seneca's life before his exile in 41 is so slight, the potential interest of these years, for social history as well as for biography, is so great that few writers on Seneca have resisted the temptation to eke out knowledge with imagination."
Griffin 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 resident in Rome by AD 5. Seneca tells us that he was taken to Rome in the "arms" of his aunt at a young age when he was about five years old, his father resided for much of his life in the city. Seneca was taught the usual subjects of literature and rhetoric, as part of the standard education of high-born Romans. While still young he received philosophical training from Attalus the Stoic, from Sotion and Papirius Fabianus, both of whom belonged to the short-lived School of the Sextii, which combined Stoicism with Pythagoreanism. Sotion persuaded Seneca when he was a young man to become a vegetarian, which he practised for around a year before his father urged him to desist because the practice was associated with "some foreign rites". Seneca had breathing difficulties throughout his life asthma, at some point in his mid-twenties he appears to have been struck down with tuberculosis.
He was sent to Egypt to live with his aunt, whose husband Gaius Galerius had become Prefect of Egypt. She nursed him through a period of ill-health. In 31 AD he returned to Rome with his uncle dying en route in a shipwreck, his aunt's influence helped Seneca be elected quaestor, which earned him the right to sit in the Roman Senate. Seneca's early career as a senator seems to have been successful and he was praised for his oratory. Cassius Dio relates a story that Caligula was so offended by Seneca's oratorical success in the Senate that he ordered him to commit suicide. Seneca only survived because he was ill and Caligula was told that he would soon die anyway. In his writings Seneca has nothing good to say about Caligula and depicts him as a monster. Seneca explains his own survival as down to his patience and his devotion to his friends: "I wanted to avoid the impression that all I could do for loyalty was die."In 41 AD, Claudius became emperor, Seneca was accused by the new empress Messalina of adultery with Julia Livilla, sister to Caligula and Agrippina.
The affair has been doubted by some historians, since Messalina had clear political motives for getting rid of Julia Livilla and her supporters. The Senate pronounced a death sentence on Seneca, which Claudius commuted to exile, Seneca spent the next eight years on the island of Corsica. Two of Seneca's earliest surviving works date from the period of his exile—both consolations. In his Consolation to Helvia, his mother, Seneca comforts her as a bereaved mother for losing her son to exile. Seneca incidentally mentions the death of a few weeks before his exile. In life Seneca was married to a woman younger than himself, Pompeia Paulina, it has been thought that the infant son may have been from an earlier marriage, but the evidence is "tenuous". Seneca's other work of this period, his Consolation to Polybius, one of Claudius' freedmen, focused on consoling Polybius on the death of his brother, it is noted for its flattery of Claudius, Seneca expresses his hope that the emperor will recall him from exile.
In 49 AD Agrippina married her uncle Claudius, through her influence Seneca was recalled to Rome. Agrippina gained the praetorship for Seneca and ap
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, orator and philosopher, who served as consul in the year 63 BC. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists, his influence on the Latin language was so immense that the subsequent history of prose, not only in Latin but in European languages up to the 19th century, was said to be either a reaction against or a return to his style. 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 accomplished orator and successful lawyer, Cicero believed his political career was his most important achievement, it was during his consulship that the second Catilinarian conspiracy attempted to overthrow the government through an attack on the city by outside forces, Cicero suppressed the revolt by summarily and controversially executing five conspirators.
During the chaotic latter half of the 1st century BC marked by civil wars and the dictatorship of Gaius Julius Caesar, Cicero championed a return to the traditional republican government. Following Julius Caesar's death, Cicero became an enemy of Mark Antony in the ensuing power struggle, attacking him in a series of speeches, he was proscribed as an enemy of the state by the Second Triumvirate and executed by soldiers operating on their behalf in 43 BC after having been intercepted during an attempted flight from the Italian peninsula. His severed hands and head were as a final revenge of Mark Antony, displayed on The Rostra. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is credited for initiating the 14th-century Renaissance in public affairs and classical Roman culture. According to Polish historian Tadeusz Zieliński, "the Renaissance was above all things a revival of Cicero, only after him and through him of the rest of Classical antiquity." The peak of Cicero's authority and prestige came during the 18th-century Enlightenment, his impact on leading Enlightenment thinkers and political theorists such as John Locke, David Hume and Edmund Burke was substantial.
