As one of the most famous religious centers in the Aegean, the island of Samothrace was visited by thousands of worshippers between the 7th century B.C. and the 4th century A.D. All known inscriptions listing or mentioning Samothracian initiates and theoroi (a total of 169 texts) are presented, including a number of previously unpublished fragments.
"The Winged Victory of Samothrace is without doubt one of the most spectacular and accomplished expressions of Greek sculpture from the Hellenistic period. Why, then, restore it now? In spite of its intrinsic beauty, the monument has not been immune to the passage of time and its presentation has been called into question by recent developments in archaeological research. Since it first arrived at the Louvre in 1864, it has been the object of three restoration campaigns. Today, the restoration of an ancient sculpture comprises an encounter with the artistic genius of the ancients; the restoration of a Greek sculpture completed during the nineteenth century necessitates taking the work’s second life into account; the restoration of a masterpiece in the Louvre means bearing in mind the deep affection everyone feels for it. Restoring the Winged Victory of Samothrace involved all three considerations. It seemed imperative that an account of this voyage deep into the heart of the work, this most exhilarating of enterprises, should be revealed to the public. The present work does just that, as well as presenting the monument of the Winged Victory in its ancient setting on the island of Samothrace: in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods where it was dedicated. The book also provides the public with the keys necessary for fully appreciating the Winged Victory of Samothrace and thus building on the viewer’s initial intense emotion. Who is this Victory in virtuoso drapery? Why does she stand on an impressive base in the shape of a ship’s prow? Finally, the book reveals a number of well-hidden technical secrets, which cannot but compel our admiration."--Publisher's description.
A founding father of the “art of philology,” Aristarchus of Samothrace (216–144 BCE) made a profound contribution to ancient scholarship. In his study of Homer’s Iliad, his methods and principles inevitably informed, even reshaped, his edition of the epic. This systematic study places Aristarchus and his fragments preserved in the Iliadic scholia, or marginal annotations, in the context and cultural environment of his own time. Francesca Schironi presents a more robust picture of Aristarchus as a scholar than anyone has offered previously. Based on her analysis of over 4,300 fragments from his commentary on the Iliad, she reconstructs Aristarchus’ methodology and its relationship to earlier scholarship, especially Aristotelian poetics. Schironi departs from the standard commentary on individual fragments, and instead organizes them by topic to produce a rigorous scholarly examination of how Aristarchus worked. Combining the accuracy and detail of traditional philology with a big-picture study of recurrent patterns and methodological trends across Aristarchus’ work, this volume offers a new approach to scholarship in Alexandrian and classical philology. It will be the go-to reference book on this topic for many years to come, and will usher in a new way of addressing the highly technical work of ancient scholars without losing philological accuracy. This book will be valuable to classicists and philologists interested in Homer and Homeric criticism in antiquity, Hellenistic scholarship, and ancient literary criticism.
In this volume, the key monuments that form the Theatral Complex, including the Theatral Circle, the Fieldstone Building with its masonry style plaster interior, the marble Doric hexastyle Dedication of Philip III and Alexander IV, the elegant Ionic Porch later attached to the western side of the Dedication, and the remains of dozens of bronze statues that originally framed the Theatral Circle, are presented in their archaeological, architectural, and historical contexts. The potential significance of the Complex within the mystery cult, both as the place that initially gave shape to the group of pilgrims undergoing initiation, and as the place where new initiates ultimately departed the Sanctuary, accords the Theatral Complex on the Eastern Hill a central place in the history of ancient Greek sacred space. Actual-state and reconstruction drawings; photographs; and a catalogue of the small finds, including pottery, lamps, terracotta figurines, coins, metal objects, inscriptions, stone objects, and glass, accompany the text.
The deities went by the name of the Great Gods, a mysterious group of numinous powers who presided over religious ceremonies on the northern Aegean island of Samothrace and elsewhere, termed a Mystery because things happened that must never be divulged to outsiders. The importance of the Mystery was second only to the great Eleusinian rite. This investigation into the secret of the Mystery begins with the famous sculptural group of the Winged Victory of Samothrace and leads through a bizarre assemblage of mythological events that includes the drunken sailing of the loon on an amphora filled with wine, the enchained rapture of souls linked to the attractive force of the magnetic stone, the thievery of the infant Hermes, obscenities and ithyphallic creatures, the stench of metallurgy, islands of wanton women and other seductively noisome smells, murder in the fields sown with grain, talking heads that sprout in the path of the plowshare, the founding of Rome, the voyage of the Argonauts and the great sorceress Medea, the riddle about the divinatory liver of Prometheus--finally to the ultimate destination: a magical herbarium at the center of a magnetic fortress in which there is a single giant tree overshadowing the entire expanse of toxic plants, and at its base the tomb of the dwarfish great god Zeus. The final view is the Golden Parchment that was the alchemical formula for transcendence and J.M.W. Turner's depiction of the Vision of Medea, reveling in the full-tide of her witchery.
