1.
Roman mosaic
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A Roman mosaic is a mosaic made during the Roman period, throughout the Roman Empire. Mosaics were used in a variety of private and public buildings, the outstanding examples of the Late Imperial period are the mosaics in the villa of Casale in Sicily. The mosaic decoration of the palace complex culminates in the gallery. Roman mosaics are constructed from geometrical blocks called tesserae, placed together to create the shapes of figures, motifs, polychrome patterns were most common, but monochrome examples are known. Marble and glass were used as tesserae, as were small pebbles. Mosaic decoration was not just confined to floors but featured on walls, traces of guidelines have been found beneath some mosaics, either scored into or painted onto the mortar bedding. The design might also be pegged out in string, or mounted in a wooden frame, the collapse of buildings in antiquity can, paradoxically, both irrevocably destroy mosaics or protect and preserve them. As well as patterns and designs, Roman mosaics frequently depicted divine characters or mythological scenes. Imagery of famous individuals or entertaining scenes are common on Roman mosaics, the Alexander Mosaic from the House of the Faun, Pompeii depicts the Battle of Issus between Alexander the Great and Darius III. In addition to people from antiquity, mosaics can depict aspects of daily life. The Gladiator Mosaic from Rome depicts a scene, naming each gladiator involved. A gladiatorial scene is known from Leptis Magna. One of the earliest depictions of Roman Christianity is a mosaic from Hinton St Mary which shows Christ with a Chi-Rho behind his head, the mosaic is now in the British Museum. Progression within the technique developed the emblem, the heart of all mosaics. The Alexander Mosaic from the House of the Faun, Pompeii, the Tomb of the Julii in the Vatican Necropolis, beneath St. Peters Basilica, Rome. The Gladiator Mosaic from the Via Casilina outside Rome, the Zliten Mosaic from Zliten in Libya
2.
Ancient Greek comedy
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Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece. Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy, New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of Menander. The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his Poetics that comedy is a representation of laughable people, C. A. Trypanis wrote that comedy is the last of the great species of poetry Greece gave to the world. These divisions appear to be arbitrary, and ancient comedy almost certainly developed constantly over the years. The most important Old Comic dramatist is Aristophanes, born in 446 B. C. his works, with their pungent political satire and abundance of sexual and scatological innuendo, effectively define the genre today. He was one of a number of comic poets working in Athens in the late 5th century, his most important contemporary rivals being Hermippus. The Old Comedy subsequently influenced later European writers such as Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, in particular, they copied the technique of disguising a political attack as buffoonery. For ancient scholars, the term may have meant little more than later than Aristophanes and his contemporaries, for at least a time, mythological burlesque was popular among the Middle Comic poets. Stock characters of all sorts also emerge, courtesans, parasites, revellers, philosophers, boastful soldiers, because no complete Middle Comic plays have been preserved, it is impossible to offer any real assessment of their literary value or genius. But many Middle Comic plays appear to have revived in Sicily and Magna Graecia in this period, suggesting that they had considerable widespread literary. New Comedy followed the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and lasted throughout the reign of the Macedonian rulers and it is comparable to situation comedy and comedy of manners. The three best-known playwrights belonging to this genre are Menander, Philemon and Diphilus, Menander was the most successful of these three comedians. His comedies not only provided their audience with a respite from reality. This led an ancient critic to ask if life influenced Menander in the writing of his plays or if the case was vice versa and this seems to be what made him more successful than the other Greek comedians who wrote in the same genre. These plays were much less satirical than preceding comedies, the other two comedians are Philemon and Diphilus. Philemon was a comedian whose comedies dwelt on philosophical issues and Diphilus was a comedian whose comedies were noted for their broad comedy, philemons comedies survive only in fragments, but Diphilus comedies were translated and adapted by Plautus. Examples of these comedies are Plautus Asinaria and Rudens, based on the translation and adaptation of Diphilus comedies by Plautus, one can conclude that he was skilled in the construction of his plots. Substantial fragments of New Comedy have survived, but no complete plays, the most substantially preserved text is the Dyskolos by Menander, discovered on a papyrus, and first published in 1958
3.
