The myths of ancient Crete, her people, and their gods twine through our minds like the snakes around the priestess's arms in those ancient temples. They call to us across the millennia, asking us to remember. In answer to that call, Ariadne’s Thread provides a window into the spirituality, culture and daily life of the Minoan people, and commemorates the richness of a world in which women and men worked and worshiped as equals. In these pages, the glory of Crete once again springs to life; the history, the culture, and most of all, the intense spirituality of these fascinating people and their gods can inspire and transform our modern ways of thinking, worshiping and being. The ruined temples and mansions of ancient Crete may crumble along the coastline of this tiny island, but Ariadne’s thread still leads us into the labyrinth and safely back out again.
Saberhagen, continues the Book of the Gods series that began with The Face of Apollo. Shiva has overthrown the rightful King Minos of Crete and in his place put a minion of the gods of Death. Sacrifices are demanded. Theseus, a young hostage, and his companions are doomed, unless Princess Ariadne, her brother Ariadne is the daughter of the King Minos. The creature in the Labyrinth is her brother Theseus is a young man sentenced to be sacrificed by the gods, with whom Ariadne falls deeply in love. She conspires to spare him from his grisly fate, but doesn't count on Dionysus stepping in to complicate matters. With mystical beasts and whimsical gods confronting them at every turn, Ariadne and Theseus must find their way through a maze of events that are as twisted as they are dangerous.
Nonnus of Panopolis (fifth century CE) composed two poems once thought to be incompatible: the Dionysiaca, a mythological long epic with a marked interest in astrology, the occult, the paradox and not least the beauty of the female body, and a pious and sublime Paraphrase of the Gospel of St John. Little is known about the man, to whom sundry identities have been attached. The longer work has been misrepresented as a degenerate poem or as a mythological handbook. The Christian poem has been neglected or undervalued. Yet, Nonnus accomplished an ambitious plan, in two parts, aiming at representing world-history. This volume consists mainly of the Proceedings of the First International Conference on Nonnus held in Rethymno, Crete in May 2011. With twentyfour essays, an international team of specialists place Nonnus firmly in his time's context. After an authoritative Introduction by Pierre Chuvin, chapters on Nonnus and the literary past, the visual arts, Late Antique paideia, Christianity and his immediate and long-range afterlife (to modern times) offer a wide-ranging and innovative insight into the man and his world. The volume moves on beyond stereotypes to inaugurate a new era of research for Nonnus and Late Antique poetics on the whole.
Indeed, relatively little work has been done on the Cretan myth cycle as a whole, a mixture of heroic Greek legend and savage, pre-Greek elements generally considered to be antithetical to evolved literary languages. As a result, although Ariadne has been extremely important in Western art from the time of ancient Greece through the nineteenth century, she is rarely included in studies of Greek myth.
This festschrift honors UCLA professor emerita Susan Downey and her meticulous scholarship on religious architecture and imagery in the Roman/Hellenistic world. The iconography of gods and goddesses, the analysis of sacred imagery in the context of ancient cult practices, and the design and decoration of sacred spaces are the main themes of the book. Authors examine such subjects as painting from Dura-Europos, Hellenistic sculpture at Saqqara in Egypt, Roman cameo glass, Pompeian fresco, and aspects of Venus in portrait sculpture. The essays on Dura-Europos are especially valuable in light of the present turmoil in the region. Professor Downey's influence shines through in these discussions, which echo her mentorship of several generations of art history and archaeology students and recognize her scholarly achievements. The broad temporal and geographic parameters of the volume are expansive, and the juxtaposition of images and analyses leads to surprising new conclusions.
Organized into an easy-to-use, alphabetical dictionary format, a guide to dream interpretation focuses on both classic and contemporary dream symbols and explains how dreams can reveal hidden truths about the physical, emotional, and metaphysical realms of life. Original.
A philosophical look at the movie Inception and its brilliant metaphysical puzzles Is the top still spinning? Was it all a dream? In the world of Christopher Nolan's four-time Academy Award-winning movie, people can share one another's dreams and alter their beliefs and thoughts. Inception is a metaphysical heist film that raises more questions than it answers: Can we know what is real? Can you be held morally responsible for what you do in dreams? What is the nature of dreams, and what do they tell us about the boundaries of "self" and "other"? From Plato to Aristotle and from Descartes to Hume, Inception and Philosophy draws from important philosophical minds to shed new light on the movie's captivating themes, including the one that everyone talks about: did the top fall down (and does it even matter)? Explores the movie's key questions and themes, including how we can tell if we're dreaming or awake, how to make sense of a paradox, and whether or not inception is possible Gives new insights into the nature of free will, time, dreams, and the unconscious mind Discusses different interpretations of the film, and whether or not philosophy can help shed light on which is the "right one" Deepens your understanding of the movie's multi-layered plot and dream-infiltrating characters, including Dom Cobb, Arthur, Mal, Ariadne, Eames, Saito, and Yusuf An essential companion for every dedicated Inception fan, this book will enrich your experience of the Inception universe and its complex dreamscape.
One of the most famous voices to have survived from the Roman world, Catullus's poetry is still amongst the most popular and widely read. But what is it that makes this 2,000-year-old voice so relevant, so personal, and so endlessly fascinating? Reinvigorating discussions around the nature of Catullus's lyricism, Catullus in Twentieth-Century Music takes a completely new approach to Catullus and ideas of lyric. It centres around four musical works from the twentieth century, each one capturing the essence of Catullus in musical retellings and showcasing a very personal response to the original text. Considering how and why these musical composers used Catullus's poetry as their stimulus allows us to uncover new ideas about Catullus's poetry. By considering the very process of reception, Stephanie Oade takes a broader view of lyric, identifying traits and characteristics that are common to both music and poetry, thus transcending the boundaries of individual art forms in order to consider the genre in larger, interdisciplinary terms. It offers insights into compositional processes and challenges audiences to think about ways of engaging with music and poetry. More than anything, it shows how ancient voices continue to resound in modernity and offer everlasting expression for our own experiences and emotions.