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I've begun to research metalpoint as a drawing technique. As far as I can tell, metalpoint was not used for drawing until the Renaissance but was possibly used for writing before that. I'd like to be able to document its early uses, if possible (scribal or artistic). I've read in a number of places that various metals were used as far back "antiquity" in Rome and possibly Greece. One silverpoint site mentions the Greek poet "Thessalonika."
Can anybody help me? Point me to sources that are a bit more solid than what I've found? Names? Places? Dates?
Thanks for any help you can give me. |
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Horace calls his satires "Bionei sermones", a reference to Bion of Borysthenes. Imagine my surprise when I read at the beginning of Diogenes Laertios' "Life of Bion":
"My father was a freedman, who wiped his nose on his sleeve" – meaning that he was a dealer in salt fish. (Translated by Robert Drew Hicks, 1925. But watch out for Robin Hard's upcoming book "Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes. With Other Popular Moralists"!)
Compare Suetonius' "Life of Horace":
Quintus Horatius Flaccus of Venusia had for a father, as he himself writes, a freedman who was a collector of money at auctions; but it is believed that he was a dealer in salted provisions, for a certain man in a quarrel thus taunted Horace: "How often have I seen your father wiping his nose with his arm!"
Surely, that's not a coincidence? |
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Dear all,
I am currently trying to write a paper on temples in Roman Spain. I am at the graduate level, but I have had very little exposure to the topic and am therefore struggling to find sources. What I would like to do is compare the temples of 4-5 cities; because the paper is short-ish, I'd prefer these to be small cities with only a couple of temples.
Unfortunately, I don't know any Spanish and don't have time to pour over publications with a dictionary. Hence my question is if anyone knows of Roman sites in Spain that have been published in English? Thus far I have only found syntheses that give very little details about individual sites.
Thank you in advance! |
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I'm wondering, does anyone have any good/reliable resources (preferably online) or can anyone give me a brief run-down of what female literacy rates were like within the classical world (central and peripheral) among Roman citizens from about the 1st to the 3rd centuries A.D.? What percentage of women, and, indeed, what type of women were literate? Concerning the women who were literate, how literate did they to / could they be?; was the reading level very basic or did some (or many?) read critically? |
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Anyone know of a convenient online source for synopses of Ancient Greek Verbs (including irregulars)?
Thanking you in advance. |
| » Criticism of Theogony |
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I am looking for criticisms of classical Greco-Roman theogony. Preferably from late antiquity or earlier. I recall reading such a criticism which claimed it was absurd to have a historicist view of the Theogony because it assumed the gods had physical bodies. It may have been an early Church Father, but I'm not sure.
If there are any other authors who criticize a historicist view of ancient myth, or the idea that the gods have physical bodies, I'd appreciate a reference.
Jul. 6th, 2011 @ 10:48 pm
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| » Small Latin and Less Greek |
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Shakespeare famously made Hector quote Aristotle (in Troilus and Cressida). Did he also make Katherina quote Homer?
Happy the parents of so fair a child;
Happier the man, whom favourable stars
Allot thee for his lovely bed-fellow! (The Taming of the Shrew IV,5)
Thrice happy then, thy parents I account,
And happy thrice thy brethren. Ah! the joy
Which always for thy sake, their bosoms fill,
When thee they view, all lovely as thou art,
Ent’ring majestic on the graceful dance.
But him beyond all others blest I deem,
The youth, who, wealthier than his rich compeers,
Shall win and lead thee to his honour’d home. (Odyssey, VI.154-159; Cowper)
Quotation, coincidence or cliché? Maybe there's something in between? Did, for example, Virgil imitate that passage?
Apr. 28th, 2011 @ 07:17 am
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| » Porphyropoles/porphyropolis |
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I have recently been studying the occurrence (or lack thereof) of "gender-neutral" occupations as held in Scripture (both the NT and OT). I happened upon Acts 16:14 wherein Lydia is called a "seller of purple" (porphyropolis). This is evidently the feminine form of the term "porphyropoles". Since there are both masculine and feminine forms of the term in Greek, I am wondering if this occupation was performed by both males and females. If so, there is no indication given that the church disapproved of females being "sellers of purple" and so, this scripture, by implication, may lend (scriptural) support to (or at least not disapproval of) certain gender-neutral occupations.
My questions are: Is there any other evidence (historically?/scripturally?) for other (apparently) gender-neutral occupations among the Jews in the OT and/or among the Christians in the NT? Also, could the masculine form of "porphyropoles" be used also to refer to (only?) women who engaged in such an occupation?
Mar. 21st, 2011 @ 01:25 pm
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| » An unsourced Lucretius quote |
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Hi everyone, my mother is writing a PhD on an unrelated subject discipline - medical stuff - but she has various philosophical wandering in it. Anyway she has a quote:
"The nature of knowledge cannot be understood by the eyes" Lucretius
without a reference. I have looked through the Perseus for On the Nature of Things and oud some likely culprits who may have been casually reworded, but I am really not sure. Any vaguely Lucretian scholars around? I have already tried googling and google books and google scholar. I am lost!
Here were my tenuous findings:
in book 2: So, too, since we behold not all with eyes,
in book 3:
Or, to say that eyes
Themselves can see no thing, but through the same
The mind looks forth, as out of opened doors,
Is- a hard saying; since the feel in eyes
Says the reverse. For this itself draws on
And forces into the pupils of our eyes
Our consciousness. And note the case when often
We lack the power to see refulgent things,
Because our eyes are hampered by their light-
With a mere doorway this would happen not;
For, since it is our very selves that see,
No open portals undertake the toil.
Besides, if eyes of ours but act as doors,
Methinks that, were our sight removed, the mind
Ought then still better to behold a thing-
and book 4:
Now then, learn
How tenuous is the nature of an image.
And in the first place, since primordials be
So far beneath our senses, and much less
E'en than those objects which begin to grow
Too small for eyes to note,
Thanks for any help which you could give.
Dec. 4th, 2010 @ 12:59 pm
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