Votive Body Parts in Greek and Roman Religion

Votive Body Parts in Greek and Roman Religion

Author: Jessica Hughes

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-04-06

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1107157838

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This book analyses hundreds of votive body parts to examine how ideas about the human body changed throughout classical antiquity.


Bodies of Evidence

Bodies of Evidence

Author: Jane Draycott

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1351573373

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Dedicating objects to the divine was a central component of both Greek and Roman religion. Some of the most conspicuous offerings were shaped like parts of the internal or external human body: so-calledanatomical votives. These archaeological artefacts capture the modern imagination, recalling vividly the physical and fragile bodies of the past whilst posing interpretative challenges in the present. This volume scrutinises this distinctive dedicatory phenomenon, bringing together for the first time a range of methodologically diverse approaches which challenge traditional assumptions and simple categorisations. The chapters presented here ask new questions about what constitutes an anatomical votive, how they were used and manipulated in cultural, cultic and curative contexts and the complex role of anatomical votives in negotiations between humans and gods, the body and its disparate parts, divine and medical healing, ancient assemblages and modern collections and collectors. In seeking to re-contextualise and re-conceptualise anatomical votives this volume uniquely juxtaposes the medical with the religious, the social with the conceptual, the idea of the body in fragments with the body whole and the museum with the sanctuary, crossing the boundaries between studies of ancient religion, medicine, the body and the reception of antiquity.


Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia

Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia

Author: C. M. C. Green

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780521851589

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The sanctuary dedicated to Diana at Aricia flourished from the Bronze age to the second century CE. From its archaic beginnings in the wooded crater beside the lake known as the 'mirror of Dianea' it grew into a grand Hellenistic-style complex that attracted crowds of pilgrims and the sick. Diana was also believed to confer power on leaders. This book examines the history of Diana's cult and healing sanctuary, which remained a significant and wealthy religious center for more than a thousand years. It sheds new light on Diana herself, on the use of rational as well as ritual healing in the sanctuary, on the subtle distinctions between Latin religious sensibility and the more austere Roman practice, and on the interpenetration of cult and politics in Latin and Roman history.


Negotiating Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean

Negotiating Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean

Author: Denise Demetriou

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-11-22

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1107019443

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Explores the creation of identities through cross-cultural interactions in multiethnic commercial settlements in the Archaic and Classical Mediterranean.


Religious Convergence in the Ancient Mediterranean

Religious Convergence in the Ancient Mediterranean

Author: Sandra Blakely

Publisher: Lockwood Press

Published: 2019-12-15

Total Pages: 597

ISBN-13: 1948488175

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This volume brings together scholars in religion, archaeology, philology, and history to explore case studies and theoretical models of converging religions. The twenty-four essays offered in this volume, which derive from Hittite, Cilician, Lydian, Phoenician, Greek, and Roman cultural settings, focus on encounters at the boundaries of cultures, landscapes, chronologies, social class and status, the imaginary, and the materially operative. Broad patterns ultimately emerge that reach across these boundaries, and suggest the state of the question on the study of convergence, and the potential fruitfulness for comparative and interdisciplinary studies as models continue to evolve.


Greek Religion

Greek Religion

Author: Walter Burkert

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1985

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 9780674362819

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A survey of the religious beliefs of ancient Greece covers sacrifices, libations, purification, gods, heroes, the priesthood, oracles, festivals, and the afterlife.


Reassembling Religion in Roman Italy

Reassembling Religion in Roman Italy

Author: Emma-Jayne Graham

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-09

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1351982443

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This book examines the ways in which lived religion in Roman Italy involved personal and communal experiences of the religious agency generated when ritualised activities caused human and more-than-human things to become bundled together into relational assemblages. Drawing upon broadly posthumanist and new materialist theories concerning the thingliness of things, it sets out to re-evaluate the role of the material world within Roman religion and to offer new perspectives on the formation of multi-scalar forms of ancient religious knowledge. It explores what happens when a materially informed approach is systematically applied to the investigation of typical questions about Roman religion such as: What did Romans understand ‘religion’ to mean? What did religious experiences allow people to understand about the material world and their own place within it? How were experiences of ritual connected with shared beliefs or concepts about the relationship between the mortal and divine worlds? How was divinity constructed and perceived? To answer these questions, it gathers and evaluates archaeological evidence associated with a series of case studies. Each of these focuses on a key component of the ritualised assemblages shown to have produced Roman religious agency – place, objects, bodies, and divinity – and centres on an examination of experiences of lived religion as it related to the contexts of monumentalised sanctuaries, cult instruments used in public sacrifice, anatomical votive offerings, cult images and the qualities of divinity, and magic as a situationally specific form of religious knowledge. By breaking down and then reconstructing the ritualised assemblages that generated and sustained Roman religion, this book makes the case for adopting a material approach to the study of ancient lived religion.


The Roman Empire [2 volumes]

The Roman Empire [2 volumes]

Author: James W. Ermatinger

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2018-05-01

Total Pages: 673

ISBN-13: 1440838097

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Covering material from the time of Julius Caesar to the sack of Rome, this topically arranged reference set provides substantive entries on people, cities, government, institutions, military developments, material culture, and other topics related to the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was one of the greatest and most influential forces of the ancient world, and many of its achievements endure in one form or another to this day. Because of its geographic breadth, cultural diversity, and overall complexity, it is also one of the most difficult organizations to understand. This book focuses on the Roman Empire from the time of Julius Caesar to the sack of Rome. While most references on the Roman world provide a series of alphabetically arranged entries, this work is organized in broad topical chapters on government and politics, administration, individuals, groups and organizations, places, events, military developments, and objects and artifacts. Each section provides 20 to 30 substantive entries along with an overview essay. The work also provides a selection of primary source documents and closes with a bibliography of important print and electronic resources.


Lived Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World

Lived Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World

Author: Valentino Gasparini

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-04-06

Total Pages: 622

ISBN-13: 3110557940

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The Lived Ancient Religion project has radically changed perspectives on ancient religions and their supposedly personal or public character. This volume applies and further develops these methodological tools, new perspectives and new questions. The religious transformations of the Roman Imperial period appear in new light and more nuances by comparative confrontation and the integration of many disciplines. The contributions are written by specialists from a variety of disciplinary contexts (Jewish Studies, Theology, Classics, Early Christian Studies) dealing with the history of religion of the Mediterranean, West-Asian, and European area from the (late) Hellenistic period to the (early) Middle Ages and shaped by their intensive exchange. From the point of view of their respective fields of research, the contributors engage with discourses on agency, embodiment, appropriation and experience. They present innovative research in four fields also of theoretical debate, which are “Experiencing the Religious”, “Switching the Code”, „A Thing Called Body“ and “Commemorating the Moment”.


Disability in Antiquity

Disability in Antiquity

Author: Christian Laes

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-10-04

Total Pages: 660

ISBN-13: 1317231538

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This volume is a major contribution to the field of disability history in the ancient world. Contributions from leading international scholars examine deformity and disability from a variety of historical, sociological and theoretical perspectives, as represented in various media. The volume is not confined to a narrow view of ‘antiquity’ but includes a large number of pieces on ancient western Asia that provide a broad and comparative view of the topic and enable scholars to see this important topic in the round. Disability in Antiquity is the first multidisciplinary volume to truly map out and explore the topic of disability in the ancient world and create new avenues of thought and research.