Flesheaters
An International Symposium on Roman Sarcophagi. University of California at Berkeley 18–19 September 2009
Edited by Christopher H. Hallett
Hardback (Published)
(November 2019)
ISBN: 9783954904006
8.27 x 11.69 inches
Price: $104.00
In stock
Roman metropolitan sarcophagi are often adorned with reliefs representing the lives of the heroes and heroines of Greek myth. Why were particular Greek myths so popular? How easy – or difficult – was it to identify and interpret the mythical stories represented? What emotions were the stories meant to evoke in the mourner at the tomb? And what might be the value of all these intricately carved marble sarcophagi for the writing of Roman social and cultural history?
In this volume a number of Classicists, Classical Archaeologists, and Ancient Historians – most of them not sarcophagus specialists – all attempt to ask some of the most fundamental questions about Roman mythological sarcophagi. Why was Greek myth such a popular choice for the decoration of these monumental marble coffins? How should we interpret the particular myths that were chosen? How easy – or difficult – was it to identify and interpret the mythical stories represented? What emotions were these often violent and tragic stories meant to evoke in the mourner at the tomb? What does it mean when portrait figures are inserted into scenes of myth? How does it affect our interpretation of the mythical imagery that some sarcophagi were completely buried, and their carved reliefs completely concealed? And what might be the value of all these intricately carved marble sarcophagi for Roman social and cultural history? Unsurprisingly, there is a great deal of disagreement on these important questions among the various authors, and on what a cultural history written from the point of view of Roman funerary commemoration might look like. What all contributors to the volume seem to agree on, however, is that the great corpus of carved sarcophagus-reliefs holds out extraordinary – as yet unrealized – promise for the cultural historian. And this selection of essays, all starting from very different premises and assumptions, allows the reader a series of brilliant glimpses of what that promise might yet deliver: a more nuanced and more inclusive understanding of the strange and distinctive society that flourished under the Roman Empire during the second and third centuries AD.
- Edited by Christopher H. Hallett
Other Titles in this Series
Die lokalen Sarkophage aus Thessaloniki
Mit epigraphischen Beitragen von Pantelis Nigdelis und einem Anhang von Y. Maniatis und D. Tambakopoulos
Volume 8
Akten des Symposiums Sarkophage der Romischen Kaiserzeit: Produktion in den Zentren – Kopien in den Provinzen
Les sarcophages romains: Centres et peripheries Paris, 2.-5.November 2005
Volume 6
Bilder und Räume
Antike Sarkophage im Kontext. Internationale Tagung, 11.–12. August 2011 in der Abteilung Rom des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts
Similar Books
Caesar’s Visions and Impact on the Roman Empire
Revisiting the Archaeological and Historical Record of the 40s BC
Volume 2
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
Etruscan and Roman Hellenistic Anatomical ex votos
Reassessing Popular Religious Expressions in Central Italy
Volume 8
Invisible Labour in Antiquity
Visualizing Obscure Work in the Ancient Mediterannean and West Asia
Volume 1
Late Antique villae in the Balkans (3rd–7th c. AD): Current Research Questions and Perspectives
HAEMUS Companion to the Late Antique Balkans 1
Volume 4
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Naples as Laboratory / Laboratorium Neapel
Style Options, Artistic Rivalry and Self Fashioning in Neapolitan Baroque Painting / Plurale Stilbildung, Kunstlerkonkurrenz und Self Fashioning in der neapolitanischen Barockmalerei
Nurturing the Elite
Representations of Drinking, Eating, and Religious Vessels in Palmyrene Funerary Iconography
Volume 13
Portraying the Individual in the Roman East
Local–Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (First–Fourth Centuries AD)
Volume 18
Technical Studies of Asian Art
Proceedings of the Seventh Forbes Symposium at the Freer Gallery of Art
After Life in Roman Paganism. L’Égypte des astrologues. Les Mages hellénisés
Introductions historiographiques
Volume 7
Atlante tematico di topografia antica 36-2026
Urbanistica e monumenti, porti, Roma. Ricerche sui monti Aurunci
Volume 36
Diodor über den ersten Sklavenaufstand auf Sizilien
Ein philologischer und historischer Kommentar
Volume 67
I Germani e l’Impero Romano. Storia e diritti
Saggi delle edizioni degli incontri 2024-2025
Volume 14
JOSEPH BEUYS — Sympoiese von Mensch und Welt im 21. Jahrhundert
Eine systemisch-hermeneutische Analyse in bildungspraktischer Absicht
