Download or read book Reading Death in Ancient Rome written by Mario Erasmo and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Reading Death in Ancient Rome, Mario Erasmo considers both actual funerary rituals and their literary depictions in epic, elegy, epitaphs, drama, and prose works as a form of participatory theater in which the performers and the depicters of rituals engage in strategies to involve the viewer/reader in the ritual process, specifically by invoking and playing on their cultural associations at a number of levels simultaneously. He focuses on the associative reading process--the extent to which literary texts allude to funeral and burial ritual, the narrative role played by the allusion to recreate a fictive version of the ritual, and how the allusion engages readers' knowledge of the ritual or previous literary intertexts. Such a strategy can advance a range of authorial agendas by inviting readers to read and reread assumptions about both the surrounding Roman culture and earlier literature invoked through intertextual referencing. By (re)defining their relation to the dead, readers assume various roles in an ongoing communion with the departed. Reading Death in Ancient Rome makes an important and innovative contribution to semiotic theory as applied to classical texts and to the emerging field of mortality studies. It should thus appeal to classicists as well as to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in art history and archeology.
Download or read book Death in Ancient Rome written by Catharine Edwards and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the Romans, the manner of a person's death was the most telling indication of their true character. Death revealed the true patriot, the genuine philosopher, even, perhaps, the great artist--and certainly the faithful Christian. Catharine Edwards draws on the many and richly varied accounts of death in the writings of Roman historians, poets, and philosophers, including Cicero, Lucretius, Virgil, Seneca, Petronius, Tacitus, Tertullian, and Augustine, to investigate the complex significance of dying in the Roman world. Death in the Roman world was largely understood and often literally viewed as a spectacle. Those deaths that figured in recorded history were almost invariably violent--murders, executions, suicides--and yet the most admired figures met their ends with exemplary calm, their last words set down for posterity. From noble deaths in civil war, mortal combat between gladiators, political execution and suicide, to the deathly dinner of Domitian, the harrowing deaths of women such as the mythical Lucretia and Nero's mother Agrippina, as well as instances of Christian martyrdom, Edwards engagingly explores the culture of death in Roman literature and history.
Download or read book Death in Ancient Rome written by Valerie Hope and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-11-13 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting a wide range of relevant, translated texts on death, burial and commemoration in the Roman world,this book is organized thematically and supported by discussion of recent scholarship. The breadth of material included ensures that this sourcebook will shed light on the way death was thought about and dealt with in Roman society.
Download or read book Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome written by Donald G. Kyle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The elaborate and inventive slaughter of humans and animals in the arena fed an insatiable desire for violent spectacle among the Roman people. Donald G. Kyle combines the words of ancient authors with current scholarly research and cross-cultural perspectives, as he explores * the origins and historical development of the games * who the victims were and why they were chosen * how the Romans disposed of the thousands of resulting corpses * the complex religious and ritual aspects of institutionalised violence * the particularly savage treatment given to defiant Christians. This lively and original work provides compelling, sometimes controversial, perspectives on the bloody entertainments of ancient Rome, which continue to fascinate us to this day.
Download or read book Death and Burial in the Roman World written by J. M. C. Toynbee and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1996-10-31 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most comprehensive book on Roman burial practices—now available in paperback Never before available in paperback, J. M. C. Toynbee's study is the most comprehensive book on Roman burial practices. Ranging throughout the Roman world from Rome to Pompeii, Britain to Jerusalem—Toynbee's book examines funeral practices from a wide variety of perspectives. First, Toynbee examines Roman beliefs about death and the afterlife, revealing that few Romans believed in the Elysian Fields of poetic invention. She then describes the rituals associated with burial and mourning: commemorative meals at the gravesite were common, with some tombs having built-in kitchens and rooms where family could stay overnight. Toynbee also includes descriptions of the layout and finances of cemeteries, the tomb types of both the rich and poor, and the types of grave markers and monuments as well as tomb furnishings.
