Day: September 3, 2010

Cupid Cameo from the City of David

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Not sure why I can’t find this up at the IAA site yet, so the Ha’aretz coverage seems to be the best right now:

Israeli archeologists unveiled a 2,000 year old semi-precious cameo bearing the image of Cupid on Monday, which the Israel Antiquities Authorities (IAA) said was among several items located in the City of David archeological area in Jerusalem’s Old City in the last 12 months.

The cameo, which will be displayed at the 11th Annual City of David Archaeology Conference scheduled to take place later this week, is 1 cm in length and 0.7 cm in width, and was discovered in the Givati Parking Lot Excavation, a part of the Jerusalem Walls National Park.

The excavation, according to an IAA statement, has been conducted by the organization under the direction of Dr. Doron Ben Ami and Yana Tchekhanovets and funded by the Ir David Foundation.

Dr. Doron Ben Ami, of the IAA, said that the cameo was “made from two layers of semi-precious onyx stone. The upper layer, into which the image of cupid is engraved is a striking blue color which contrasts with the dark brown background color of the lower layer.”

“The brown layer is the side of the cameo which would have been inserted into the round metal setting of a piece of jewelry, apparently an earring,” Ben Ami said, adding that the “cupid’s left hand is resting on an upside-down torch which symbolizes the cessation of life.”

According to Dr. Ben Ami, the “discovery, together with other important finds that we uncovered from this unusual large Roman structure at the City of David, contribute significantly to our understanding of the nature of Jerusalem’s Roman Period.””

The IAA statement added that the inlaid stone was of the “Eros in mourning” type, one of a group of visual motifs linked with the imagery of mourning practices.

Ha’aretz includes an excellent photo:

IAA via Ha'aretz

If you want to see a pile of cameos — many involving Eros/Cupid in various activities (not mourning, as far as I can tell), check this page out (scroll to the bottom) …

More coverage:

Citanda: Plato’s Pop Culture Problem

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

By way of captatio benevolentiae:

This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on a case that may have the unusual result of establishing a philosophical link between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Plato.

Classical Coronation Street?

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Interesting item brought back by my spiders from a piece in the National marking the 50th anniversary of Coronation Street … inter alia:

In that sense, it doesn’t matter that the soap is set in a version of northern England where life can be slightly grim and unglamorous. Because once you’ve got past the accents (not, in truth, that difficult), Coronation Street isn’t about living in a fictional part of Greater Manchester, just as EastEnders isn’t a commentary on London life. These places are just the settings for stories that are as old as the hills.

This was the thrust of a recent BBC documentary on the links between Greek tragedy and soaps. The similarities were revealing; the presenter Natalie Haynes spoke to a writer who had based EastEnders storylines on Aeschylus’s Oresteia. Apparently, Haynes wrote on her blog, the BBC Writers’ Academy trains future generations of soap writers by giving them Aristotle’s Poetics to encourage them to think about time and place.

It’s not over-intellectualising soaps to make these comparisons; infanticide, patricide, dysfunctional families, suffering women … they’re all tropes of Greek tragedy and soap opera.

It’s a theme Corrie’s Jonathan Harvey has been keen to discuss recently, too. “There’s something inherently theatrical in soaps and they are like Greek tragedies,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “They have archetypes that are created again and again through different generations, and they have a chorus in other characters commenting on what happens.” […]

via: Fifty years of Coronation Street in two hours

If you’re very fast, you can listen to Natalie Haynes on the BBC on ‘OedipusEnders’ via Listen Again (but even if you don’t make it, the text summary is interesting) … I think Haynes’ blog post was this one from the Guardian …