Roman Republic
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It was during this period that Romes control expanded from the citys immediate surroundings to hegemony over the entire Mediterranean world. During the first two centuries of its existence, the Roman Republic expanded through a combination of conquest and alliance, by the following century, it included North Africa, most of the Iberian Peninsula, and what is now southern France. Two centuries after that, towards the end of the 1st century BC, it included the rest of modern France, Greece, and much of the eastern Mediterranean. By this time, internal tensions led to a series of wars, culminating with the assassination of Julius Caesar. The exact date of transition can be a matter of interpretation, Roman government was headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and advised by a senate composed of appointed magistrates. Over time, the laws that gave exclusive rights to Romes highest offices were repealed or weakened. The leaders of the Republic developed a tradition and morality requiring public service and patronage in peace and war, making military. Many of Romes legal and legislative structures can still be observed throughout Europe and much of the world in modern nation states, the exact causes and motivations for Romes military conflicts and expansions during the republic are subject to wide debate. While they can be seen as motivated by outright aggression and imperialism and they argue that Romes expansion was driven by short-term defensive and inter-state factors, and the new contingencies that these decisions created. In its early history, as Rome successfully defended itself against foreign threats in central and then northern Italy, with some important exceptions, successful wars in early republican Rome generally led not to annexation or military occupation, but to the restoration of the way things were. But the defeated city would be weakened and thus able to resist Romanizing influences. It was also able to defend itself against its non-Roman enemies. It was, therefore, more likely to seek an alliance of protection with Rome and this growing coalition expanded the potential enemies that Rome might face, and moved Rome closer to confrontation with major powers. The result was more alliance-seeking, on the part of both the Roman confederacy and city-states seeking membership within that confederacy. While there were exceptions to this, it was not until after the Second Punic War that these alliances started to harden into something more like an empire and this shift mainly took place in parts of the west, such as the southern Italian towns that sided with Hannibal. In contrast, Roman expansion into Spain and Gaul occurred as a mix of alliance-seeking, in the 2nd century BC, Roman involvement in the Greek east remained a matter of alliance-seeking, but this time in the face of major powers that could rival Rome. This had some important similarities to the events in Italy centuries earlier, with some major exceptions of outright military rule, the Roman Republic remained an alliance of independent city-states and kingdoms until it transitioned into the Roman Empire. It was not until the time of the Roman Empire that the entire Roman world was organized into provinces under explicit Roman control
4.
Roman Empire
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Civil wars and executions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesars adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt. Octavians power was then unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power, the imperial period of Rome lasted approximately 1,500 years compared to the 500 years of the Republican era. The first two centuries of the empires existence were a period of unprecedented political stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana, following Octavians victory, the size of the empire was dramatically increased. After the assassination of Caligula in 41, the senate briefly considered restoring the republic, under Claudius, the empire invaded Britannia, its first major expansion since Augustus. Vespasian emerged triumphant in 69, establishing the Flavian dynasty, before being succeeded by his son Titus and his short reign was followed by the long reign of his brother Domitian, who was eventually assassinated. The senate then appointed the first of the Five Good Emperors, the empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, the second in this line. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus, Commodus assassination in 192 triggered the Year of the Five Emperors, of which Septimius Severus emerged victorious. The assassination of Alexander Severus in 235 led to the Crisis of the Third Century in which 26 men were declared emperor by the Roman Senate over a time span. It was not until the reign of Diocletian that the empire was fully stabilized with the introduction of the Tetrarchy, which saw four emperors rule the empire at once. This arrangement was unsuccessful, leading to a civil war that was finally ended by Constantine I. Constantine subsequently shifted the capital to Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in his honour and it remained the capital of the east until its demise. Constantine also adopted Christianity which later became the state religion of the empire. However, Augustulus was never recognized by his Eastern colleague, and separate rule in the Western part of the empire ceased to exist upon the death of Julius Nepos. The Eastern Roman Empire endured for another millennium, eventually falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Roman Empire was among the most powerful economic, cultural, political and military forces in the world of its time. It was one of the largest empires in world history, at its height under Trajan, it covered 5 million square kilometres. It held sway over an estimated 70 million people, at that time 21% of the entire population. Throughout the European medieval period, attempts were made to establish successors to the Roman Empire, including the Empire of Romania, a Crusader state. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, then, it was an empire long before it had an emperor
5.
