Why does class prep have to be full of such interesting and relevant images for my research?! This is raising my blood pressure. And of course a student walked in an I had to go all geek out special interest telling them why this image made me so excited.

Detail of Cancelleria Relief

I’ve been worried for so so long about the notches in the spearhead of just some of the amphora/spearhead currency bars (so-called Aes Signatum) and NOW I HAVE A PARALLEL in the ritual attribute of a figure typically identified as Honos personified. Nope. I think as I look closer that the object is held by the guy who looks a little like Nero and has a round disc (shield) clasped in his other hand.

I totally don’t have time to write this post. I’m prepping a new class and a talk for Buffalo. Yet, I have to get this down. (Link to Berlin specimen)

But F— It. I want to write. So I’m going to write.

This images of ‘Jupiter’ recalls the portrayal of the disputed Veovis/Apollo types on the republican series. Wiseman wrote about this and Macer, but you can see an overview on p. 148 of my book. Maybe I’ll even drop in an image of that down the road. Those representations are not bearded.

Veovis is a disputed god. I’m sure I’ve got a blog post or three on that.

If we don’t see the above coin through a Republican lens how would it fit into an imperial context

Jupiter isn’t that common on the Roman mint coins.

IOVIS TONANTIS: Augustus 19 BCE (with variations)

IVPPITER CVSTOS: Nero, c. 64-65 CE (with variations)

The above coin unlabeled and paired with the Genius of the Roman People (so republican!)

The pairing might make this next type with GPR and IOM CAPITOL (Paris) a kissing cousin.

BUT I don’t think so.

RIC Civil Wars 123-128 have lots of busts of IOM CAPITOL and the iconography of the busts is v different (the pairing on these is with Vesta).

Not the reverse view, diadem not wreath crown, palm if any attribute not thunderbolt (fulmen).

The Civil War also gives us

IVPPITER CONSERVATOR paired with:

• anonymous type paired with a Venus-like female bust and AVGVST legend
• ROMA RESTITVTA

IVPPITER CVSTOS paired with:

• Roma
• ROMA RESTITVTA
• VIRT[us]

IVPPITER LIBERATOR paired with:

• ROMA RESTITVTA

Otho uses a seated Jupiter with the legend PONT MAX as a reverse type.

Vitellius uses I O MAX CAPITOLINVS and IVPPITER VICTOR reverses.

Once established in 76 CE Vespasian revives IOVIS CVSTOS.

84-85 Domitian revives IVPPITER CONSERVATOR and IOVIS VICTOR but primarily on Bronze

There are quadrans that use Jupiter as an obverse type from this this period or later. The interest in Jupiter qua Jupiter with aspect labeled in legend fades.

The anonymous issues of the Civil War continue to intrigue me for their republican allusions. More later I hope.

Yesterday was grading (today as well). I posted this to Twitter while giving myself a micro-break with a museum database to refresh my soul.

In response an anonymous post shared this.

The parallel between the nineteenth century intaglio and this gold piece is … concerning. The Cameo is in the Boston MFA (Beazley link with many other imitations illustrated).

I would have questioned the antiquity of the cameo too but after consulting with more learned friends I’m now convinced that its 16th century provenance (said to be discovered at Sentium before 1572, sold at Venice, and in the Howard collection, and known to Stosch) makes it almost certainly ancient.

Looking briefly at Cupid and Psyche iconography I can find no great ancient parallels (YET!) and no I haven’t been through LIMC plates yet.

But my finds of unknown date include these parallels:

and this lovely Wedgwood glass paste (BM)

Ok. I hope this post is enough to restore my focus to more pressing tasks.

From RASPE

See in future:

WARNING: This blog post contains SPOILERS about Greek myth and history, a little Shakespeare, and a 1991 SF novel.

Yesterday and today I am struggling with how to address the use of what we’ve been calling AI — it’s just a large language model, for now. All educators are dealing with this these days and the answers have not been great. Some educators at both the HS level and the college level are simply not giving any assignments completed outside the classroom any weight in the assessment of student learning.

