Paul Zanker

"Roman sarcophagi have fascinated posterity since the Middle Ages, largely because of their mythological reliefs. Living with Myths provides a comprehensive introduction to this important genre, exploring such subjects as the role of the mythological images in everyday life of the time, the messages they convey about the Romans' view of themselves, and the reception of the sarcophagi in later European art and art history. The volume is fully illustrated with high-quality photographs, which enable readers to appreciate the artistic quality of the reliefs and to explore for themselves the messages they convey. Together with the text, which includes analyses of specific sarcophagi, the pictures open up a panorama of Roman cultural history in the 2nd to the early 4th centuries CE."--Publisher's website.

Dieser Sammelband, der sich grundlegenden Fragen - nicht nur der Alten Geschichte - widmet, ist ein gelungenes Beispiel dafür, welche fruchtbaren Beiträge, die sowohl in die eigene Disziplin reichen als auch weit in andere hineinwirken, gelingen, wenn interdisziplinäre, zum Teil auch eng an die oft geschmähte, weil programmatisch ausgerichtete Drittmittelforschung gebundene, Forschergruppen zusammenwirken.

The portraits of the great writers and thinkers from antiquity are never photographic likenesses. Many of these images were created long after the subject's death, and few tell us very much about the historical individual. Yet these visual representations can become fascinating witnesses to the role and function of the intellectual in ancient Greco-Roman society when seen in the context of the cultural aims with which they were created. In this richly illustrated work, Paul Zanker offers the first comprehensive history of the visual representation of Greek and Roman intellectuals. Zanker draws on a variety of source materials such as Graeco-Roman literature, historiography, and philosophy, in addition to artistic renderings; his work takes the reader from the earliest visual images of Socrates and Plato to the figures of Christ, the Apostles, and contemporaneous pagan and civic dignitaries. Through his interpretations of postures, gestures, facial expressions, and stylistic changes of particular pieces, we come to know these great poets through all of their various personas - the prophetic wise man, the virtuous democratic citizen, or the self-absorbed bon vivant. Zanker's analysis of the ways the iconography of influential thinkers and writers changed demonstrates the rise and fall of trends and the movement of schools of thought and belief, each successively embodying the most valued characteristics of the period and culture. Zanker provides a new and deeper perspective on the interaction of visual representation and classical culture from the fifth century B.C. to the fourth-century A.D.

Die Griechen haben, seit der frühen archaischen Zeit, ihre Welt in einem eminenten Maß in Bildern begriffen. In Bildern von sich selbst und Gegenbildern zu sich selbst. Die Selbstbilder sind seit Jahrhunderten bewundert und analysiert worden. Hier geht es um die Gegenbilder. Weitgehend waren es Wertvorsstellungen der eigenen Kultur, die dann durch neue Normen und Verhaltensmuster in die Gegenwelt der großen Antipoden projiziert wurden. Gerade weil es abgedrängte Ideale und latente Möglichkeiten der eigenen Kultur waren, gewannen sie solche Faszination und Aktualität.

When the aqueduct that brings fresh water to thousands of people around the bay of Naples fails, Roman engineer Marius Primus heads to the slopes of Mount Vesuvius to investigate, only to come face to face with an impending catastrophe.