His works rank among the most influential in European culture, today still constitute one of the most important bodies of primary material for the writing and revision of Roman history the last days of the Roman Republic. Cicero was born in 106 BC in a hill town 100 kilometers southeast of Rome, he belonged to the tribus Cornelia. His father possessed good connections in Rome. However, being a semi-invalid, he studied extensively to compensate. Although little is known about Cicero's mother, Helvia, it was common for the wives of important Roman citizens to be responsible for the management of the household. Cicero's brother Quintus wrote in a letter. Cicero's cognomen, or personal surname, comes from the Latin for cicer. Plutarch explains that the name was given to one of Cicero's ancestors who had a cleft in the tip of his nose resembling a chickpea. However, it is more that Cicero's ancestors prospered through the cultivation and sale of chickpeas. Romans chose down-to-earth personal surnames.
The famous family names of Fabius and Piso come from the Latin names of beans and peas, respectively. Plutarch writes that Cicero was urged to change this deprecatory name when he entered politics, but refused, saying that he would make Cicero more glorious than Scaurus and Catulus. During this period in Roman history, "cultured" meant being able to speak both Greek. Cicero was therefore educated in the teachings of the ancient Greek philosophers and historians. 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 his broad education that tied him to the traditional Roman elite. Cicero's interest in philosophy figured in his career and led to him providing a comprehensive account of Greek philosophy for a Roman audience, including creating a philosophical vocabulary in Latin. In 87 BC, Philo of Larissa, the head of the Academy, founded by Plato in Athens about 300 years earlier, arrived in Rome.
Cicero, "inspired by an extraordinary zeal for philosophy", sat enthusiastically at his feet and absorbed Plato's philosophy. Cicero said of Plato's Dialogues. According to Plutarch, Cicero was an talented student, whose learning attracted attention from all over Rome, affording him the opportunity to study Roman law under Quintus Mucius Scaevola. Cicero's fellow students were Gaius Marius Minor, Servius Sulpicius Rufus, Titus Pomponius; the latter two became Cicero's friends for life, Pomponius would become, in Cicero's own words, "as a second brother", with both maintaining a lifelong correspondence. In 79 BC, Cicero left for Asia Minor and Rhodes; this was to avoid the potential wrath of Sulla, as Plutarch claims, though Cicero himself says it was to hone his skills and improve his p
Populonia
Populonia or Populonia Alta today is a frazione of the comune of Piombino. As of 2009 its population was 17. Populonia is noteworthy for its Etruscan remains, including one of the main necropolis in Italy, discovered by Isidoro Falchi. Modern Populonia is located within a small portion of the walled acropolis of a large ancient city, which covered the entire north end of Monte Massoncello, a promontory, its northern slopes down to the Bay of Baratti, the shores of the bay, its port; the city was an industrial one, smelting copper ore brought from the Colline Metallifere, the "ore-bearing hills" inland, iron ore from nearby Elba, in beehive blast furnaces. Over the thousand years of its life it came to cover the entire southern shore of the bay with slag, piling it over abandoned residences and cemeteries, until it lost its utility as a metals manufacturer, it was abandoned. The metal-rich slag was reworked for its content by Feromin Co. 1929–1969, which cleaned the shore of the bay and left but little behind.
During the process Etruscan necropoleis and other buildings were uncovered. They attracted the attention of the archaeologists. Soon it was realized that not only Populonia but the entire Val di Cornia, Valley of the nearby Cornia River, had been densely populated in Etruscan times. Moreover, the Val had been populated continuously from Paleolithic times. In recognition of the area's importance to archaeology, a system of parks was created, the Parchi della Val di Cornia, with a key park being the Parco archeologico di Baratti e Populonia, the "Baratti and Populonia Archeological Park", which covers the hill with the acropolis and the entire Bay of Baratti and its shores. Another is the Archaeological Area of Poggio del Molino; the port has long since been replaced by the city of Piombino on the southern slopes of Monte Massoncello, the departure point of maritime traffic leading to Elba and elsewhere. The parks and museums host large numbers of visitors; the heights feature a massive fortress built in the 15th century by the Appiani lords of Piombino, with stones taken from Etruscan remains.
