Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome PDF Download

Author: George Jennison
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN:
Category : Games
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
"Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome" is a complete and comprehensive investigation of the rise, function, and pageantry of wild and domesticated animals as household pets and as fodder for entertainment in the Roman world.

Author: Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317577434
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The ancient Greeks and Romans lived in a world teeming with animals. Animals were integral to ancient commerce, war, love, literature and art. Inside the city they were found as pets, pests, and parasites. They could be sacred, sacrificed, liminal, workers, or intruders from the wild. Beyond the city domesticated animals were herded and bred for profit and wild animals were hunted for pleasure and gain alike. Specialists like Aristotle, Aelian, Pliny and Seneca studied their anatomy and behavior. Geographers and travelers described new lands in terms of their animals. Animals are to be seen on every possible artistic medium, woven into cloth and inlaid into furniture. They are the subject of proverbs, oaths and dreams. Magicians, physicians and lovers turned to animals and their parts for their crafts. They paraded before kings, inhabited palaces, and entertained the poor in the arena. Quite literally, animals pervaded the ancient world from A-Z. In entries ranging from short to long, Kenneth Kitchell offers insight into this commonly overlooked world, covering representative and intriguing examples of mammals, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates. Familiar animals such as the cow, dog, fox and donkey are treated along with more exotic animals such as the babirussa, pangolin, and dugong. The evidence adduced ranges from Minoan times to the Late Roman Empire and is taken from archaeology, ancient authors, inscriptions, papyri, coins, mosaics and all other artistic media. Whenever possible reasoned identifications are given for ancient animal names and the realities behind animal lore are brought forth. Why did the ancients think hippopotamuses practiced blood letting on themselves? How do you catch a monkey? Why were hyenas thought to be hermaphroditic? Was there really a vampire moth? Entries are accompanied by full citations to ancient authors and an extensive bibliography. Of use to Classics students and scholars, but written in a style designed to engage anyone interested in Greco-Roman antiquity, Animals in the Ancient World from A to Z reveals the extent and importance of the animal world to the ancient Greeks and Romans. It answers many questions, asks several more, and seeks to stimulate further research in this important field.

Author: Jocelyn Mary Catherine Toynbee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Author: Gordon Lindsay Campbell
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191035157
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 657

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life is the first comprehensive guide to animals in the ancient world, encompassing all aspects of the topic by featuring authoritative chapters on 33 topics by leading scholars in their fields. As well as an introduction to, and a survey of, each topic, it provides guidance on further reading for those who wish to study a particular area in greater depth. Both the realities and the more theoretical aspects of the treatment of animals in ancient times are covered in chapters which explore the domestication of animals, animal husbandry, animals as pets, Aesop's Fables, and animals in classical art and comedy, all of which closely examine the nature of human-animal interaction. More abstract and philosophical topics are also addressed, including animal communication, early ideas on the origin of species, and philosophical vegetarianism and the notion of animal rights.

Author: Maurizio Bettini
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022603996X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
If you told a woman her sex had a shared, long-lived history with weasels, she might deck you. But those familiar with mythology know better: that the connection between women and weasels is an ancient and favorable one, based in the Greek myth of a midwife who tricked the gods to ease Heracles’s birth—and was turned into a weasel by Hera as punishment. Following this story as it is retold over centuries in literature and art, Women and Weasels takes us on a journey through mythology and ancient belief, revising our understanding of myth, heroism, and the status of women and animals in Western culture. Maurizio Bettini recounts and analyzes a variety of key literary and visual moments that highlight the weasel’s many attributes. We learn of its legendary sexual and childbearing habits and symbolic association with witchcraft and midwifery, its role as a domestic pet favored by women, and its ability to slip in and out of tight spaces. The weasel, Bettini reveals, is present at many unexpected moments in human history, assisting women in labor and thwarting enemies who might plot their ruin. With a parade of symbolic associations between weasels and women—witches, prostitutes, midwives, sisters-in-law, brides, mothers, and heroes—Bettini brings to life one of the most venerable and enduring myths of Western culture.

