It is a cliché that most Greek art (indeed most ancient art) was religious in function. Yet our histories of Classical art, having acknowledged this truism, systematically ignore the religious nuances and associations of images while focusing on diverse arthistorical issues from style and form, or patronage and production, to mimesis and aesthetics. In general, the emphasis on naturalism in classical art and its reception has tended to present it as divorced from what is perceived as the overwhelmingly religious nature (...) of post-Constantinian Christian art. The insulation of Greek and Roman art from theological and ritual concerns has been colluded in by most historians of medieval images. Take for instance Ernst Kitzinger's monographic article entitled ‘The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm’. Despite its title and despite Kitzinger's willingness to situate Christian emperor worship in an antique context, this classic paper contains nothing on the Classical ancestry of magical images, palladia and miracle-working icons in Christian art. There has been the odd valiant exception (especially in recent years), but in general it is fair to say that the religiousness of antiquity's religious art is skirted by the art historians and left to the experts on religion. (shrink)

The idea that the womb moved freely about a woman's body causing spasmodic disease enjoyed great popularity among the ancient Greeks, beginning in the classical period with Plato and the Hippocratic writers and continuing on into the Roman and Byzantine periods. Armed with sophisticated analyses of the medical tradition and new texts pertaining to the magical, this essay describes how both approaches to the wandering womb develop side by side in mutual influence from the late classical period onwards. Of special (...) interest will be the tendency in both traditions to imagine both demons and errant wombs as wild animals and to use fumigations to control both. It concludes with a discussion of the historical development of and consequences for the idea that women alone possessed an internal organ that was variously interpreted as a mechanically defective body-part, a sentient and passionate animal, and then finally a demon with malicious intent, who bites and poisons the female body. It also argues against the hypothesis or assumption that midwives or wet-nurses were the original source for the idea of the wandering womb, suggesting that the syndrome never fit comfortably into the category of gynecological illness, because the womb was not the site of disease, but rather a cause of spasmodic disease in other areas of the body. (shrink)

I argue that it is rational and appropriate for atheists to give thanks to deep impersonal agents for the benefits they give to us. These agents include our evolving biosphere, the sun, and our finely-tuned universe. Atheists can give thanks to evolution by sacrificially burning works of art. They can give thanks to the sun by performing rituals in solar calendars. They can give thanks to our finely-tuned universe, and to existence itself, by doing science and philosophy. But these linguistic (...) types of thanks-giving are forms of non-theistic contemplative prayer. Since these behaviors resemble ancient pagan behaviors, it is fair to call them pagan. Atheistic paganism may be part of an emerging ecosystem of naturalistic religions. (shrink)

Statues of gods in Greek culture had lives, both metaphorically and literally. The statues of gods had complex ritual lives. They had biographies (bioi); they travelled; they were subject to peripeties (destruction, repairs, re-dedication); and they suffered violence. Although they were not an indispensable element of worship, the images psychologically prepared the worshippers to address the divinity, and this was an important factor in the efforts of worshippers to communicate with the gods. Through the arousal of emotions they provoked actions (...) that were beyond or contrary to human intentions; in this sense, they had agency. Finally, under certain conditions they were perceived as fulfilling vital functions. Since Greek gods could not be in two places at the same time, they could not continually inhabit their statues. But they manifested their power through the statue during an epiphany. A statue was a receptacle (ankeion) of a god and medium of epiphany. (shrink)

It is a cliché that most Greek art was religious in function. Yet our histories of Classical art, having acknowledged this truism, systematically ignore the religious nuances and associations of images while focusing on diverse arthistorical issues from style and form, or patronage and production, to mimesis and aesthetics. In general, the emphasis on naturalism in classical art and its reception has tended to present it as divorced from what is perceived as the overwhelmingly religious nature of post-Constantinian Christian art. (...) The insulation of Greek and Roman art from theological and ritual concerns has been colluded in by most historians of medieval images. Take for instance Ernst Kitzinger's monographic article entitled ‘The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm’. Despite its title and despite Kitzinger's willingness to situate Christian emperor worship in an antique context, this classic paper contains nothing on the Classical ancestry of magical images, palladia and miracle-working icons in Christian art. There has been the odd valiant exception , but in general it is fair to say that the religiousness of antiquity's religious art is skirted by the art historians and left to the experts on religion. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Philologus Jahrgang: 160 Heft: 2 Seiten: 197-216.