You've heard all about the 'brilliant men' of ancient myth, but what about the scheming and scandalous women who were so often lost in their shadow? Bad Girls of Ancient Greece contains profiles of wayward wives, mad mothers, scandalous sisters and damsels, that quite frankly, caused others A LOT of stress in the ancient world.
Priapos isn't just a god of dicks, bees, and abundant orchards. He was also a patron god for navigators on the sea, of merchant sailors in #ancientGreece and Rome. Apotropaic items carried on board by mariners in the forms of a terracotta phallus and a wooden #Priapos figure were found in shipwrecks, coinciding with the use of wooden Priapic markers erected in areas of dangerous passage or particular landing areas for sailors.
Aristotle and Xunzi on Shame, Moral Education, and the Good Life by Jingyi Jenny Zhao, 2024
The first major work that takes two philosophers from the ancient Greek and early Chinese traditions to stimulate discussion of an interdisciplinary nature on the rich and complex topic of the emotions-in particular, of shame.
It's #InternationalWomensDay and the #vulva is still a taboo. The vulva is regarded as ugly and something to be ashamed of and talking about it is considered obscene and vulgar. In #ancientGreece and #ancientRome, exposure of the vulva (#Anasyrma) was considered an act that could avert evil, just like the phallus charms.
Labia are rarely found in ancient #GreekRomanArt but were they omitted or erased?
Top reason to go to Delos? To see these magnificent phalloi set up to show appreciation to Dionysus and Pan. Just a matter of finding where the tips went…
It's the Day of Hermes aka Mercurius Day aka #Wednesday! 🐏
A premature #PhallusThursday for good luck in this #NewYears week: a young man carrying a sacrificial basket passes by a herm, a simple statue of #Hermes with a head and a #phallus at the appropriate height. He gives the phallus a rub for good luck. May your #NewYear2024 be happy and full of joy!
This Greek marble stele commemorates a young girl. Although there is some damage to her face and what she holds (pomegranates?), the poignant grief of saying goodbye to a child too soon is clear.
Sorry, had to redraft. My app is not having fun with the edits.
A thought I've been chewing on after a particularly vivid dream: I wonder if the minotaur in the maze was a symbol of the internal human struggle between our needs in both a wild and a built world and how those structures, like cities, are overwhelming and oppressive while simultaneously being isolating and entrapping. Or perhaps a symbol of domesticates being trapped between two worlds...
🌊 SICILY/GRECE/MAGNA GRAECIA: how to tell the story of a seminal relationship, that built the #AncientMediterranean giving shape to our cultural imaginary. An exhibition of extraordinary artefacts from various #museums of #Sicily, southern Italy and from Athens at the Salinas Archaeological #Museum of Palermo
This golden wreath is thought to represent oak indicated by gold acorns. Interwoven with the foliage is a bee and two cicadas. Breathtakingly beautiful!
"He was red with blood as if he were slaying living men, and he stood in his chariot. Beside him stood Deimos and Phobos, eager to plunge amidst the fighting men."
Hesiod, The Shield of Heracles 191
🏛️ #Ares among Greeks and #Amazons, detail of an Apulian volute krater, 5th century BCE. Today in the National Archaeological Museum Jatta, Ruvo di Puglia.
"Swelled like young Mene's [Selene's] arching chariot-rail when high over Okeanos' fathomless-flowing stream she rises, with the space half filled with light betwixt her bowing horns."
Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy 1.147
Continuously inhabited for five millennia, and at one point the most powerful city in Ancient Greece, Thebes has been overshadowed by its better-known rivals, Athens and Sparta.
It was destroyed on the orders of Alexander the Great.
Not just men can party - not even in #ancientGreece - as this female reveller proves. She is playing the popular party game kottabos, flinging drops of wine sediment at a target not seen here.
🎨 Red-figure kylix attributed to Onesimos ca 490 BCE: woman reveller playing kottabos
Have a beautiful Day of Aphrodite aka Venus' Day aka Frigg's Day aka Friday 🌹
A long, elegant gold hairpin adorned with #Aphrodite and her son #Eros. Eros offers support to his mum who appears to adorn herself, adjusting one of her anklets to complement the snake-shaped arm bracelets she already wears.
🏛️ Gold Aphrodite Hairpin, 1st century BCE, Greece
It's the Day of Hermes aka Mercurius Day aka #Wednesday! 🐏
For #AllHallows, have a relief of #Hermes in his role as #psychopomp. Hermes guides the souls of the dead to the underworld. Here, he takes the hand of a dead woman named Myrrhine on the way down to Hades.
🏛 Relief on Myrrhine's lekythos, ca 420-410 BCE, National Archaeological Museum, #Athens
The goddess of the night in all her shadowy glory as depicted by Gustave Moreau. It is said by Homer than even Zeus fears to upset this primordial divinity who rules the darkest of times.