Wonder and the Marvellous from Homer to the Hellenistic World
Wonder and the Marvellous from Homer to the Hellenistic World

Author: Jessica Lightfoot

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-09-16

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 1009007335

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Wonder and wonders constituted a central theme in ancient Greek culture. In this book, Jessica Lightfoot provides the first full-length examination of its significance from Homer to the Hellenistic period. She demonstrates that wonder was an important term of aesthetic response and occupied a central position in concepts of what philosophy and literature are and do. She also argues that it became a means of expressing the manner in which the realms of the human and the divine interrelate with one another; and that it was central to the articulation of the ways in which the relationships between self and other, near and far, and familiar and unfamiliar were conceived. The book provides a much-needed starting point for re-assessments of the impact of wonder as a literary critical and cultural concept both in antiquity and in later periods. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Wonder and the Marvellous from Homer to the Hellenistic World
Wonder and the Marvellous from Homer to the Hellenistic World

Author: Jessica Lightfoot

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781009003551

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"The Greeks are already engaged with the marvellous from the very beginning of their literary tradition. Homer presents a world full of visual marvels linked to the divine, from the Shield of Achilles to epiphanic appearances of the gods themselves before mortals. Already in the Homeric poems, the marvellous is linked to transgression of the boundaries that separate the human and divine realms, and also the natural and the artificial"--

Geographers of the Ancient Greek World: Volume 2
Geographers of the Ancient Greek World: Volume 2

Author: D. Graham J. Shipley

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2024-04-18

Total Pages: 578

ISBN-13: 1009207180

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Ancient Greek geographical writing is represented not just by the surviving works of the well-known authors Strabo, Pausanias, and Ptolemy, but also by many other texts dating from the Archaic to the Late Antique period. Most of these texts are, however, hard for non-specialists to find, and many have never been translated into English. This volume, the work of an international team of experts, presents the most important thirty-six texts in new, accurate translations. In addition, there are explanatory notes and authoritative introductions to each text, which offer a new understanding of the individual writings and demonstrate their importance: no longer marginal, but in the mainstream of Greek literature and science. The book includes twenty-eight newly drawn maps, images of the medieval manuscripts in which most of these works survive, and a full Introduction providing a comprehensive survey of the field of Greek and Roman geography.

Theologies of Fear in Early Greek Epic
Theologies of Fear in Early Greek Epic

Author: Carman Romano

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-09-24

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1040131697

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This book explores the theological significance of horror elements in the works of Hesiod and in the Homeric Hymns for the characters within these poems, the mortal audience consuming them, and the poet responsible for mythopoesis. Theologies of Fear in Early Greek Epic argues that just as modern supernatural horror fiction can be analyzed to reveal popular conceptions of the divine, so too can the horrific elements in early Greek epic. Romano develops this analogy to show how myth-makers chose to include, omit, or nuance horror elements from their narratives in order to communicate theological messages. By employing methodological approaches from religious studies, classical studies, and literary studies of supernatural horror fiction, this book brings a fresh perspective to our understanding of how the Greeks viewed their gods and how poets helped to create that view. Theologies of Fear in Early Greek Epic will be of interest to scholars in classical studies, religious studies, and comparative literature, as well as students in courses on myth, religion, and Greek culture and society.

Storyworlds in Short Narratives
Storyworlds in Short Narratives

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-10-17

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 9004707352

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This interdisciplinary and comparative volume offers a systematic approach to the early Greek tale. Bringing similarities and differences between ancient Greek and early Byzantine tales to the fore, this volume thus creates new knowledge in the fields of classics, medieval studies, and literary studies. Its chapters discuss the theory and poetics of tales, the art of storytelling, inherent features of the tale, and the arrangement, types, and characteristics of tales in collections. The chapter authors base their approaches on a rich variety of texts and writers that are here discussed for the first time in one volume. Contributors are: Andria Andreou, Stavroula Constantinou, Julia Doroszewska, Christian Høgel, Markéta Kulhánková, Ingela Nilsson, Nicolò Sassi, and Sophia Xenophontos.