Princeton University Art Museum
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The Princeton University Art Museum is the Princeton Universitys gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1882, it now houses over 92,000 works of art that range from antiquity to the contemporary period and its collections concentrate on the Mediterranean region, Western Europe, China, the United States, and Latin America. The Museum has a collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, including ceramics, marbles, bronzes. Medieval Europe is represented by sculpture, metalwork, and stained glass, the collection of Western European paintings includes examples from the early Renaissance through the nineteenth century, and there is a growing collection of twentieth-century and contemporary art. Photographic holdings are a strength, numbering over 27,000 works from the invention of daguerreotype in 1839 to the present. The Museum is also noted for its Asian art gallery, which includes a collection of Chinese calligraphy, painting, ancient bronze works, jade carvings. In addition to its collections, the Museum mounts regular temporary exhibitions featuring works from its own holdings as well as made from public. Admission is free and the Museum is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday,10,00 am to 5,00 pm, Thursday,10,00 am to 10,00 pm, and Sunday 1,00 to 5,00 pm. The portrait was a donation from Belcher himself, given shortly before the College moved in 1756 to the newly built Nassau Hall and it was joined by a portrait of King George II, who had issued the letters patent establishing the College. The two portraits hung in the prayer hall, and were displayed alongside various antiquities and objects of natural history. The creation of the Art Museum in a formal sense took place under the leadership of James McCosh. The Scottish McCosh brought with him from Europe new progressive academic disciplines, by 1882, McCosh charged William Cowper Prime, a Princeton alumnus and founding trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and George B. McClellan, the Civil War general and then Governor of New Jersey and they argued, The foundation of any system of education in Historic Art must obviously be in object study. A museum of art objects is so necessary to the system that without it we are of opinion it would be of utility to introduce the proposed department. ”The intention was to go beyond the fields of art and classics to include, “many other branches of the collegiate course. ”They anticipated, “large future growth, ” as the College could “look with confidence to her sons, in all parts of the world. The collections of the Museum were initially held in Nassau Hall, along with the natural history collection of professor Arnold Henry Guyot. A new purpose-built fireproof Romanesque Revival Museum was designed by A, page Brown and completed in 1890 on the site of the current museum. On completion of the building the Museum received the Trumball-Prime collection of pottery and porcelain from William Prime, early additions included the purchase of a large collection of Cypriot pottery from the Metropolitan Museum in 1890, and purchases of Etruscan, Roman, and South Italian pottery. Marquand established an endowment from his own resources to further purchases
6.
Samos
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It is also a separate regional unit of the North Aegean region, and the only municipality of the regional unit. In ancient times Samos was a rich and powerful city-state, particularly known for its vineyards. It is home to Pythagoreion and the Heraion of Samos, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that includes the Eupalinian aqueduct, Samian wine was well known in antiquity, and is still produced on the island. The island was governed by the semi-autonomous Principality of Samos under Ottoman suzerainty from 1835 until it joined Greece in 1912, the area of the island is 477.395 km2, and it is 43 km long and 13 km wide. It is separated from Anatolia by the approximately 1-mile-wide Mycale Strait, while largely mountainous, Samos has several relatively large and fertile plains. A great portion of the island is covered with vineyards, from which wine is made. The most important plains except the capital, Vathy, in the northeast, are that of Karlovasi, in the northwest, Pythagoreio, in the southeast, the islands population is 33,814, which is the 9th most populous of the Greek islands. The Samian climate is typically Mediterranean, with rainy winters. Samos relief is dominated by two mountains, Ampelos and Kerkis. The Ampelos massif is the larger of the two and occupies the center of the island, rising to 1,095 metres. Mt. Kerkis, though smaller in area is the taller of the two and its summit is the islands highest point, at 1,434 metres, the mountains are a continuation of the Mycale range on the Anatolian mainland. According to Strabo, the name Samos is from Phoenician meaning rise by the shore, Samos is home to many surprising species including the golden jackal, stone marten, wild boar, flamingos and monk seal. Samos is one of the sunniest places in Europe with almost 3300 hours of sunshine annually or 74% of the time and its climate is mild and wet in winter and dry in summer. In classical antiquity the island was a center of Ionian culture and luxury, renowned for its Samian wines and its most famous building was the Ionic order archaic Temple of goddess Hera—the Heraion. Concerning the earliest history of Samos, literary tradition is singularly defective, at the time of the great migrations it received an Ionian population which traced its origin to Epidaurus in Argolis, Samos became one of the twelve members of the Ionian League. By the 7th century BC it had one of the leading commercial centers of Greece. They helped to open up trade with the population lived around the Black Sea as well as with Egypt, Cyrene, Corinth. This caused them to become rivals with Miletus
7.
