Author: Jenifer Neils
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691036120
Category : Arts, Greek
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
While the Olympics, because of their modern revival, enjoy the greatest fame today, in ancient Greece other religious festivals were equally elaborate and impressive spectacles. The lavishly illustrated Goddess and Polis is the first work devoted to the Panathenaia, the most significant of these festivals to be held in ancient Athens. Founded in 566 B.C., this complex ritual performed for the goddess Athena vied with other Greek festivals in grandeur and importance and was particularly distinguished by the works of art commissioned in its service. Among these were the painted vases known as Panathenaic amphoras, each of which contained forty liters of olive oil, awarded to athletic and equestrian victors. The contests depicted on these vases are the best extant illustrations of Greek sport. Although women were excluded from the competitions, they had an important role to play in the weaving of the peplos, an elaborate textile that took nine months to produce. The culmination of the festival was a long procession bearing this new robe to the cult statue of the goddess; the procession in turn was the subject of another great work of art, the Parthenon frieze. Combining art, spectacle, and civic consciousness, the Panathenaia contributed to the development of the high classical style of Periklean Athens. This book deals with every aspect of the festival and produces a vivid portrait of the worship of the patron goddess of the city. Essays by eminent classical scholars examine in depth the musical and poetic competitions, the athletic and equestrian contests, the peplos, and the evolving image of Athena as documented in sculpture from the Acropolis. Jenifer Neils, the curator of the exhibition Goddess and Polis, held at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, has contributed an introduction to the Panathenaia, an essay on the prize amphoras, and detailed entries for the seventy objects exhibited.
Author: Jenifer Neils
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
Author: Hood Museum of Art
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
Author: Jenifer Neils
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299151140
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
Ten papers from 1992 symposia at Dartmouth College and Princeton University are augmented by an original chapter and a translation of a Greek article, to explore the myth and cult of Athena, contests and prizes associated with her worship, and art and politics generated around her. Among the topics are women in the Panathenaic and other festivals, the iconography of shield devices and column-mounted statues on amphoras, and the Panatheniaia in the age of Perikles. Paper edition (unseen), $22.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Julia L. Shear
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108618022
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 555
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Book Description
In ancient Athens, the Panathenaia was the most important festival and was celebrated in honour of Athena from the middle of the sixth century BC until the end of the fourth century AD. This in-depth study examines how this all-Athenian celebration was an occasion for constructing identities and how it affected those identities. Since not everyone took part in the same way, this differential participation articulated individuals' relationships both to the goddess and to the city so that the festival played an important role in negotiating what it meant to be Athenian (and non-Athenian). Julia Shear applies theories of identity formation which were developed in the social sciences to the ancient Greek material and brings together historical, epigraphical, and archaeological evidence to provide a better understanding both of this important occasion and of Athenian identities over the festival's long history.
Author: Amy C. Smith
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004214526
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
Ancient Greek artists pioneered in the allegorical use of personifications of political ideas, events, places, institutions, and peoples in visual arts. This book surveys and interprets these personifications within the intellectual and political climate of the golden age of Athens.
Author: Joan Breton Connelly
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385350503
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 512
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Book Description
Built in the fifth century b.c., the Parthenon has been venerated for more than two millennia as the West’s ultimate paragon of beauty and proportion. Since the Enlightenment, it has also come to represent our political ideals, the lavish temple to the goddess Athena serving as the model for our most hallowed civic architecture. But how much do the values of those who built the Parthenon truly correspond with our own? And apart from the significance with which we have invested it, what exactly did this marvel of human hands mean to those who made it? In this revolutionary book, Joan Breton Connelly challenges our most basic assumptions about the Parthenon and the ancient Athenians. Beginning with the natural environment and its rich mythic associations, she re-creates the development of the Acropolis—the Sacred Rock at the heart of the city-state—from its prehistoric origins to its Periklean glory days as a constellation of temples among which the Parthenon stood supreme. In particular, she probes the Parthenon’s legendary frieze: the 525-foot-long relief sculpture that originally encircled the upper reaches before it was partially destroyed by Venetian cannon fire (in the seventeenth century) and most of what remained was shipped off to Britain (in the nineteenth century) among the Elgin marbles. The frieze’s vast enigmatic procession—a dazzling pageant of cavalrymen and elders, musicians and maidens—has for more than two hundred years been thought to represent a scene of annual civic celebration in the birthplace of democracy. But thanks to a once-lost play by Euripides (the discovery of which, in the wrappings of a Hellenistic Egyptian mummy, is only one of this book’s intriguing adventures), Connelly has uncovered a long-buried meaning, a story of human sacrifice set during the city’s mythic founding. In a society startlingly preoccupied with cult ritual, this story was at the core of what it meant to be Athenian. Connelly reveals a world that beggars our popular notions of Athens as a city of staid philosophers, rationalists, and rhetoricians, a world in which our modern secular conception of democracy would have been simply incomprehensible. The Parthenon’s full significance has been obscured until now owing in no small part, Connelly argues, to the frieze’s dismemberment. And so her investigation concludes with a call to reunite the pieces, in order that what is perhaps the greatest single work of art surviving from antiquity may be viewed more nearly as its makers intended. Marshalling a breathtaking range of textual and visual evidence, full of fresh insights woven into a thrilling narrative that brings the distant past to life, The Parthenon Enigma is sure to become a landmark in our understanding of the civilization from which we claim cultural descent.
Author: Catherine Morgan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134877692
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Clear and direct in style, and with more than eighty photographs, maps and plans, Early Greek States Beyond the Polis is a widely relevant study of Greek history, archaeology and society. Catherine Morgan addresses the different forms of association experienced by early Iron-Age and Archaic Greeks by exploring the archaeological, literary and epigraphical records of central Greece and the northern Peloponnese. Giving an unprecedented understanding of the connections between polis identity and other forms and tiers of association, and refuting the traditional view of early Greek 'ethnic' groups (ethne) as simple systems based on primitive tribal ties, students will find this an essential text in the study of Greek history.
Author: Jenifer Neils
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780299151133
Category : Arts, Greek
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
Author: Jenifer Neils
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Book Description
"This book distils centuries of history into a concise yet rich introduction to the entire Greek world." "Starting with its rediscovery in modern times, the author traces the development of ancient Greece from its earliest Bronze Age origins to the Roman conquest, encompassing the influence of neighboring civilizations. She explores topics such as writing and art, government and philosophy, warfare and hunting, trade and colonization, gods and heroes, entertainments and domestic life. Drawing on the world-famous collections of the British Museum, she shows how the ancient Greeks were able to play such a major role in the subsequent development of Western culture."--BOOK JACKET.
