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The enactment of moderation in Plato's "Charmides"
5–34Views:250Plato’s dialogues are as much literary dramas as philosophical inquiries. In light of the scope and development of σωφροσύνη and the carefully crafted historical resonances of the dialogue’s dramatic date and cast of characters, it is argued here that σωφροσύνη is a foundational virtue, best understood as moderation, moderating one’s behavior, rather than on a par with other virtues. The Charmides is non-dogmatic, rather than skeptical or aporetic, and essentially political rather than ethical or epistemological, as often assumed. Rather than asserting any simple, propositional account of moderation, it enacts a complex moral and political view of moderation that unifies many strands of the term’s meanings in Greek through the persons and words of its characters and operating as much through the reader’s, imagination, and emotions as through reason and purely logical argument.
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The Gems in the Ustinow Collection, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo
101-141Views:401Scientifically, the collection’s primary importance is its Middle-Eastern origin; collections of gemstones from the Middle East have rarely been published unlike those from European archaeological sites. Thus the possibility opens up to compare finds from the eastern and western parts of the Roman Empire with a focus on similarities and differences. While in the western provinces the gemstones typically spread during the era of the Roman Empire, in the eastern provinces the use of seals and gemstones goes back several thousand years. It follows that in the western regions, representations of the official themes of the age of the emperors, including the characteristic figures of gods of the state religion (Jupiter, Minerva, Mars, Venus Victrix), are the most common. In contrast, the eastern provinces saw the spread of representations of local gods (Zeus Ammon, Zeus Heliopolitanos, Sarapis) or the Hellenistic types of the Greek gods (Apollo Musagetes, Aphrodite Anadyomene, Hermes Psychopompos). However, there were figures of gods that were equally popular in both regions, such as Tyche–Fortuna, Nike–Victoria, Eros–Amor, Dionysos–Bacchus, Heracles–Hercules. Each of these became rather popular in the Hellenistic World, spreading basically spontaneously throughout the entire Roman Empire. There was a similar unity in the popularity of represenations of animals, too.
The eastern region was, however, characterised by the relatively large number of magic gemstones. There is a piece among these which has no exact analogy (Cat. 69) and its analysis sheds new light on the previous interpretation of similar pieces. The popularity of magic gemstones is highlighted by the fact that some of their motifs became distorted beyond recognition in the popularisation process. Understandably, Sasanian gemstones and seals, which revived the Romans’ dying custom of sealing for some time, were also typical of the eastern regions. What is conspicuous is that the stone cameos (agate, sardonyx) so common in the western regions are completely missing from the collection, while there is a fair number of glass cameo pendants made in the eastern regions.
From an educational and community cultural aspect, the significance of the Ustinow collection lies in the fact that it represents several historical and cultural eras between the fourth century B.C. and the fifth century A.D. for the benefit of the interested public, private collectors, and students of archaeology and the antiquities. The gemstones may be small, but the representations on them can be extraordinarily rich in meaning. With adequate enlargement and due professional expertise, which this catalogue aims to promote, all this information can come to life in front of us, allowing us a glimpse into the lives and thoughts of the citizens of a Mediterranean world two thousand years back. -
Apollo Propugnator, Diana Victrix: Erscheint die Militär und Siegesthematik bei den Darstellungen der Götter Apollo und Diana in der Münzprägung der Zeit der Soldatenkaiser (235-284/285 n. Chr.)?
115–134Views:187The figures of Diana and Apollo are frequently represented in Roman coinage. Such is the case in the soldier-emperors’ era, when one finds different representations of them both. They are depicted in various poses with altered attributes, while the gods are often named differently in the legend on the reverse. My article focuses on those types where the gods are not only displayed with weapons (bow and arrow) but also with legends connected with fighting and winning: Apollo Propugnator, Diana Victrix. I took a closer look at the figure of Diana and realised that she is represented as the goddess of hunting: she does not fight but protects hunters and ensures the success of hunting. The Apollo Propugnator type is a version known from the local coinage of Eastern Greek cities; this type is appropriated temporarily by imperial propaganda, but does not have an enduring role. In the cases of Diana and Apollo the military theme is impermanent and secondary; nor does it have an important impact.
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The Destruction of the City: Loss in the Greek and Roman Memory
19-36Views:336The appearance of the ethnically “Other” naturally has an impact on a society’s own identity. It provokes the confirmation or rephrasing of identity. The loss and destruction caused by an ethnically “Other” group creates an especially deep conflict in the society’s self-definition. This paper focuses on such events and the collective memory concerning these, through the case study of the Persian sack in 490 BC and one hundred years later the Gallic siege of Rome.
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The rules of the game: constructing power in rhizotomic practice
45–68Views:174The growth of contemporary interest in ethnobiology and -botany legitimates an attempt to historicise the activities and claims of ancient rhizotomists, ‘root-cutters’, i.e. individuals who made themselves specially knowledgeable about the medicinal and other values of plants (mainly wild) and animal-parts. These men and women hardly formed a coherent group in fact, but may be treated as such for heuristic purposes. One model for historicising them is to locate them between family or household medicine on the one hand, and the increasingly complex market in health-care that developed in the Greek world from the fifth century BCE, and continued to grow in complexity throughout the Hellenistic and Roman periods. We can suggest two ways in which rhizotomists responded to this market pressure: experimentation and the construction of the marvellous through complex rules of collection. These rules covered gathering, body movements, offerings to the herb or the earth, addresses to the herb, and close temporal specifications – these latter lent themselves in turn to exploitation by literate rhizotomists in terms of occult schemes. We may use Searle’s distinction between regulative and constitutive rules to interpret these moves.
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Sopra l’institutio philosophica di Vitruvio: l’apporto concettuale e pratico della filosofia nel De architectura
173–185.Views:147The essay aims to point out organically the contribution of philosophical sources within Vitruvius’ De architectura; both the explicit and implicit references to Greek philosophy will be taken into account, showing not only the two philosophical fields involved in the treatise (physics and ethics) but also, for the first time, the relationship between them: the moral improvement of man is parallel to the better knowledge of nature and both are the basis for the full exercise of the architect’s ars.
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Le navire de la république – le navire de l’amour: L’individualisation d’une allégorie collective. (Sonnet LV de Ronsard)
159–173Views:195Pierre Ronsard’s sonnet constitutes a very creative re-interpretation of an ancient allegory (the sea of Love) which is considered to be one of the more important amatory figures. This allegory featured in both Greek and Latin from earliest until latest times, employed in several genres of verse, which reached an advanced stage of development in the hands of Ronsard. The purpose of this paper is providing a comprehensive and detailed study of the idealized cognitive model of the sea of Love from the archaic period until Renaissance, based on Ronsard’s sonnet.