Download or read book Reading Death in Ancient Rome written by Mario Erasmo and published by Ohio State University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-25 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Reading Death in Ancient Rome, Mario Erasmo considers both actual funerary rituals and their literary depictions in epic, elegy, epitaphs, drama, and prose works as a form of participatory theater in which the performers and the depicters of rituals engage in strategies to involve the viewer/reader in the ritual process, specifically by invoking and playing on their cultural associations at a number of levels simultaneously. He focuses on the associative reading process-the extent to which literary texts allude to funeral and burial ritual, the narrative role played by the allusion to recreate a fictive version of the ritual, and how the allusion engages readers' knowledge of the ritual or previous literary intertexts. Such a strategy can advance a range of authorial agendas by inviting readers to read and reread assumptions about both the surrounding Roman culture and earlier literature invoked through intertextual referencing. By (re)defining their relation to the dead, readers assume various roles in an ongoing communion with the departed. Reading Death in Ancient Rome makes an important and innovative contribution to semiotic theory as applied to classical texts and to the emerging field of mortality studies. It should thus appeal to classicists as well as to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in art history and archeology.
Download or read book A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum written by Emma Southon and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An entertaining and informative look at the unique culture of crime, punishment, and killing in Ancient Rome In Ancient Rome, all the best stories have one thing in common—murder. Romulus killed Remus to found the city, Caesar was assassinated to save the Republic. Caligula was butchered in the theater, Claudius was poisoned at dinner, and Galba was beheaded in the Forum. In one 50-year period, 26 emperors were murdered. But what did killing mean in a city where gladiators fought to the death to sate a crowd? In A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Emma Southon examines a trove of real-life homicides from Roman history to explore Roman culture, including how perpetrator, victim, and the act itself were regarded by ordinary people. Inside Ancient Rome's darkly fascinating history, we see how the Romans viewed life, death, and what it means to be human.
Download or read book The Game of Death in Ancient Rome written by Paul Plass and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our taste for blood sport stops short at the bruising clash of football players or the gloved blows of boxers, and the suicide of a politician is no more than a personal tragedy. What, then, are we to make of the ancient Romans, for whom the meaning of sport and politics often depended on death? In this provocative, thoughtful book, Paul Plass shows how the deadly violence of arena sport and political suicide served a social purpose in ancient Rome. His work offers a reminder of the complex uses to which institutionalized violence can be put. Violence, Plass observes, is a universal part of human life, and so must be integrated into social order. Grounding his study in evidence from Roman history and drawing on ideas from contemporary sociology and anthropology, he first discusses gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome. Massive bloodshed in the arena, Plass argues, embodied the element of danger for a society frequently engaged in war, with outsiders--whether slaves, criminals, or prisoners of war--sacrificed for a sense of public security
Download or read book Death and Disease in the Ancient City written by Valerie M. Hope and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-11 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Life Death and Entertainment in the Roman Empire written by David Stone Potter and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Life, Death, and Entertainment in the Roman Empire gives those who have a general interest in Roman antiquity a starting point informed by the latest developments in scholarship for understanding the extraordinary range of Roman society. Family structure, gender identity, food supply, religion, and entertainment are all crucial to an understanding of the Roman world. As views of Roman history have broadened in recent decades to encompass a wider range of topics, the need has grown for a single volume that can offer a starting point for all these diverse subjects, for readers of all backgrounds."--Page 4 of cover.
Download or read book The Ancient Roman Afterlife written by Charles King and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In ancient Rome, it was believed some humans were transformed into special, empowered beings after death. These deified dead, known as the manes, watched over and protected their surviving family members, possibly even extending those relatives’ lives. But unlike the Greek hero-cult, the worship of dead emperors, or the Christian saints, the manes were incredibly inclusive—enrolling even those without social clout, such as women and the poor, among Rome's deities. The Roman afterlife promised posthumous power in the world of the living. While the manes have often been glossed over in studies of Roman religion, this book brings their compelling story to the forefront, exploring their myriad forms and how their worship played out in the context of Roman religion’s daily practice. Exploring the place of the manes in Roman society, Charles King delves into Roman beliefs about their powers to sustain life and bring death to individuals or armies, examines the rituals the Romans performed to honor them, and reclaims the vital role the manes played in the ancient Roman afterlife.