Bikini Girls Question

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ 1 Comment

This one arose during my pondering the so-called ‘female gladiator lamp’ claim (see next post) and I asked on Twitter if anyone knew what this ‘bikini girl’ from Piazza Armerina was holding:

via wikipedia

… Max Sinclair and Liz Gloyn offered some suggestions with varying degrees of seriousness, but the most ‘reasonable’ (and one I’ve heard before) — that it’s some sort of umbrella really doesn’t fit in with the ‘program’ of the scene. Here’s the whole thing:

via wikipedia

… not sure why the photo is cut up … it’s practically stitchable. The scene is usually said to depict the ‘crowning of the victor’ but our bikini girl is standing between the person bestowing the crown and the one who apparently received it. Outside of the victrix, everyone else  is engaged in some sort of athletic activity and usually these women are taken to be exercising at the baths or something. But we do know of athletic events for women — we mentioned the Heraia a few days ago; sadly the Matthew Dillon article referenced therein doesn’t mention these particular female athletes. Kelly Olson’s article in Classical World from a few years ago (Roman Underwear Revisited, CW 96 (2003), 201-210 speculates that these ladies might be wearing the subligar, and that Martial describes a female athlete as subligata (208-209), so it seems reasonable that there might actually be a competition being depicted here. Indeed, I might be imagining things, but the victrix and the lady I’m wondering about seem to be engaged in a footrace in the register above … our lady seems to be complaining, perhaps, because in the upper register she appears to win, but she doesn’t get the palm frond and laurel. What does she get? Even if I am imagining the ‘narrative’ of this scene, I’d still like to know what the heck she’s holding … anyone know?

Some Interesting Auction Items

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Catching up with email last night (we’re in the pre-back-to-school-throw-your-routine-out-of-whack phase), I came across a link to Timeline Auctions’ upcoming antiquities offerings. I don’t recall ever having mentioned them before, but they appear to be one of many smaller auction houses who also sell via Live Auctioneers, which we have somewhat hesitantly mentioned before (here too). As we’ve seen in the past with these sorts of auctons, provenance varies greatly, e.g., this nice little Lar:

… comes from an old private collection formed in the 1950’s” (see the full description for a larger version of the image; all photos in this post come from the auction house itself)

The most interesting item is this second-century ‘addorsed double bust’:

… again, see the official description for larger versions … what’s interesting, of course (outside of the lack of a provenance) is that this one is male on one side and female on the other.  The faces, though, are somewhat similar when viewed side-by-side so I’m wondering if this might not be a depiction of Tieresias, before and after, as it were …

Also catching my eye were a pair of “bronze steelyard weights” which were the property of “a deceased detectorist”:

… (official description … one of the things is ‘a mount’) … which reminded me that ‘boxer’ found in Israel a year or so ago. As with the boxer, these items are said to be ‘weights’ used with hanging scales. What I find interesting is that we’re never given the actuall mass/weight of these things. Are they some standard weight? Anyone know?

The final item of interest (to me) is a Roman oil lamp, from the “Hornbeam collection”, which purports to show a female gladiator:

… the larger photo is definitely worth looking at, as “she” is described as holding a “mace and a shield” and this raised a bunch of questions for me (as folks who follow me on twitter and/or facebook know). First, how would one distinguish between an Amazon and a gladiatrix? Terrence Lockyer suggested that if the helmet had a visor, that might be the basis of the identification by the auction house (or collector).  That said, it’s worth comparing this particular individual to an Amazonomachia scene on a sarcophagus, apparently at the Louvre:

via wikipedia

… in which we see what appears to be a ‘characteristic’ shield and the weapon the ‘lady of the lamp’ is holding (i.e. an ax) … but not a helmet. In another scene, also at the Louvre, however:


… we get another interpretation . Note the warrior on the left, with her clothing off her shoulder, the crested helmet, and the shield. For those who were chatting with me about this, I think the thing I thought might be a ‘tragedy mask’ (i.e. the shield) is a shield; that’s probably a gorgon on the lamp. Whatever the case, clearly this lamp is depicting an Amazon. Someone could say it’s a gladiatrix dressed like an Amazon, I suppose …

I find it curious, however, that at least one of these items (the ‘Tieresias’) is being offered in such a ‘quiet’ environment; even the lamp — especially if it did portray a gladiatrix — would be of interest to a more ‘major’ auction house, no? hmmmmm …