Author: Meyer ReinholdPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Civilization, Ancient
Languages : en
Pages : 84
Book Description
History of Purple as a Status Symbol in Antiquity
Author: Meyer ReinholdPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Civilization, Ancient
Languages : en
Pages : 84
Book Description
History of purple as a status symbol in antiquity
Author: Meyer ReinholdA Cultural History of Color in Antiquity
Author: David WhartonPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350193461
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
A Cultural History of Color in Antiquity covers the period 3000 BCE to 500 CE. Although the smooth, white marbles of Classical sculpture and architecture lull us into thinking that the color world of the ancient Greeks and Romans was restrained and monochromatic, nothing could be further from the truth. Classical archaeologists are rapidly uncovering and restoring the vivid, polychrome nature of the ancient built environment. At the same time, new understandings of ancient color cognition and language have unlocked insights into the ways – often unfamiliar and strange to us – that ancient peoples thought and spoke about color. Color shapes an individual's experience of the world and also how society gives particular spaces, objects, and moments meaning. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Color examines how color has been created, traded, used, and interpreted over the last 5000 years. The themes covered in each volume are color philosophy and science; color technology and trade; power and identity; religion and ritual; body and clothing; language and psychology; literature and the performing arts; art; architecture and interiors; and artefacts. David Wharton is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA. Volume 1 in the Cultural History of Color set. General Editors: Carole P. Biggam and Kirsten Wolf
A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity
Author: Jerry TonerPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474232981
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280
Book Description
The ancient world used the senses to express an enormous range of cultural meanings. Indeed the senses were functionally significant in all aspects of ancient life, often in ways that were complex and interconnected. Antiquity was also a period where the senses were experienced vividly: cities stank, statues were brightly painted and literature made full use of sensory imagery to create its effects. In a steeply hierarchical world, with vast differences between the landed wealthy, the poor and the slaves, the senses played a key role in establishing and maintaining boundaries between social groups; but the use of the senses in the ancient world was not static. New religions, such as Christianity, developed their own way of using the senses, acquiring unique forms of sensory-related symbolism in processes which were slow and often contested. The aim of this volume is to provide an overview of these structures and developments and to show how their study can yield a more nuanced understanding of the ancient world. A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity presents essays on the following topics: the social life of the senses; urban sensations; the senses in the marketplace; the senses in religion; the senses in philosophy and science; medicine and the senses; the senses in literature; art and the senses; and sensory media.
A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in Antiquity
Author: Mary HarlowPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350114049
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 485
Book Description
Whilst seemingly simple garments such as the tunic remained staples of the classical wardrobe, sources from the period reveal a rich variety of changing styles and attitudes to clothing across the ancient world. Covering the period 500 BCE to 800 CE and drawing on sources ranging from extant garments and architectural iconography to official edicts and literature, this volume reveals Antiquity's preoccupation with dress, which was matched by an appreciation of the processes of production rarely seen in later periods. From a courtesan's sheer faux-silk garb to the sumptuous purple dyes of an emperor's finery, clothing was as much a marker of status and personal expression as it was a site of social control and anxiety. Contemporary commentators expressed alarm in equal measure at the over-dressed, the excessively ascetic or at 'barbarian' silhouettes. Richly illustrated with 100 images, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in Antiquity presents an overview of the period with essays on textiles, production and distribution, the body, belief, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, visual representations, and literary representations.
The World of Roman Costume
Author: Judith Lynn SebestaPublisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299138547
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
Thirteen scholarly and well-illustrated essays survey, document and elucidate over a thousand years of Roman garments and accessories, including Etruscan influences, Near Eastern fashions and the transition towards early Christian garb.
Rarest Blue
Author: Baruch StermanPublisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0762790423
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333
Book Description
For centuries, dyed fabrics ranked among the most expensive objects of the ancient Mediterranean world, fetching up to 20 times their weight in gold. Huge fortunes were made from and lost to them, and battles were fought over control of the industry. The few who knew the dyes’ complex secrets carefully guarded the valuable knowledge. The Rarest Blue tells the amazing story of tekhelet, or hyacinth blue, the elusive sky-blue dye mentioned 50 times in the Hebrew Bible. The Minoans discovered it; the Phoenicians stole the technique; Cleopatra adored it; and Jews—obeying a Biblical commandment to affix a single thread of the radiant color to the corner of their garments—risked their lives for it. But with the fall of the Roman Empire, the technique was lost to the ages. Then, in the nineteenth century, a marine biologist saw a fisherman smearing his shirt with snail guts, marveling as the yellow stains turned sky blue. But what was the secret? At the same time, a Hasidic master obsessed with reviving the ancient tradition posited that the source wasn’t a snail at all but a squid. Bitter fighting ensued until another rabbi discovered that one of them was wrong—but had an unscrupulous chemist deliberately deceived him? Baruch Sterman brilliantly recounts the complete, amazing story of this sacred dye that changed the color of history.
Gifts of Clothing in Late Antique Literature
Author: Nikki RollasonPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317128192
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
Both clothing and gifts in the ancient world have separately been the subject of much scholarly discussion because they were an integral part of Greek and Roman society and identity, creating and reinforcing the relationships which kept a community together, as well as delineating status and even symbolising society as a whole. They have, however, rarely been studied together despite the prevalence of clothing gifts in many ancient texts. This book addresses a gap in scholarship by focusing on gifts of elite male clothing in late antique literature in order to show that, when they appeared in texts, these items were not only functioning in an historical or 'real-life' sphere but also as a literary space within which authors could discuss ideas of social relationships and authority. This book suggests that authors used items which usually formed part of the costume of authority of the period - the trabea of the consul, the chlamys of the imperial court and the emperor, and the pallium of the Christian bishops - to 'over-write' wearers and donors as confident figures of 'official' authority when this may have been open to doubt.
Nothing Ordinary Here
Author: Noelle K. ZeinerPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000101371
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346
Book Description
Through a combined methodology of philology, social theory and archaeology this book offers a reinterpretation of Statius's Silvae.
Corrupting Luxury in Ancient Greek Literature
Author: Vanessa B GormanPublisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472120468
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 493
Book Description
A widely accepted truism says that luxury corrupts, and in both popular and scholarly treatments, the ancient city of Sybaris remains the model for destructive opulence. This volume demonstrates the scarcity of evidence for Sybarite luxury, and examines the vocabulary of luxury used by the Hellenic world. Focus on the word truphe reveals it means an attitude of entitlement: not necessarily a bad trait, unless in extreme form. This pattern holds for all Classical evidence, even the historian Herodotus, where the idea of pernicious luxury is commonly thought to be thematic. Advancing a new method to evaluate this fragmentary evidence, the authors argue that almost all relevant ancient testimony is liable to have been distorted during transmission. They present two conclusions: first, that there exists no principle of pernicious luxury as a force of historical causation in Hellenic or Hellenistic literature. Rather, that idea is derived from early Latin prose historiography and introduced from that genre into the Greek writers of the Roman period, who in turn project the process back in time to explain events such as the fall of Sybaris. The second conclusion is methodological. The authors lay down a strategy to determine the content and extent of fragments of earlier authors found in cover texts such as Athenaeus, by examining the diction along synchronic and diachronic lines. This book will appeal to scholars of intellectual history, the history of morality, and historiographical methodology.