Visual Histories of the Classical World

Professor R.R.R. Smith is one of the foremost scholars in the study of Classical art, or more broadly, ‘visual culture’, pioneering research that examines not only the details of images and objects themselves, but also their contexts and underlying conceptual frameworks. Key to his approach is a focus on social identity: by exploring the people who commissioned, produced, and consumed ancient art, he has offered important insights into what this can tell us about how people lived, and how they perceived themselves and were seen by others.

This volume, produced on the occasion of R.R.R. Smith’s 65th birthday, draws together essays from a distinguished group of researchers who have been inspired by Smith’s work and its value for reconstructing ancient social and cultural history. The papers gathered here consider various aspects of art and architecture in the classical world, engaging directly with R.R.R. Smith’s own research, and at the same time celebrating his enormous contribution to scholarship.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Approaches, Methods and Materials

Robin Osborne, A World of Choice: Taking Archaic Greek Diversity Seriously

Catherine M. Draycott, Art History and Achaemenid History: Or, What You Can Get out of the Back End of a Bull

Caspar Meyer, What is the Value of Images? On the Significance of Time Spent Looking at Classical Art

Peter Stewart, Ancient Greek Artists and Texts: Loss and Re-Creation

Thomas Mannack, Two New Lekythoi and Two ’Ghosts’

Rune Frederiksen, A Short History of the Depiction of Plaster Casts in the Scholarly Literature on Ancient Sculpture

Royal Representations

Christoph Bachhuber, The Lion Pit and Other Ambiguous Violence against Statues at Iron-Age Zincirli

Stephan Faust, Alexander's Hearse and the Alexander Sarcophagus: Power Politics and Commemoration in a Changing World

Emma Libonati, An Ambiguous Identification: The Diorite Statue in Diaphanous Drapery from Canopus

Milena Melfi, A Cast, a Bird, and a Queen (?)

Reconstructing Hellenistic Imagery

Sheila Dillon, Portrait Statues in the City Eleusinion in Athens

Olympia Bobou, Apollo’s Children: Five Statues from Delphi

John Ma, Seeing the Invisible

Kenneth Lapatin, A Puzzling Pachyderm

Roman Imperial Representations

Katharina Lorenz, Writing Histories from Roman Imperial Portraiture: The Case of the Julio-Claudian Princes

Chris Hallett, Terracotta, Antiquarianism, and the ’Archaic Revival’ of Early Augustan Rome

Klaus Fittschen, Zum Bildnis des Kaisers Claudius in Braunschweig

Katherine Welch, Neropolis

Paul Zanker, Zu einer neuen Bildnisbüste des Kaisers Domitian in Toledo

Social and Cultural Identities in Sculpture

Bjorn Ewald, Minding the Gap: Issues of Transmission and Cultural Translation in Graeco-Roman Art

Mantha Zarmakoupi, The Statue Monument of C. Billienus in the Stoa of Antigonos Gonatas on Delos

Ben Russell, Simulacra Gentium [Africanarum]

Rubina Raja, Stacking Aesthetics in the Syrian Desert. Displaying Palmyrene Sculpture in the Public and Funerary Sphere

Constructed Cities

Andrew Stewart, Notes on the Origins and Early Development of the ’Agora of the Kerameikos’

Margareta Steinby, The Res gestae of Q. Haterius Q. L. Tychicus, Redemptor

Barbara Borg, Herodes Atticus in Rome: The Triopion Reconsidered

Janet Delaine, Street Plaques (and Other Signs) at Ostia

Roman Domestic Décor(um)

Maryl Gensheimer, Fictive Gardens and Family Identity in the House of Neptune and Amphitrite

Will Wootton, More Than One Way to Skin a Cat? A Roman Mosaic from the House of the Cryptoporticus, Carthage

Reading Memorial Art

Jane Masseglia, The Banquet Scene at Kazanluk: A Feast of Speculation

Maria Stamatopoulou, ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’: The Stele of Aristokydes Son of Xenokles, a Keian in Demetrias

Myrina Kalaitzi, Public Profiles and Mediated Selfies in Ancient Macedonia: The Gravestones’ Facebook

Jas Elsner, Some Observations on Dionysiac Sarcophagi

Aphrodisias and Aphrodisians

Angelos Chaniotis, Myon, a True Ktistes: A New Inscription from Aphrodisias and its Context

Chris Ratte, The Cemetery of Bingec (Plarasa)

Andrew Wilson, Earthquakes at Aphrodisias

Julie Van Voorhis, Reconsidering the Sculptor's Workshop at Aphrodisias

Julia Lenaghan, Another Statue in Context: Rhodopaios of Aphrodisas

Looking at Late Antiquity

Anna Leone, The Use of Statuary in Late Antique North Africa and its Social and Economic Significance: An Overview

Esen Ogus, Statues of Men, Men as Statues: Distancing the Body from Its Portrait Statue in Late Antiquity