Download or read book Memory and Mourning written by Valerie M. Hope and published by Oxbow Books Limited. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume challenges boundaries between traditional academic disciplines and utilizes current approaches in Scholarship. It-highlights how death was interwoven with Roman life and brings together diverse evidence such is poetry, oratory, portraiture, epigraphy, and funerary monuments. These chapters individually and collectively demonstrate the significance of studying the evidence for Roman death and death rituals, and how concerns for memory and mourning both shaped and were reflected in that evidence. --Book Jacket.
Download or read book The Phantom Image written by Patrick R. Crowley and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing from a rich corpus of art works, including sarcophagi, tomb paintings, and floor mosaics, Patrick R. Crowley investigates how something as insubstantial as a ghost could be made visible through the material grit of stone and paint. In this fresh and wide-ranging study, he uses the figure of the ghost to offer a new understanding of the status of the image in Roman art and visual culture. Tracing the shifting practices and debates in antiquity about the nature of vision and representation, Crowley shows how images of ghosts make visible structures of beholding and strategies of depiction. Yet the figure of the ghost simultaneously contributes to a broader conceptual history that accounts for how modalities of belief emerged and developed in antiquity. Neither illustrations of ancient beliefs in ghosts nor depictions of afterlife, these images show us something about the visual event of seeing itself. The Phantom Image offers essential insight into ancient art, visual culture, and the history of the image.
Download or read book Ancient Rome in So Many Words written by Christopher Francese and published by Hippocrene Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The brief word-histories in this book are meant to provide background on some words that everyone learns when they study Latin, as well as some rarer terms that have interesting stories to tell about Roman culture. This book lists a new word or phrase that came into American English every year from 1975 to 1998, with a selection of early additions from 1497 to 1750, and discusses the history behind the adoption of each. Teachers and students of Latin can benefit from the slightly more formal, but still anecdotal, approach taken here to some key words in the Latin lexicon.
Download or read book Roman Death written by Valerie M. Hope and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2009-06-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An original study of the role and rituals of death in Roman civilization. Death never ceases to fascinate the living and in roman society, where the mortality was high, people were forced to confront the brevity of life and the impact of death. What did death mean and symbolize to the Romans? What does 'roman death' tell the modern reader about ancient society? This accessible and engaging book ranges from suicides, funeral feasts, necromancy and Hades to mourning, epitaphs and posthumous damnation. Impressive in its broad scope and fascinating in the level of detail, Valerie Hope presents the first survey to study death in ancient Rome in such an approachable and authoritative style.
Download or read book SPQR A History of Ancient Rome written by Mary Beard and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-11-09 with total page 743 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Foreign Affairs, and Kirkus Reviews Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction) Shortlisted for the Cundill Prize in Historical Literature Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) A San Francisco Chronicle Holiday Gift Guide Selection A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection A sweeping, "magisterial" history of the Roman Empire from one of our foremost classicists shows why Rome remains "relevant to people many centuries later" (Atlantic). In SPQR, an instant classic, Mary Beard narrates the history of Rome "with passion and without technical jargon" and demonstrates how "a slightly shabby Iron Age village" rose to become the "undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean" (Wall Street Journal). Hailed by critics as animating "the grand sweep and the intimate details that bring the distant past vividly to life" (Economist) in a way that makes "your hair stand on end" (Christian Science Monitor) and spanning nearly a thousand years of history, this "highly informative, highly readable" (Dallas Morning News) work examines not just how we think of ancient Rome but challenges the comfortable historical perspectives that have existed for centuries. With its nuanced attention to class, democratic struggles, and the lives of entire groups of people omitted from the historical narrative for centuries, SPQR will to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come.
Download or read book The Great Fire of Rome written by Joseph J. Walsh and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Readers interested in ancient (and modern) Rome, urban life, and civic disasters, among other things, will be fascinated by this book.