Athens
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Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece. In modern times, Athens is a cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, financial, industrial, maritime. In 2015, Athens was ranked the worlds 29th richest city by purchasing power, Athens is recognised as a global city because of its location and its importance in shipping, finance, commerce, media, entertainment, arts, international trade, culture, education and tourism. It is one of the biggest economic centres in southeastern Europe, with a financial sector. The municipality of Athens had a population of 664,046 within its limits. The urban area of Athens extends beyond its administrative city limits. According to Eurostat in 2011, the Functional urban areas of Athens was the 9th most populous FUA in the European Union, Athens is also the southernmost capital on the European mainland. The city also retains Roman and Byzantine monuments, as well as a number of Ottoman monuments. Athens is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Acropolis of Athens and the medieval Daphni Monastery, Athens was the host city of the first modern-day Olympic Games in 1896, and 108 years later it welcomed home the 2004 Summer Olympics. In Ancient Greek, the name of the city was Ἀθῆναι a plural, in earlier Greek, such as Homeric Greek, the name had been current in the singular form though, as Ἀθήνη. It was possibly rendered in the later on, like those of Θῆβαι and Μυκῆναι. During the medieval period the name of the city was rendered once again in the singular as Ἀθήνα, an etiological myth explaining how Athens has acquired its name was well known among ancient Athenians and even became the theme of the sculpture on the West pediment of the Parthenon. The goddess of wisdom, Athena, and the god of the seas, Poseidon had many disagreements, in an attempt to compel the people, Poseidon created a salt water spring by striking the ground with his trident, symbolizing naval power. However, when Athena created the tree, symbolizing peace and prosperity. Different etymologies, now rejected, were proposed during the 19th century. Christian Lobeck proposed as the root of the name the word ἄθος or ἄνθος meaning flower, ludwig von Döderlein proposed the stem of the verb θάω, stem θη- to denote Athens as having fertile soil. In classical literature, the city was referred to as the City of the Violet Crown, first documented in Pindars ἰοστέφανοι Ἀθᾶναι. In medieval texts, variant names include Setines, Satine, and Astines, today the caption η πρωτεύουσα, the capital, has become somewhat common
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Menander
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Menander was a Greek dramatist and the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy. He wrote 108 comedies and took the prize at the Lenaia festival eight times and his record at the City Dionysia is unknown but may well have been similarly spectacular. One of the most popular writers of antiquity, his work was lost during the Middle Ages and is known in modernity in highly fragmentary form, only one play, Dyskolos, has survived almost entirely. He presumably derived his taste for drama from his uncle Alexis. He was the friend, associate, and perhaps pupil of Theophrastus and he also enjoyed the patronage of Ptolemy Soter, the son of Lagus, who invited him to his court. But Menander, preferring the independence of his villa in the Piraeus and the company of his mistress Glycera, refused. According to the note of a scholiast on the Ibis of Ovid, he drowned while bathing, and his countrymen honored him with a tomb on the leading to Athens. Numerous supposed busts of him survive, including a statue in the Vatican. His rival in dramatic art was Philemon, who appears to have more popular. Menander, however, believed himself to be the better dramatist, how long complete copies of his plays survived is unclear, although 23 of them, with commentary by Michael Psellus, were said to still have been available in Constantinople in the 11th century. He is praised by Plutarch and