tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28335558357384730622024-02-22T21:34:58.810+07:00Matters ArisingTangents from my readingRWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.comBlogger137125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-27908347020869718522010-10-25T20:03:00.001+07:002010-10-25T20:07:23.946+07:00SpiderwomanBook VI of the Metamorphoses opens with the story of Arachne. (picture from wikicommons by galak76, used by permission under creative commons licence)
Arachne appears in a fresco painted by Francesco del Cossa in the Palazzo Schifanoia in the late 1460s. Although the Palazzo doesn’t seem to have a website, you can see the fresco in situ in the following video, where it appears about 25 RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-59959729651190698952010-10-24T22:50:00.000+07:002010-10-24T22:50:05.833+07:00Perseus in the RenaissanceFor those who enjoyed my series of posts on Perseus, H. Niyazi has a recent post on The Three Pipe Problem discussing the portrayal of Perseus in Renaissance Art.RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-47987997447890501382010-10-16T21:41:00.000+07:002010-10-16T21:41:01.959+07:00The Lynx and the MagpiesThe next story in the Metamorphoses is that of Lyncus’s treacherous attempt to murder his guest, Triptolemus, for which he was turned into a lynx. Jacques Dumont Le Romain painted a picture of this incident in 1732 which is now in the Louvre, but not on their website.
Book V now comes to a close. The daughters of Pierus, who had challenged the Muses to a singing contest but refused to accept RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-13162131384740743742010-10-13T20:59:00.002+07:002010-10-13T21:08:39.369+07:00ArethusaThe next story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses is that of Arethusa, a nymph who was turned into a spring by the goddess Diana to protect her from the river Alphaeus who was chasing her.(photo of Arethusa's spring in Syracuse copyright Giovanni Dall'Orto, used by permission)
The Philadelphia Museum of Art has an Italian plate dated to 1531 showing Arethusa fleeing from Alphaeus.
The above statue RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-55427612336414927442010-10-05T21:04:00.000+07:002010-10-05T21:04:27.412+07:00Falco ReviewLindsey Davis’s series of mysteries starring Marcus Didius Falco, a private informer in Vespasian’s Rome, has now reached its 20th and probably final volume. Ms. Davis has not said that she won’t be writing any further Falco stories, but a Falco Companion has now been issued and certain plot points in “Nemesis” would mean some radical changes to the series if it were to continue. I’m going to RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-28748372678794072982010-09-19T14:49:00.000+07:002010-09-19T14:49:40.202+07:00WelcomeWelcome to follower Nam Hoai, a Vietnamese architect with two blogs: nhomthangmuoimot, about 19th and 20th century art from different parts of the world, and nguyenhoainamkts, which covers a miscellany of subjects, including architecture, photography, and music.RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-81612807269547698102010-09-18T14:01:00.002+07:002010-11-29T12:43:13.235+07:00The Water OrganI’ve been reading Lindsey Davis’s Falco series, and as the Roman History Reading Group is due to read Last Act in Palmyra in December, I thought I’d blog a few items. (book cover copied from librarything)
One reason for our hero travelling to the Eastern edges of the Empire is to track down a missing hydraulis player. The hydraulis or water organ is said to have been invented by Ctesibius RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-54508977462366149022010-07-22T16:10:00.000+07:002010-07-22T16:10:19.093+07:00Another WelcomeWelcome to H. Niyazi from Three Pipe Problem, the three pipes being art, history, and mysteries.RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-61283219930956442572010-07-21T20:51:00.000+07:002010-07-21T20:51:50.518+07:00The Death of Socrates in ArtIn my last post I talked about hemlock, but I’d forgotten that Gary Corby of A Dead Man Fell From the Sky also covered hemlock quite recently. We’ll continue by looking at some artistic depictions of Socrates’s death.
Charles Alphonse Dufresnoy’s Death of Socrates was painted in 1650. It is now in Florence, some sites say in the Galleria degli Uffizi, others say in the Galleria Palatina. RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-46521110063792267912010-07-18T22:00:00.002+07:002010-07-18T22:02:25.121+07:00HemlockThe episode of House shown the other night was Knight Fall. The patient, Sir William, was a re-enactor who became ill during a mock-mediaeval joust. One of the possibilities put forward as the cause of his illness was hemlock poisoning. I was surprised by this as his sufferings were completely different to the image of hemlock poisoning I was familiar with from Plato’s description of the death RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-59564944212512755252010-07-08T20:30:00.000+07:002010-07-08T20:30:31.638+07:00Belated WelcomesA belated welcome to new followers:
Amalia T. of Good to Begin Well, Better to End Well, who writes on mythology and history
Mufti G M of Lout de Chevalier, who writes in Indonesian about the oil industry, and has a great soundtrack
William Wolfe
Nachtigalle of Playground Canvas, who writes in German
Fazleybayim
Zsuzsi
Just Another Sarah
Georgia MemonRWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-17762323408125906682010-07-04T20:30:00.000+07:002010-07-04T20:30:04.537+07:00Persephone: the 18th and 19th centuriesHaving looked at Persephone in the 16th and 17th centuries, we now turn to 18th and 19th centuries.