Author: Alison Futrell
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405153156
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This sourcebook presents a wealth of material relating to everyaspect of Roman spectacles, especially gladiatorial combat andchariot racing. Draws on the words of eye-witnesses and participants, as wellas depictions of the games in mosaics and other works of art. Offers snapshots of “a day at the games” and“the life of a gladiator”. Includes numerous illustrations. Covers chariot-races, water pageants, naval battles and wildanimal fights, as well as gladiatorial combat. Combines political, social, religious and archaeologicalperspectives. Facilitates an in-depth understanding of this important featureof ancient life.

Author: Adrienne Mayor
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691245606
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
The fascinating story of how the fossils of dinosaurs, mammoths, and other extinct animals influenced some of the most spectacular creatures of classical mythology Griffins, Centaurs, Cyclopes, and Giants—these fabulous creatures of classical mythology continue to live in the modern imagination through the vivid accounts that have come down to us from the ancient Greeks and Romans. But what if these beings were more than merely fictions? What if monstrous creatures once roamed the earth in the very places where their legends first arose? This is the arresting and original thesis that Adrienne Mayor explores in The First Fossil Hunters. Through careful research and meticulous documentation, she convincingly shows that many of the giants and monsters of myth did have a basis in fact—in the enormous bones of long-extinct species that were once abundant in the lands of the Greeks and Romans. As Mayor shows, the Greeks and Romans were well aware that a different breed of creatures once inhabited their lands. They frequently encountered the fossilized bones of these primeval beings, and they developed sophisticated concepts to explain the fossil evidence, concepts that were expressed in mythological stories. The legend of the gold-guarding griffin, for example, sprang from tales first told by Scythian gold-miners, who, passing through the Gobi Desert at the foot of the Altai Mountains, encountered the skeletons of Protoceratops and other dinosaurs that littered the ground. Like their modern counterparts, the ancient fossil hunters collected and measured impressive petrified remains and displayed them in temples and museums; they attempted to reconstruct the appearance of these prehistoric creatures and to explain their extinction. Long thought to be fantasy, the remarkably detailed and perceptive Greek and Roman accounts of giant bone finds were actually based on solid paleontological facts. By reading these neglected narratives for the first time in the light of modern scientific discoveries, Adrienne Mayor illuminates a lost world of ancient paleontology.

Author: J. P. Toner
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421415860
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
The Roman Emperor Commodus wanted to kill a rhinoceros with a bow and arrow, and he wanted to do it in the Colosseum. For fourteen days near the end of AD 192, the emperor mounted one of the most lavish gladiatorial games Rome had ever seen. People rushed from all over Italy to witness the spectacle. Why did Roman rulers spend vast resources on such over-the-top displays? Why did the Roman rabble enjoy watching the slaughter of animals and the sight of men fighting to the death? In this book, Jerry Toner set out to answer these questions by describing what it would have been like to attend Commodus' fantastic shows.

Author: Sian Lewis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351782495
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 771

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Book Description
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.

Author: A.D. O'Neill
Publisher: Black & White Publishing
ISBN: 1785305344
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
The charioteer in his purest form. The supreme master of destiny and the elements. A man who made a circus out of life, and life out of a circus. 'A.D. O'Neill peels back the veil of time and shines a light on the intrigue and excitement of chariot racing in ancient Rome. With exquisite attention to detail and an authentic and engaging voice, Circus Maximus is endlessly and effortlessly entertaining.' MATTHEW HARFFY, author of The Bernicia Chronicles series THE CHAOTIC A.D. 69 When the tyrannical Aulus Vitellius seizes the reins of power in Rome, the empire is already in the grip of a fierce civil war. But the new emperor's first priority is both personal and deeply symbolic: he plans to crush the Green chariot racing faction - the mortal enemies of his beloved Blues - at the Plebeian Games in the Circus Maximus. To save the Greens from certain extinction, two former charioteers - the stoical and determined Corax and the flamboyant and cocksure Alector (once the firmest of friends, now the bitterest of rivals) - have just twenty-six days to transport four champion chariot horses across the breadth of Europe to Rome. Braving blizzards, bandits, floods and wild storms at sea, theirs is an unforgettable odyssey and race-against-time adventure. A.D. O'Neill steers a thundering epic around historical events and real-life characters to a breathtaking climax in the greatest sporting arena of all time - the Circus Maximus.