‘Now look again at the painting; it is all from Homer’ (Philostratus, Imagines 1.1). This dialogue between art and literature can be traced back as far as the Homeric epic, where we find precise descriptions of iconographic objects. Who can forget the famous cup of Nestor (Iliad 11.632–7)? Horace's renowned analogy ut pictura poesis (Ars Poetica 361–5) captured the essential idea that also inspired Philostratus' educational discourse: the ability of a painting to tell a story that feels real, captures the imagination and is capable of evoking emotions in the same way that epic poetry does. Philostratus' approach to painting as a sensorial experience helps us to understand one of the many ways through which myth and epic became an integral part of life for the ancient Greeks and Romans. The central themes within this volume are the complex relationship between text and image and the issues of interpretation posed by their interaction. This collective volume stems from a panel presented at the meeting of the American Philological Association (now the Society for Classical Studies) in Philadelphia in 2012 and is a response to the challenges of the digital era as well as the increasing interest in the use and study of ancient imagery by Classicists.
The introductory chapter, ‘Approaching the Visual in Ancient Culture Principles’, written by the volume's editor, provides a useful and well-organised insight into the challenges and obstacles faced by scholars in their interpretation of ancient Greek and Roman visual material. It features some well-known case studies, including the frescos from the villa at Boscotrecase, the Trajan Column, the Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus and the geometric crater showing Dipylon shields attributed to the Hirschfeld Workshop. Through these, C. introduces the reader to key concepts such as the interconnectivity between textual and visual narratives, the spatial contextualisation of art, ancient perceptions of originality, the social uses and representative value of objects and the changing meaning of art and iconography for users and viewers, both ancient and modern. The chapter also addresses some of the scholarly debates that have shaped the study of ancient art and iconography in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including the concept of ‘arte plebea’ vs ‘arte aulica’ that was introduced by R. Bianchi-Bandinelli, and critically discussed by T. Hölscher,Footnote 1 among others. This first chapter functions as a necessary overview of the following contributions.
L. Giuliani's chapter uses Attic vase imagery to challenge modern analytical conventions that have a tendency to create binary categories, such as myth/life, reality/fiction, narrative/non-narrative imageries. This seductively deconstructive exercise proposes a new take on the iconographies of the Geometric period. Following an approach already explored in previous works, notably in Bild und Mythos: Geschichte der Bilderzählung in der griechischen Kunst (2003), Giuliani considers various levels of image interpretation, from ontological perception to potential narrative functions. Rather than imposing dichotomies on the ‘real’ and the ‘fictional’, Giuliani prefers to differentiate between images that were attached to a story and those that were not, i.e. between narrative and descriptive images. For the former, images do not speak for themselves and require a narrator to tell their stories, usually the object's viewer.
The next chapter, by K.M.D. Dunrabin, considers three fourth-century a.d. mosaics that depict Homeric and Virgilian epics: Ulysses and Polyphemus from Piazza Armerina (Sicily), Diomedes and Glaucus from Cabezón de Pisuerga (Valladolid, Spain), and Aeneas and Turnus from Alter do Chão (Alentejo, Portugal). These examples are intended to illustrate the ubiquity of ancient myth and epic in very different contexts: urban, rural and provincial. Any coherent interpretation of these mosaic imageries will require, according to Dunrabin, a more nuanced understanding of the complex cultural environment of producers and consumers of such visual repertoires that goes beyond a familiarity with literary works.
This example of the floor mosaics addresses a central question concerning the display of art and material wealth as signs of social status, and is the starting point of T.M. O'Sullivan's contribution that specifically deals with lavishly decorated coffered ceilings. While such ceilings are in Latin literature (and modern scholarship) frequently linked with the luxury attributed to their owners, social and cultural interpretations of these decorative elements should also, in O'Sullivan's view, take into account their philosophical significance as representations of the sky. The author proposes to read the criticism of ancient moralists not only in terms of material opulence, but also as the censurable imitation of a practice – celestial contemplation – that should always take place outdoors.
Numismatics is the subject of the fifth chapter, written by A. Burnett and D. Oldman. This contribution is divided into two parts that concern ancient coinage preserved in the British Museum and their use as historical tools. In the first part, the authors demonstrate the importance of using coinage to understand key political developments during the Augustan Principate. A second case study deals with the rare coins of Agrippa I, king of Judaea (a.d. 37–48) that were found together with the famous Warren Cup. A digital analysis of these coins has, according to the authors, contributed to understanding the context in which the object might have been used. The second part of the article focuses on the challenges and possibilities of the digital revolution for museums and cultural institutions. The authors explain the advantages of the Semantic Web as an online platform to facilitate research and collaboration between institutions and individuals by adapting and harmonising existing resources, as well as enhancing public accessibility to them. An example of such open-access initiatives is ResearchSpace (www.researchspace.org), a project led by the British Museum and supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The last chapter, written by the editor, is a practical guide addressed to scholars and students on how to use images for teaching and research, including instructions on formalia and copyright issues involving publications.
The book serves as a useful tool for any reader interested in ancient images from the Classics and neighbouring disciplines. It will also be particularly welcome as recommended reading for undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. All the contributions are stimulating, combining various methodological approaches and case studies that convincingly illustrate the challenges and complexities involved in the use of ancient visual material. Although a few relevant topics may be missing from the volume – for example, a more comprehensive insight into the link between epigraphy and imagery, and into current projects and approaches within the new field of Digital Classics – this is compensated by an excellent edition and a thoughtful treatment of the illustrations. Eighty-eight carefully chosen colour images, each with precise and informative captions, justify their presence not only as worthy companions to the text but as protagonists of the volume in their own right. The book is thus grounded in examples, giving the images the authority they deserve within a field traditionally dominated by text. The truly affordable price of the volume will no doubt help boost its distribution beyond academia.
