literature and art

Lecture: LIterature and Art 18/11/25


  1. Culture in the Ancient Mediteranean World

  • Working definition of culture: a complex of objects, practices and beliefs characteristic of persons who see themselves as belonging to a more or less coherent group

    • All pervasive, everywhere

    • Invisible

  • Geertz define culture: an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic form by means of which men communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge abt and attitudes towards life

  • “High culture” encompasses beliefs and practices characteristic of the upper class or which is assigned a high aesthetic value

  • “Popular” culture, “folk culture, “low” culture

  1. The Emergence of Historical Writing

  • Homeric epics record the deeds and words of the Trojan war to save them from the oblivion of time

  • Hecataeus of Miletus (c. 550-476 BCE)

  • Periegesis (“Journey around the World”): Direct prose, seeking the truth

  •  Genealogies

  1. Hellenistic Visual Culture

  • Kouroi: Archaic youths from Athens, c. 550-500 BCE

    • Unrealistic, lack of life-like energy 

  • “Kritios Boy” Athens, c. 500-450 BCE: more movement, life and reality

  • Nike, Samothrace (“Winged Victory of Samothrace”) c, 250-190 BCE

  • “Hanging Marsyas,” Paris c. 250-200 BCE: Depiction of Greek myth where Marsyas being skinned alive for challenging Apollo 

  • Menelaus w body of Patroclus (“Pasquino”) c. 250-200 BCE

  • Attalid Gauls from Pergamum: Dying Gaul (230-220 BCE)

  • Laocoon group, c. 200 BCE

  1. Roman Portraiture

  • Verism: portraits of the aristocracy

    • Hyper-realistic? Or more so exaggerated…

    • Age = experience, wisdom

  • Roman portraits are not idealized like Greek portraits. Age is more obviously emphasized (wrinkles, baggy eyes, etc)

  • Funerary relief of man and woman (freedpersons), via Statilia, Rome, 75-50 BCE 

  • Augustus lives till 76 but he is consistently portrayed as a young man in his 20s/30s.

  • Hadrian: first bearded emperor (117-138 CE)