Jocelyn Penny Small

Cacus and Marsyas in Etrusco-Roman legend

This book discusses how Greek and South Italian vase paintings of the musical contest between Apollo and Marsyas became the model for Etruscan representations of Cacus ambushed by the Vibennae brothers, two Etruscan heroes of the sixth century B.C. The study demonstrates that the Etruscans knowingly adapted Greek iconographic forms to represent their own legends.Originally published in 1982.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Was Alexander the Great left-handed?

No evidence, literary or pictorial, exists from antiquity to indicate that Alexander the Great was left-handed. Instead classical representations of Alexander show him as right-handed.

Skenographia in Brief

This chapter begins chronologically with our earliest mention of skenographia in the fourth century BCE. Aristotle says: “Three actors and skenographia with Sophocles.” That places the beginning of skenographia in the fifth century BCE. Vitruvius considers skenographia as divorced from the theater and an independent form of “design”, dispositio in Latin, which the OLD defines as “spatial arrangement, layout, formation”. The chapter addresses the principal scholarly interpretation of the word skenographia as “perspective” and most likely “linear perspective”. Just as importantly the classical texts support the focus on individual objects. While individual objects may obey the rules of linear perspective, the entire scene with all its parts depicted from one viewpoint is the hallmark of linear perspective. The focus on individual objects and not their place in the whole scene becomes especially apparent in South Italian vase-painting from the fourth century BCE. Keywords:skenographia; Vitruvius

Classical antecedents for modern metaphors for memory 1

Classical antiquity provides not just the storehouse metaphor, which postdates Plato, but also parts of the correspondence metaphor. In the fifth century B.C., Thucydides (1.22) considered the role of gist and accuracy in writing history, and Aristotle ( Poetics 1451b, 1460b 8–11) offered an explanation. Finally, the Greek for truth ( aletheia ) means “that which is not forgotten.”

Aeneas and Turnus on Late Etruscan Funerary Urns

The Etruscans often depended on Greek stylistic and iconographical models. When they borrowed from the Greeks, they did so with discrimination; and if they altered their models, they did so consciously. A certain lack of inventiveness on the part of the Etruscans does not necessarily imply a lack of intelligence or judgment. As the Etruscans turned eagerly towards Greek literature and art, they maintained their own culture with its traditions and history. Their own heritage was not so completely overwhelmed by Greek things as to leave barely any traces in Etruscan art. Here we will examine two related scenes on late Etruscan