Our first picture, Psyche Obtaining the Elixir of Beauty from Proserpine is by Charles Joseph Natoire and dates from around 1735. It is now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
In 1866 Swinburne wrote a poem called The Garden of Proserpine, an extract from which, accompanied by RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-10136286785644089442010-06-27T14:56:00.010+07:002010-06-27T15:31:29.230+07:00Persephone: the 17th centuryIn my last post we looked at the story of Persephone in the 16th century, when the rape (i.e., kidnapping) of Persephone was a popular theme from the story. We now move on to the 17th century, looking first at pictures of the rape and then a few pictures of Persephone in the underworld.In the first decade of the century, Hendrik van Balen painted Pluto and Persephone, which is now in the RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-88004900944157832382010-04-30T13:55:00.008+07:002010-04-30T15:02:16.194+07:00Persephone: The 16th centuryNext in Ovid's Metamorphoses is the story of Proserpine, or as she is better known under her Greek name, Persephone. Paintings of Persephone in the 16th century concentrated on the Rape of Persephone ("rape" here meaning kidnapping). (picture of pomegranate from wikicommons used under creative commons licence. Other images are in the public domain and also come from wikicommons.)Our first RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-4931906392603777302010-01-26T20:28:00.006+07:002010-01-26T20:48:48.852+07:00Vae VictisIn 390 BC or rather more likely 387/6 BC, Gauls defeated a Roman army in a battle at the river Allia and occupied Rome itself, which had been more or less abandoned after the battle except for the Capitol. The stirring events surrounding this are told by Livy in Book 5, sections 34 to 50 of his History of Rome (scroll down). (licensed from wikicommons under GNU Free Documentation Licence)This RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-28338587639319130312010-01-25T21:23:00.005+07:002010-01-25T21:46:39.789+07:00The Phantom of the Great DionysiaWhen Gary Corby of A Dead Man Fell From the Sky and I were chatting on Twitter the other day, he mentioned how much more attractive to the average male the addition of zombies made "Pride and Prejudice". I can't say I'd ever felt the lack before, but we kicked around a few titles which might increase the ancient world's visibility today.Purely by coincidence I can announce the translation of a RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-33039293922148712152010-01-17T14:01:00.002+07:002010-01-17T14:07:14.817+07:00Perseus and PhineusOvid starts Book V of the Metamorphoses by continuing the story of Perseus. Phineus, who had been betrothed to Andromeda, starts a fight at Perseus and Andromeda's wedding feast. In my post Perseus and Andromeda: the 17th Century I embedded part of a TV production of Lully's Persée. Here is Phineus' petrification scene from a sound recording of the same opera:The picture shown to accompany the RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-66538956593519125612010-01-16T17:12:00.003+07:002010-01-16T17:18:28.404+07:00Welcome to some new followersWelcome to nina4176 and LK, who have joined this blog as followers, and also to Michael K. Smith of the book review blog Booksmith, who follows Matters Arising via NetworkedBlogs on Facebook.RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-89220954852175715582010-01-15T23:18:00.005+07:002010-01-15T23:38:32.040+07:00Review of The Roman MysteriesCaroline Lawrence's The Roman Mysteries is a series of 17 detective stories set in the Roman Empire between June 78 and October 81 AD, i.e., basically in the reign of Titus. The detectives are a group of four children: Flavia Gemina, daughter of Marcus Flavius Geminus, sea captain; Jonathan ben Mordecai, her Jewish Christian neighbour; Nubia (formerly Shepenwepet), a Nubian slave bought by FlaviaRWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-14321015198479640112010-01-06T22:52:00.034+07:002010-01-07T00:31:59.591+07:00Calleva AtrebatumThe Roman History Reading Group's first read for 2010 is Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth, part of which is set in Calleva Atrebatum. As it's quite near where my parents live, I set out one cold and frosty morning to have a look at what remains of Calleva Atrebatum today. The remains are near the village of Silchester, not far from Reading.Calleva Atrebatum means something like "the RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-10393653630001637572009-12-15T15:28:00.005+07:002009-12-15T15:36:26.315+07:00Verginia and Appius ClaudiusAppius Claudius, one of the decemvirs assigned the task of codifying Roman law in the 5th century BC, declared a freeborn young Roman woman called Verginia to be legally a slave of one of his clients in order to be able to rape her with impunity. Seeing no other way of keeping her out of Appius Claudius's clutches her father stabbed her to death. You can read Livy's version of the story here on RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-38253484046888907352009-12-05T06:14:00.015+07:002009-12-05T06:51:54.769+07:00Perseus and Medusa: the 19th century and afterLast time we looked at Perseus and Medusa in the 16th and 17th centuries. I haven't found anything in the 18th century, so moving on to the 19th century, the 1806 statue on the left is by Canova and now in New York's Metropolitan Museum. An earlier version of this statue is in the Vatican Museum, but not on their website. (image used by permission of metmuseum.org)George Watts sculpted a head of RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-928901002036935932009-10-18T21:14:00.014+07:002009-10-18T21:56:35.403+07:00Perseus and Medusa: the 16th and 17th centuriesAfter Perseus defeats the sea monster and rescues Andromeda, the Ethiopians hold a feast in his honour and he tells the story of how he defeated Medusa.Benvenuto Cellini's famous statue of Perseus with the head of Medusa is in Florence and dates from 1545-1554. John Singer Sargent produced a series of sketches and paintings of the statue, two of which are shown below, in the first decade of the RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-82331226816903454782009-10-08T06:36:00.003+07:002009-10-08T06:53:57.877+07:00Comments PolicyI've just received a comment on a review I posted in this blog. The comment basically agrees with what I said in my review but expresses itself much more harshly than I would. The comment is also anonymous, which makes me feel uncomfortable about publishing something that could be construed as an attack on somebody's professionalism. I've decided therefore that I'm not going to publish anonymous RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2833555835738473062.post-59439517816783296202009-09-26T12:51:00.006+07:002009-09-26T13:06:21.287+07:00Nicholas HilliardOne of the plot points in Michael Innes's Lord Mullion's Secret involves miniatures by Nicholas Hilliard, a painter or limner at Elizabeth I's court (Hilliard's self portrait left). Although miniatures are small, the word actually derives from the Latin 'minium', meaning red lead. Since red lead was mainly used for illuminated manuscripts and small portable paintings, the word gradually took on RWMGhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04271851970303022440noreply@blogger.com0