Samedi, 12 Janvier 2013 17:38
Marie-Karine Lhommé
Catherine Steel, Henriette van der Blom, Community and Communication. Oratory and Politics in Republican Rome, Oxford, New York, 2013.
Éditeur : Oxford University Press
416 pages
ISBN : 978-0-19-964189-5
£80.00
Community and Communication: Oratory and Politics in Republican Rome brings together nineteen international contributions which rethink the role of public speech in the Roman Republic. Speech was an integral part of decision-making in Republican Rome, and oratory was part of the education of every member of the elite. Yet no complete speech from the period by anyone other than Cicero survives, and as a result the debate on oratory, and political practice more widely, is liable to be distorted by the distinctive features of Cicero's oratorical practice. With careful attention to a wide range of ancient evidence, this volume shines a light on orators other than Cicero, and considers the oratory of diplomatic exchanges and impromptu heckling and repartee alongside the more familiar genres of forensic and political speech. In doing so, it challenges the idea that Cicero was a normative figure, and highlights the variety of career choices and speech strategies open to Roman politicians. The essays in the volume also demonstrate how unpredictable the outcomes of oratory were: politicians could try to control events by cherry-picking their audience and using tried methods of persuasion, but incompetence, bad luck, or hostile listeners were constant threats.
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Samedi, 12 Janvier 2013 17:34
Marie-Karine Lhommé
Edith Hall, Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris. A Cultural History of Euripides' Black Sea Tragedy, Oxford, New York, 2013.
Éditeur : Oxford University Press
416 pages
ISBN : 978-0-19-539289-0
£40.00
Human sacrifice, a spirited heroine, a quest ending in a hairsbreadth escape, the touching reunion of long-lost siblings, and exquisite poetry--these features have historically made Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris one of the most influential of Greek tragedies. Yet, despite its influence and popularity in the ancient world, the play remains curiously under-investigated in both mainstream cultural studies and more specialized scholarship. With Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris, Edith Hall provides a much-needed cultural history of this play, giving as much weight to the impact of the play on subsequent Greek and Roman art and literature as on its manifestations since the discovery of the sole surviving medieval manuscript in the 1500s. The book argues that the reception of the play is bound up with its spectacular setting on the southern coast of the Crimean peninsula in what is now the Ukraine, a territory where world history has often been made. However, it also shows that the play's tragicomic tenor and escape plot have had a tangible influence on popular culture, from romantic fiction to Hollywood action films. The thirteen chapters illustrate how reactions to the play have evolved from the ancient admiration of Aristotle and Ovid, the Christian responses of Milton and Catherine the Great, the anthropological ritualists and theatrical Modernists including James Frazer and Isadora Duncan, to recent feminist and postcolonial dramatists from Mexico to Australia. Individual chapters are devoted to the most significant adaptations of the tragedy, Gluck's opera Iphigénie en Tauride and Goethe's verse drama Iphigenie auf Tauris. Richly illustrated and accessibly written, with all texts translated into English, Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris argues elegantly for a reappraisal of this Euripidean masterpiece. Edith Hall is Professor of Classics at King's College London.
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Samedi, 12 Janvier 2013 17:28
Marie-Karine Lhommé
Michael Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere. Augustine's Early Figurative Exegesis, Oxford, New York, 2012.
Éditeur : Oxford University Press
Collection : Oxford Studies in Historical Theology
384 pages
ISBN : 978-0-19-975129-7
£45.00
Most readers first encounter Augustine's love for Scripture's words in the many biblical allusions of his masterwork, the Confessions. Augustine does not merely quote texts, but in many ways makes Scripture itself tell the story. In his journey from darkness to light, Augustine becomes Adam in the Garden of Eden, the Prodigal Son of Jesus' parable, the Pauline double personality at once devoted to and rebellious against God's law. Throughout he speaks the words of the Psalms as if he had written them. Crucial to Augustine's self-portrayal is his skill at transposing himself into the texts. He sees their properties and dynamics as his own, and by extension, every believing reader's own. In Christ Meets Me Everywhere, Michael Cameron argues that Augustine wanted to train readers of Scripture to transpose themselves into the texts in the same way he did, by the same process of figuration that he found at its core. Tracking Augustine's developing practice of self-transposition into the figures of the biblical texts over the course of his entire career, Cameron shows that this practice is the key to Augustine's hermeneutics. Michael Cameron is Associate Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Portland
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Samedi, 12 Janvier 2013 17:17
Marie-Karine Lhommé
Paul Zanker, Bjorn C. Ewald, Living with Myths. The Imagery of Roman Sarcophagi, Oxford, New York, 2012.