What’s the problem with that you ask?

First, Time. My time with my students is precious. According to our bulletin (most accredited institutions)students should dedicate twice the amount of time outside of class learning as in class. If I only assess work completed in the classroom, the time to complete that work comes out of my teaching time. Students get less instruction.

Second, Power Dynamics. When instructors obsess over policing academic integrity we lose sight of our relationship with students. We become primarily rule-enforcers rather than mentors, educators, and coaches. We lose the ability to reach our students across the gaping power differential. There are always ways to break the rules (and even get away with it). If a student doesn’t value the learning and respect integrity of the assessment process, more dystopian futures of enforcement won’t help. It only feeds a technological arms race with students consuming technology to enable ‘easy answers’ and educators and institutions will always be looking to buy better ‘detectors’ or ‘prevention methods’.

The solutions must be cultural and based on the relational rather than transactional aspects of education.

Why do I believe this? Why do I want to stay in relationship with students who have sought or may seek to deceive me? Why do I hope they may wish to stay in relationship with me?

Largely because humans have been struggling with these issues for millennia and telling stories about the risks they entail. My experiences with A.I. and my students and colleagues resonates with the fantastic narratives I read or watch for pleasure and the texts I have taught for more than 20 years.

Pithy Answers

Apollo slew the great Pytho^* to win his shrine at Delphi. In honor of this his priestess, his voice on earth, his oracle, was named the Pythia. When something is said in a witty, concise manner we describe that as “pithy” to recall the nature of the responses given by the Pythia to those mortals who came to seek answers to difficult questions. The Pythia is always right but almost always misinterpreted. Oedipus’ parents are told their son will kill his father and marry his mother. They toss him away only to have him found and reared by other parents. He hears his own fate and trying to avoid it flees his adoptive parents and ends up killing his birth father and marrying his birth mother. Croesus wonders what will happen if invades Persia and is told “a great empire will fall”. Of course, being an optimist, he goes ahead only to have his own great empire of Lydia toppled by Cyrus the Great. If only they understood the ‘true’ answers and how to use that knowledge!

Or, maybe it is worse to have access to these questions and be tempted to use it? Socrates rebuked Xenophon for asking the wrong question before his ill-fated expedition with a much less great Cyrus. Xenophon tried to constrain the answer through the forming of his question: “What gods should I propitiate to have success in this endeavor?” Xenophon and a few of his comrades reached the sea and made it home to inspire others on their own ill-fated retreats. Many did not return. All were scarred. What if he’d asked a better question: “What will it cost me if I go?”

Weird Answers

I thought a great deal about the Delphic oracle while watching Macbeth with members of the BC Classical Society, a wonderful student club, which initiated a group viewing of campus production of “the Scottish play”.

Shakespeare reworked historical fiction to tell a story of the evils of “true” answers caused by the limits of human understanding. Macbeth was a real person, so Duncan, and so Malcolm, but none lived lives as we see on the stage or remember. Banquo and MacDuff were not purely Shakespeare’s own invention but may be considered shared fictional characters. Macbeth is tempted by seemly miraculous access to information. He asks again and again. And each ‘true’ statement brings him only deeper toward his own tragic end. Banquo tries to abide by his own moral code even as he asks and receives delicious answers. Macbeth is jealous of his access to this knowledge and Banquo’s own demise is the cost of knowing. We are also left to wonder if the answers given to Banquo are even correct. Shakespeare does not have them manifest on stage. Malcolm takes the crown. Sure the Stuarts claim Banquo’s equally fictional surviving son Fleance as an ancestor to legitimate their rule, but is it true? Did the audience believe it to be true? How can we verify the weird answers of the three sisters?

You can read those those better versed in these things to learn about how Shakespeare intersects with the classical tradition of riddles and prophecy.^**

A Bird^*** of a Different Feather?

I finished the last 20 minutes of my latest audiobook, All the Weyrs of Pern (1991), on the drive home from the dropping my children at school. I’d guessed from the foreshadowing how it would end and yet nonetheless it was poignant and I find myself writing now instead of addressing some most necessary piece of bureaucracy or service.