Quintilian, who accepted the tradition that he was the author of the speeches published under the name of the Attic orator Charisius. These maxims were afterwards collected, and, with additions from other sources, were edited as Menanders One-Verse Maxims, a kind of moral textbook for the use of schools. The single surviving speech from his early play Drunkenness is an attack on the politician Callimedon, in the manner of Aristophanes, whose bawdy style was adopted in many of his plays. Eunuchus, Andria, Heauton Timorumenos and Adelphi of Terence were avowedly taken from Menander, the original of Terences Hecyra is generally supposed to be, not by Menander, but Apollodorus of Carystus. Caecilius Statius, Luscius Lanuvinus, Turpilius and Atilius also imitated Menander, most of Menanders work did not survive the Middle Ages, except as short fragments. Michael Psellos might be the last writer who may have more than we do today. Until the end of the 19th century, all that was known of Menander were fragments quoted by authors and collected by Augustus Meineke and Theodor Kock. These consist of some 1650 verses or parts of verses, in addition to a number of words quoted from Menander by ancient lexicographers
9.
Perikeiromene
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Perikeiromene (Greek, Περικειρομένη, translated as The Girl with her Hair Cut Short, is a comedy by Menander that is only partially preserved on papyrus. Of an estimated total of between 1030 and 1091 lines, about 450 lines survive, most acts lack their beginning and end, except that the transition between act I and II is still extant. The play may have been first performed in 314/13 BC or not much later, probably set in Corinth, the play is a drama of reconciliation. It focuses on the relationship between Polemon, a Corinthian mercenary, and his wife, Glykera. An act of violence by the soldier triggers a sequence of events that culminates in Glykeras discovery of her father and her reconciliation with. The lost opening of the play probably featured Glykeras flight from Polemons house, recently returned from fighting abroad, the soldier had learned from Sosias, his slave, that Glykera was seen embracing the neighbors son, Moschion. Moschion has been stalking her because he is in love with her, in a violent fit of jealousy, Polemon cuts off Glykeras long hair. Glykera finds refuge with Myrrhine, the woman next door. In a delayed prologue, Agnoia reveals that Myrrhines son Moschion, is, in fact, as only Glykera knows, her brother by birth, Moschion was exposed together with her and given to Myrrhine by the same woman, now deceased, who kept and raised Glykera. In act II, the slave Daos falsely tries to take credit for Glykeras move into their house and he finds, however, that his mother keeps him away from her. In act IV, Pataikos tries to negotiate with Glykera at Polemons request, as a result, Pataikos discovers that both Glykera and Moschion are the children he exposed long ago after he lost his fortune and his wife died in childbirth. Consequently, Glykera forgives the contrite Polemon in act V and marries him, in Terences Eunuchus 771ff. for example, the soldier Thraso unsuccessfully tries to storm the house of the hetaera Thais with an army that includes his parasite, Gnatho, and his cook, Sanga. Just as in Aspis and Misoumenos, the soldier in Perikeiromene has to be socialized into the polis before he can marry the romantic heroine. In the end, his future father-in-law suggests that he should renounce mercenary service for good, from the start, however, Polemon seems strangely lacking in martial spirit. It is his slave, Sosia, who leads the attack at the neighbors house, Polemons act of domestic violence, the forcible haircut, is representative of the violence associated with mercenaries at the time. What redeems him as a husband is that Agnoia in the prologue explicitly claims responsibility for his violent act. Moreover, his behavior is presented as a rather than an expression of a fundamentally corrupt character. In this play, Menander handles the typical formula of separation and reunion in an elegant way
10.
