A Veiled Antiquity
A Veiled Antiquity

Author: Rett MacPherson

Publisher: Minotaur Books

Published: 2013-10-08

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 146685409X

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Torie O'Shea investigates the tangled roots of an ancient family tree. Torie O'Shea-- genealogist and amateur sleuth-- is having a killer of a day. The town gossip spreads the word that her sweet wheelchair-bound mother is having an affair--with the sheriff! Then quiet Marie Dijon is found dead at the foot of her basement stairs. Did she fall? Was she pushed? All Torie knows is that Marie had a family tree with royal roots completely foreign to a folksy Middle America town like New Kassel, Missouri. As foreign as, say...murder. But nosiness in New Kassel is as native as the upcoming Oktoberfest. To Torie, the open door to Marie's house is more tempting than chocolate. Finding a hidden key and old documents in French make further investigating irresistible. But while juggling her growing suspicions, a hectic job at the historical society, two kids, and a sexy husband, Torie overlooks the obvious. Curiosity killed the cat. Someone killed Marie Dijon. And now Torie might know too much to live...

Aphrodite's Tortoise
Aphrodite's Tortoise

Author: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

Publisher: Classical Press of Wales

Published: 2003-12-31

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1910589896

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Greek women routinely wore the veil. That is the unexpected finding of this meticulous study, one with interesting implications for the origins of Western civilisation. The Greeks, popularly (and rightly) credited with the invention of civic openness, are revealed as also part of a more Eastern tradition of seclusion. Llewellyn-Jones' work proceeds from literary and, notably, from iconographic evidence. In sculpture and vase painting it demonstrates the presence of the veil, often covering the head, but also more unobtrusively folded back onto the shoulders. This discreet fashion not only gave a priviledged view of the face to the ancient art consumer, but also, incidentally, allowed the veil to escape the notice of traditional modern scholarship. From Greek literary sources, the author shows that full veiling of the head and face was commonplace. He analyses the elaborate Greek vocabulary for veiling and explores what the veil meant to achieve. He shows that the veil was a conscious extension of the house and was often referred to as `tegidion', literally `a little roof'. Veiling was thus an ingeneous compromise; it allowed women to circulate in public while mainting the ideal of a house-bound existence. Alert to the different types of veil used, the author uses Greek and more modern evidence (mostly from the Arab world) to show how women could exploit and subvert the veil as a means of eloquent, sometimes emotional, communication. First published in 2003 and reissued as a paperback in 2010, Llewellyn-Jones' book has established itself as a central - and inspiring - text for the study of ancient women.

The Veil of Isis
The Veil of Isis

Author: Pierre Hadot

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 9780674023161

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Nearly twenty-five hundred years ago the Greek thinker Heraclitus supposedly uttered the cryptic words "Phusis kruptesthai philei." How the aphorism, usually translated as "Nature loves to hide," has haunted Western culture ever since is the subject of this engaging study by Pierre Hadot. Taking the allegorical figure of the veiled goddess Isis as a guide, and drawing on the work of both the ancients and later thinkers such as Goethe, Rilke, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger, Hadot traces successive interpretations of Heraclitus' words. Over time, Hadot finds, "Nature loves to hide" has meant that all that lives tends to die; that Nature wraps herself in myths; and (for Heidegger) that Being unveils as it veils itself. Meanwhile the pronouncement has been used to explain everything from the opacity of the natural world to our modern angst. From these kaleidoscopic exegeses and usages emerge two contradictory approaches to nature: the Promethean, or experimental-questing, approach, which embraces technology as a means of tearing the veil from Nature and revealing her secrets; and the Orphic, or contemplative-poetic, approach, according to which such a denuding of Nature is a grave trespass. In place of these two attitudes Hadot proposes one suggested by the Romantic vision of Rousseau, Goethe, and Schelling, who saw in the veiled Isis an allegorical expression of the sublime. "Nature is art and art is nature," Hadot writes, inviting us to embrace Isis and all she represents: art makes us intensely aware of how completely we ourselves are not merely surrounded by nature but also part of nature.

The Art of Veiled Speech
The Art of Veiled Speech

Author: Han Baltussen

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2015-07-27

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0812291638

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Throughout Western history, there have been those who felt compelled to share a dissenting opinion on public matters, while still hoping to avoid the social, political, and even criminal consequences for exercising free speech. In this collection of fourteen original essays, editors Han Baltussen and Peter J. Davis trace the roots of censorship far beyond its supposed origins in early modern history. Beginning with the ancient Greek concept of parrhêsia, and its Roman equivalent libertas, the contributors to The Art of Veiled Speech examine lesser-known texts from historical periods, some famous for setting the benchmark for free speech, such as fifth-century Athens and republican Rome, and others for censorship, such as early imperial and late antique Rome. Medieval attempts to suppress heresy, the Spanish Inquisition, and the writings of Thomas Hobbes during the Reformation are among the examples chosen to illustrate an explicit link of cultural censorship across time, casting new light on a range of issues: Which circumstances and limits on free speech were in play? What did it mean for someone to "speak up" or "speak truth to authority"? Drawing on poetry, history, drama, and moral and political philosophy the volume demonstrates the many ways that writers over the last 2500 years have used wordplay, innuendo, and other forms of veiled speech to conceal their subversive views, anticipating censorship and making efforts to get around it. The Art of Veiled Speech offers new insights into the ingenious methods of self-censorship to express controversial views, revealing that the human voice cannot be easily silenced. Contributors: Pauline Allen, Han Baltussen, Megan Cassidy-Welch, Peter J. Davis, Andrew Hartwig, Gesine Manuwald, Bronwen Neil, Lara O'Sullivan, Jon Parkin, John Penwill, François Soyer, Marcus Wilson, Ioannis Ziogas.

