Search

Search Results

• Empire and invention: the Elder Pliny's heurematology ("Nat." VII 191–215)

  123–135

  Marco Romani Mistrella

  Views:

  158

  This paper focuses on the catalog of inventions and inventors that concludes book VII of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia (Nat. VII 191-215). While the list is certainly a fundamental source for the largely lost tradition of Greek invention-catalogs, the literary, rhetorical, and intellectual-historical importance of Pliny’s heurematography has, to date, rarely been appreciated for its own merits. I argue that, in spite of the seemingly irregular and heterogeneous character of the catalog, the underlying rhetorical strategy of Pliny’s heurematography allows the list to become a teleological narrative. As I argue, Pliny’s main goal is to show the Romans’ historical merit in unifying the whole Mediterranean world through the appropriation of its cultural and technological patrimony.

• A Possible Interpretation

  17–24

  Edina Gradvohl

  Views:

  120

  This paper attempts to interpret a gem of uncertain date and questionable origin, with Greek inscriptions and letters, and which is in the National Library of France (BNF inv.58.2220). Based on previous interpretations and the surviving impression and description of a pendant which is very similar to it in material and subject, it can be shown that the gem is original, and Christian, based on the depictions on it and the clearly legible word "ΧΡΙCΤΟC".

• To a beautiful soul. Inscriptions on lead mirrors (Collection of Roman Antiquities, Hungarian National Museum)

  101–113

  György Németh

  Ádám Szabó

  Views:

  117

  There is a collection of several hundred small Roman lead mirrors (former private collection) in the Hungarian National Museum. Greek or Latin inscriptions can be read on 17 mirrors. The present study publishes these items along with the drawings of the inscriptions. Such mirrors were found mainly in graves of women, functioning as escorts to the souls of the dead and as apotropaic amulets.

• A gold lamella for ‘Blessed’ Abalala

  7–20

  Roy D. Kotansky

  Views:

  107

  This article examines a previously unpublished gold lamella of unknown provenance, datable on palaeographical grounds to the 1st century BCE, give-or-take a half century, either side. The tablet preserves three words written in Greek letters that may contain a GrecoPersian formula of protection in the afterlife for its bearer, Abalala, a name of pre-Islamic extraction. The study compares the formula with those on a number of shorter ‘Orphic’ gold lamellae to show that the tiny piece represents a ‘Totenpaß’ for the beneficent dead, rather than a protective charm (phylactery) with the usual voces magicae, although the distinction between magic words and meaningful text is not always clear in such instances.