Éditeur : Oxford University Press
Collection : Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture & Representation
440 pages
ISBN : 978-0-19-922869-0
£150.00
Translated by Julia Slater
Roman sarcophagi have fascinated posterity since the Middle Ages, largely because of their mythological reliefs. Living with Myths provides a comprehensive introduction to this important genre, exploring such subjects as the role of the mythological images in everyday life of the time, the messages they convey about the Romans' view of themselves, and the reception of the sarcophagi in later European art and art history. The volume is fully illustrated with high-quality photographs, which enable readers to appreciate the artistic quality of the reliefs and to explore for themselves the messages they convey. Together with the text, which includes analyses of specific sarcophagi, the pictures open up a panorama of Roman cultural history in the 2nd to the early 4th centuries CE.
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Samedi, 12 Janvier 2013 17:12
Marie-Karine Lhommé
Marco Fantuzzi, Achilles in Love. Intertextual Studies, Oxford, New York, 2012.
Éditeur : Oxford University Press
336 pages
ISBN : 978-0-19-960362-6
£70.00
Achilles in Love: Intertextual Studies traces the escapades of Achilles' erotic history, whether in same-sex or opposite-sex relationships, and how they were developed and revealed, or elided and concealed, in the writing and visual arts following Homer. The volume investigates how different authors and artists responded to this most controversial aspect of Achilles' character, in comparison to the fiery personality that was shaped by the Iliad and was often considered 'canonical' for his character. Through analyzing Achilles in love from the time of Homer all the way down to the Latin poets of the first century BC and AD, the Ilias Latina, and the authors and iconography of the imperial age, this book makes both novel and productive connections between poetic texts, pictorial images, and literary genres which tried time and time again to capture Achilles' ever-shifting role within the world of eros.
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Samedi, 12 Janvier 2013 15:47
Marie-Karine Lhommé
Gianluca De Sanctis, La religione a Roma, Rome, 2012.
Éditeur : Carocci editore
Collection : Quality paperbacks (397)
192 pages
ISBN : 9788843066391
15€
Quando ci si accosta a quella che viene definita – un po' semplificando – “religione romana”, si ha l'impressione di imbattersi in un mondo esotico, quasi selvaggio, fatto di riti, credenze e divinità che incuriosiscono e impressionano l'osservatore moderno in virtù della loro distanza culturale. Il volume racconta il mondo religioso dei Romani proprio a partire dalle sue “stranezze”; si pensi alle tecniche divinatorie, ai sacrifici, alle interdizioni cui erano soggetti alcuni sacerdoti, alla divisione giuridica dei giorni, alla sconcertante varietà dell'universo teologico. Ne deriva, più che una storia, una lettura antropologica della religione romana, ricostruita attraverso il fitto intrico delle voci native, da Cicerone a Livio, da Varrone a Ovidio.
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Samedi, 12 Janvier 2013 15:20
Marie-Karine Lhommé
Elise A. Friedland, The Roman Marble Sculptures from the Sanctuary of Pan at Caesarea Philippi/Panias (Israel), Boston, 2012.
Éditeur : American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR)
Collection : Archaeological Reports, 17
200 pages
ISBN : 9780897570879
$89.95
This constitutes the first publication of a deposit of broken, marble statues, discovered in 1992 during excavations of the Roman Sanctuary of Pan at Caesarea Philippi (Banias, Israel). From 245 fragments, twenty-nine statues ranging from colossal to miniature and representing mainstream Graeco-Roman deities and mythological figures are reconstructed. Most date stylistically to the first through the late fourth centuries AD. A catalogue discusses each sculpture's subject, comparanda, workshop associations, and date; three interpretive chapters present the artistic and material origins of the sculptures; patterns of patronage, chronology of sculptural dedication, and display; and sculptural evidence for the sanctuary's pantheon.
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