Family Skeletons
Family Skeletons

Author: Rett MacPherson

Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks

Published: 2014-12-30

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1466888849

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In Rett MacPherson's Family Skeletons, as resident genealogist, historian, tour guide, and occasional amateur snoop, Victory "Torie" O'Shea can be found anywhere in the historic German town of New Kassel, Missouri--mixing fudge, giving tours, tracing family trees, and even investigating murder... When shop-owner Norah Zumwalt asks Torie for help in piecing together her family lineage to find her missing father, Torie cheerfully agrees. But before Torie delivers her results, Norah is brutally murdered. Now Torie must use her formidable skills at prying into the past--and the human heart--to solve a case of passionate secrets and betrayal. But as the Mississippi floods, she may be in deep trouble when evidence of another killing surfaces--and Torie comes face to face with a family skeleton that will chill her to the bone.

Chasing Aphrodite
Chasing Aphrodite

Author: Jason Felch

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2011-05-24

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 0547538022

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A “thrilling, well-researched” account of years of scandal at the prestigious Getty Museum (Ulrich Boser, author of The Gardner Heist). In recent years, several of America’s leading art museums have voluntarily given up their finest pieces of classical art to the governments of Italy and Greece. Why would they be moved to such unheard-of generosity? The answer lies at the Getty, one of the world’s richest and most troubled museums, and scandalous revelations that it had been buying looted antiquities for decades. Drawing on a trove of confidential museum records and candid interviews, these two journalists give us a fly-on-the-wall account of the inner workings of a world-class museum, and tell a story of outlandish characters and bad behavior that could come straight from the pages of a thriller. “In an authoritative account, two reporters who led a Los Angeles Times investigation reveal the details of the Getty Museum’s illicit purchases, from smugglers and fences, of looted Greek and Roman antiquities. . . . The authors offer an excellent recap of the museum’s misdeeds, brimming with tasty details of the scandal that motivated several of America’s leading art museums to voluntarily return to Italy and Greece some 100 classical antiquities worth more than half a billion dollars.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “An astonishing and penetrating look into a veiled world where beauty and art are in constant competition with greed and hypocrisy. This engaging book will cast a fresh light on many of those gleaming objects you see in art museums.” —Jonathan Harr, author of The Lost Painting

The Ancient Unconscious
The Ancient Unconscious

Author: Vered Lev Kenaan

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-05-08

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0192562789

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In the field of classical studies, the psychoanalytic construction of the unconscious is rarely regarded as a fruitful methodological concept. Commonly understood as a modern conceptual invention rather than the discovery of a psychic reality, the notion of the unconscious is often criticized as an anachronistic lens, one that ineluctably subjects ancient experience to modern patterns of thought. The Ancient Unconscious seeks to challenge this ambivalent theoretical disposition toward the psychoanalytic concept and reclaim the value of the unconscious as a methodological tool for the study of ancient texts by transforming our understanding of what the unconscious means, the way it operates, and how it relates to textual hermeneutics. It considers the debate over whether the ancients had an unconscious as an invitation to rethink the relationship between antiquity and modernity, investigating the meaning of textuality through contact between historical moments that have no priority under the law of chronology: associations and connections between the past and its future - including the present - belong to the sphere of the unconscious, which is primarily employed here in order to study the inherent, often hidden, links that bind modernity to classical antiquity and modern to ancient experiences. Drawing on an incisive examination of the complicated, often conflicted, relationship between classical studies and psychoanalytic theory, the volume aims to explain why the concept of the unconscious is in fact inseparable from, and crucial for, the study of the ancient text and, more generally, the methodology of classical philology.

The Culture of Animals in Antiquity
The Culture of Animals in Antiquity

Author: Sian Lewis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-01-09

Total Pages: 771

ISBN-13: 1351782495

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The Culture of Animals in Antiquity provides students and researchers with well-chosen and clearly presented ancient sources in translation, some well-known, others undoubtedly unfamiliar, but all central to a key area of study in ancient history: the part played by animals in the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean. It brings new ideas to bear on the wealth of evidence – literary, historical and archaeological – which we possess for the experiences and roles of animals in the ancient world. Offering a broad picture of ancient cultures in the Mediterranean as part of a wider ecosystem, the volume is on an ambitious scale. It covers a broad span of time, from the sacred animals of dynastic Egypt to the imagery of the lamb in early Christianity, and of region, from the fallow deer introduced and bred in Roman Britain to the Asiatic lioness and her cubs brought as a gift by the Elamites to the Great King of Persia. This sourcebook is essential for anyone wishing to understand the role of animals in the ancient world and support learning for one of the fastest growing disciplines in Classics.