The hill has been kept in rural condition. It was once populated; the remains of a city wall go around the top. The name of the Etruscan city is known from its coins, it has been suggested that it was named after a god, Fufluns, as other Etruscan cities were named after divinities. It would mean "the city of Fufluns." The word was written in Hellenistic times with the Etruscan letter f, only introduced then. Before Etruscans and Romans made do with a p, resulting in such spellings as Pupluna or Populonia, but the pronunciation must have been Fufluna, it has been further suggested that Pliny's mention of a statue of Zeus at Populonia carved from one vine suggests a pre-metallurgical wine industry flourishing at the time Fufluna was named. The earliest evidence of Etruscans at Fufluna is from two necropoleis containing material of the Villanovan culture, Iron Age and began about 900 BC. Except for some cities that began in the Proto-Villanovan, 900 is the foundation time for the majority of Etruscan urbanizations.
The cemeteries are San Cerbone on the south shore of the Bay of Baratti and Piano e Poggio della Granate further north on the bay. The presence of the cemeteries can only be explained by a large settlement nearby, which can only have been Fufluna; the acropolis of the city extended over two hills at the top of the promontory: Poggio del Castillo, the site of the castle and modern structures, Poggio del Telegrafo called, Poggio del Molino, not the only hill of that name in the area. Remains of a Roman villa, Villa le Logge, share Telegrafo with an excavation last conducted in the seasons of 2003–2005, which uncovered among other things postholes from a village of huts of the same date as the Villanovan cemeteries, about 900 BC; the presence of a few Proto-Villanovan tombs at Villa del Barone on another Poggio del Molino near Punta del Stellino just to the north of Baratti indicates the foundation population was proto-Etruscan. It was excavated in the 1980s by the University of Florence; the Bronze Age Proto-villanovan began as early as 1200 BC.
Another excavation at another Roman villa on Poggio del Molino near Baroni began in 2009. A report from the second season, 2010, mentions that a Bronze Age village of huts was found under the villa; the excavators date it to "the Late Bronze Age" by the pottery, tentatively assigning it to 1200–1100 BC, a time falling within the Final Bronze Age of the Italian system and within the Proto-Villanovan Period. They have not yet made any such distinctions; the village is assumed to have been associated with the Populonian population. Throughout the Val di Cornia are remains much older, it cannot be presumed, just because the archaeology of the region goes back to the Stone Age, that their populations represent the Proto-Etruscans. The Poggio del Molino north of Baratti must be associated with Fufluna because of a geographical barrier, not there now, once termed Lake Rimigliano. In Etruscan times it was a lagoon fringed by a barrier island extending from San Vincenzo in the north southward to the foot of Poggio del Molino, where it was broken by an egress point.
The lake went as far inland as the mines at Campiglia Marittima, an easy route for ore barges between there and the Bay of Baratti. The lagoon became a swamp, disappe
François Tomb
The François Tomb is an important painted Etruscan tomb from the Ponte Rotto Necropolis in the Etruscan city of Vulci, in central Italy. It was discovered in 1857 by Adolphe Noël des Vergers, it dates to the last quarter of the fourth century BC. The tomb seems to belong to the Etruscan family of the Saties and one of its chief occupants is Vel Saties, who appears with his dwarf, Arnza, its outstanding frescoes are significant both iconographically and in terms of their comments on Etruscan history and identity. The tomb contains a fresco depicting Caelius Mastarna; the frescos were removed by Prince Torlonia soon after their discovery and were kept in the Torlonia Museum. Since 1946, they have been stored at the private Villa Albani in Rome as part of the Torlonia collection; some pottery vessels from the tomb are now in the British Museum. Http://www.instoria.it/home/FrancoisII.htm http://www.mysteriousetruscans.com/francois.html Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. F. Messerschmidt, A. von Gerkan, Nekropolen von Vulci, Berlin, 1930.
Cristofani, research on paintings of François Vulci grave. The decorative friezes, in Diala, 1, 1967, pp. 189–219 Steingr S. Aber, Catalogue raisonné of Etruscan painting, Milan, 1984, pp. 380–387. Art and Ideology in Rome. By Hellenistic models to the republican tradition, Rome, 1996, pp. 138–178. The François tomb at Vulci, an Etrusco-Hellenistic monument. Thesis/dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Holliday, Peter James. 1993. Narrative and event in ancient art. Cambridge University Press
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