Prologue
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A prologue or prolog is an opening to a story that establishes the context and gives background details, often some earlier story that ties into the main one, and other miscellaneous information. The Ancient Greek prólogos included the meaning of prologue, but was of wider significance. The importance, therefore, of the prologue in Greek drama was very great, it sometimes almost took the place of a romance, to which, or to an episode in which, the play itself succeeded. It is believed that the prologue in this form was practically the invention of Euripides, the point precisely is that, to an Athenian audience, it was useful and pertinent, as supplying just what they needed to make the succeeding scenes intelligible. He seems, in such a typical prologue as that to the Hippolytus, to be accepting a conventional formula, many of the existing Greek prologues may be later in date than the plays they illustrate, or may contain large interpolations. Molière revived the Plautian prologue in the introduction to his Amphitryon, racine introduced Piety as the speaker of a prologue which opened his choral tragedy of Esther. The tradition of the ancients vividly affected our own early dramatists, though less prevalent in the Elizabethan than in the Classical or Restoration periods, prologues of Renaissance plays are an interesting composite of styles and forms. Bruster and Weimann further argue that the prologue of the Early Modern period serves as a liminal entity, firstly, a prologue is at once the text which is spoken, the actor who speaks that text, and the performance given by the actor in speaking. Ben Jonson has been credited with using the prologue as a means to remind the audience of the relationships between themselves and all aspects of the performance they are about to view. In performance, the actor appeared dressed all in black and this is in contrast to the costume of the play proper, where elaborate and colourful costumes were worn, in the fashion of the day. The prologue removed his hat and wore no makeup and he probably carried a book or scroll, or a placard displaying the title of the play. He was introduced by three short trumpet calls, on the third of which he entered and took a position downstage and he made three bows in the current fashion of the court, and then addressed the audience. The Elizabethan prologue was unique in incorporating aspects of classical and medieval traditions. Epigraph Epilogue Foreword Introduction Preface Prolegomena Attribution This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh. The dictionary definition of prologue at Wiktionary
11.
Dyskolos
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Dyskolos is an Ancient Greek comedy by Menander, the only one of his plays, and of the whole New Comedy, that has survived in almost complete form. It was first presented at the Lenaian festival in 317–16 BC, the play is set in motion by the mischievous Pan, who speaks the prologue and whose personality dominates the play. Pan makes young Sostratos fall in love with a peasant girl he has glimpsed, Sostratos sends his servant to see the girls father. This ends in violence, as the father is Knemon, a farmer who becomes enraged at anyone who ventures onto his land or tries to converse with him. His wife and stepson have left him, he is alone with his daughter, knemons daughter has no written name and so she is referred to as Girl. Sostratos meets Knemon’s stepson, Gorgias, and enlists his assistance in getting Knemon to allow Sostratos to wed his daughter, according to Gorgias, Knemon has vowed that he will permit only a man like himself to marry his daughter. Therefore, Sostratos dons a rough sheepskin coat so as not to appear a gentleman of leisure, a cry goes up that Knemon has accidentally fallen down his own well. Gorgias jumps in to rescue him, Sostratos, although entirely preoccupied with admiring the beautiful daughter, pulls the rope to haul the misanthrope out, nearly killing the old man by his inattention. Having nearly drowned and believing himself about to die, Knemon sees the error of his ways and grants all his property to Gorgias, telling him also to take his daughter, Gorgias introduces Sostratos to Knemon, who gives his indifferent approval. The jubilant Sostratos tells his own father, Kallippides, of the wedding plan, Kallippides balks for a moment at taking two paupers into the family. Sostratos scolds his father, pointing out that wealth is inherently unstable, therefore, Kallippides should not begrudge sharing wealth with others, money cant be held forever, and luck will simply assign that wealth to someone else someday, perhaps to someone less deserving. Sostratos argues out that wealth imposes upon its owner a responsibility to act nobly, summarizing the plays key theme, Sostratos explains that what goes around comes around, By acting nobly now, Kallippides may himself—in a future moment of need—benefit from someone elses kindness. Sostratos finally persuades Kallippides that it is far better to have a friend than invisible wealth which you keep buried away. Menanders Dyskolos, translated by Vincent J. Rosivach Dyskolos, translated by G. Theodoridis
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