Historiography and Mythography in the Aristotelian Mirabilia
Historiography and Mythography in the Aristotelian Mirabilia

Author: Stefan Schorn

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-10-31

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1000986101

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This is the first full-length volume in English that focuses on the historiographical section of the Mirabilia or De mirabilibus auscultationibus (On Marvelous Things Heard), attributed to Aristotle but not in fact by him. The central section of the Mirabilia, namely §§ 78–151, for the most part deals with historiographical material, with many of its entries having some relationship to ancient Greek historians of the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. The chapters in this volume discuss various aspects of this portion of the text, including textual issues involving toponyms; possible structural principles behind the organization of this section; the passages on Theopompus and Timaeus; mythography; the philosopher Heracleides of Pontos; Homeric exegesis; and the interrelationship between pseudo-Plutarch’s On Rivers, a section of the historian Stobaeus’ Geography, and the Mirabilia. Historiography and Mythography in the Aristotelian Mirabilia is an invaluable resource for scholars and students of this text, and of Greek philosophy, historiography, and literature more broadly.

Medicine and Paradoxography in the Ancient World
Medicine and Paradoxography in the Ancient World

Author: George Kazantzidis

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-08-05

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 3110660474

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The present volume offers a systematic discussion of the complex relationship between medicine and paradoxography in the ancient world. For a long time, the relationship between the two has been assumed to be virtually non-existent. Paradoxography is concerned with disclosing a world full of marvels and wondrous occurrences without providing an answer as to how these phenomena can be explained. Its main aim is to astonish and leave its readers bewildered and confused. By contrast, medicine is committed to the rational explanation of human phusis, which makes it, in a number of significant ways, incompatible with thauma. This volume moves beyond the binary opposition between ‘rational’ and ‘non-rational’ modes of thinking, by focusing on instances in which the paradox is construed with direct reference to established medical sources and beliefs or, inversely, on cases in which medical discourse allows space for wonder and admiration. Its aim is to show that thauma, rather than present a barrier, functions as a concept which effectively allows for the dialogue between medicine and paradoxography in the ancient world.

Technological Animation in Classical Antiquity
Technological Animation in Classical Antiquity

Author: Maria Gerolemou

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-09-24

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 0192672061

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The persistent desire to animate inanimate objects has been a recurring theme in European culture dating back to ancient Greek and Roman times. Technological Animation in Classical Antiquity aims to establish, for the first time, the significance of this aspiration and its practical realization within Greek and Roman societies. While certain aspects of this narrative have been explored previously, this study shifts the focus to place technological animation at the forefront. The sixteen chapters examine the tangible existence of such devices across various media and considers their roles in diverse contexts, delving into the reciprocal relationship between technological and material realities, and its influence on the concept of animation and vice versa. By adopting this perspective, technological animation not only provides a new understanding of the processes behind animation but also lends a fresh perspective to the animated artifact. In contrast to other types of animation, where the technologically animated artifact is often dismissed as a perceptual error induced, for instance, by rhetoric or magic, this study separates technological animation from notions of rhetorical or magical skills, theurgy, or divine intervention. Specifically, it concentrates on a subset of artificial animation solely produced through technical procedures, exploring how various motive forces actively contributed to giving objects agency and impacting their viewers, illuminating how the material conditions of the artifacts themselves played a role in the process of technological animation--whether through the distinctive materiality of bronze or the design of a statuette's hinge.

Technical Automation in Classical Antiquity
Technical Automation in Classical Antiquity

Author: Maria Gerolemou

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-12-15

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1350077615

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Technical automation – the ability of man-made (or god-made) objects to move and act autonomously – is not just the province of engineering or science fiction. In this book, Maria Gerolemou, by taking as her starting point the close semantic and linguistic relevance of technical automation to natural automatism, demonstrates how ancient literature, performance and engineering were often concerned with the way nature and artifice interacted. Moving across epic, didactic, tragedy, comedy, philosophy and ancient science, this is a brilliant assembly of evidence for the power of 'automatic theatre' in ancient literature. Gerolemou starts with the earliest Greek literature of Homer and Hesiod, where Hephaestus' self-moving artefacts in the Iliad reflect natural forces of motion and the manufactured Pandora becomes an autonomous woman. Her second chapter looks at Greek drama, where technical automation is used to augment and undermine nature not only through staging and costume but also in plot devices where statues come to life and humans behave as automatic devices. In the third chapter, Gerolemou considers how the philosophers of the 4th century BCE and the engineers of the Hellenistic period with their mechanical devices contributed to a growing dialogue around technical automation and how it could help its audience glance and marvel at the hidden mechanisms of self-motion. Finally, the book explores the ways technical automation is employed as an ekphrastic technique in late antiquity and early Byzantium.