Pern is a world created by Anne McCaffery in the late nineteen-sixties and is still to some degree being created by her children and intellectual heirs. It was colonized by future Earthers looking to start afresh by using technology to escape the devastation of this world. (A dangerous SF trope influencing the minds of men with too much money today.). All goes well until unforeseen natural disaster on the new world returns the descendants of the original colonists to a pre-modern state. Fast forward more than two millennia and Pernese start excavating their past. The discoveries influence fashions and create social unrest. The best and worst of the discoveries is the A.I.V.A.S. or the Artificial Intelligence Voice Address System.

Let me tell you how disappointed I am to find no actual SF scholars have yet written about A.I.V.A.S. (as far as I can find)!

This character and how society reacts to it speak volumes to our present moment and has had me pause the playback on many occasions just to let the implications of this 1991 vision of today’s reality sink in fully. A.I.V.A.S. will remind readers of the computer in Star Trek and similar remarkable seemingly all-knowing data storage and computation tools from other SF worlds. A.I.V.A.S. holds necessary information for the Pernese to overcome the constant threat of natural disaster and thus have the material and temporal resources necessary for more than a subsistence living.

And, once the mission is accomplished, the machine destroys itself. Without the specific mission and focus of its energies, it will only disrupt society rather support it. The information it held is still accessible, but the ability to rely on the character of A.I.V.A.S., the interface that demands little or no comprehension of the mortal human accessing it must be removed.

What now?

I don’t think any of our AI will turn itself off. It has been programmed to capture our eyeballs and continually fascinate us, rather than to protect us and our intellectual autonomy. It is closer to Macbeth’s weird sisters than A.I.V.A.S. At best it might be pithy, a clever tool, of which we may if we dare ask questions and try to use the answers without (too much) risk. Futile attempts to smash AI, ignore it, or calling ‘the abomination’ will get us nowhere. Thoughtful, cautious engagement is where we must start.

I do know that thinking about the character of AI is something I want to do more and something I will invite my students to do alongside me.

* –

Python as we use the word today was imposed during the European taxonomy revolution and is only first attested in 1803. It is a borrowing of the classical to describe the ‘exotic’ without any inquiry of

** –

Davies, Malcolm. “‘All’and ‘Nothing’: Existential Riddles and Cosmic Pessimism in Ancient Greek Literature and Shakespeare.” GAIA. Revue interdisciplinaire sur la Grèce ancienne 18, no. 1 (2015): 455-469.

Fontenrose, Joseph. “The Oracular Response as a Traditional Narrative Theme.” Journal of Folklore Research (1983): 113-120.

*** –

Avis is Latin for bird. I’m playing with the homophone and wonder if the author may have intended this.

I bought the catalogue of mirrors in Brussels. I’ll collect my notes here.

The catalogue describes the head at Minerva’s feet as a likely personification of body of water. I’m not sure at all. Typically I’d see such a head as oracular but how that would work with the scene is as unclear as it would be if a water personification.

This one I like for its suggestion of the use of the cistae, bronze cylindricaltoilet boxes. Also the body necklaces are delightful as ancient lingerie.

Here the head on the ground is interpreted as a mask of Silenus, as an attribute of Fufluns, associated with Dionysus/Liber. More sensible but still not clearly correct. The catalogue associates Esia with Ariadne and her slaying by Artemis cf Hom. Od. 11.321-325. The childlike characteristics of Esia and her being held make me think this image is connected to a very different narrative than any we know.

While the catalogue seems to endorse Helbig’s interpretation of this as Eos’ seizing of Cephales even if not fully explained, I’m inclined to see this as the union of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. While most have seen Ovid Met. 4.306ff. as an Augustan age literary invention, it would also fit this scene. The figure to the far right would be their final joined forms marked by the velafactio. Saturn, the right hand figure, stands for tradition and how this new form is to be rejected.

TBC

Occupational Scenes

Two young men dress a fawn (not a calf!) (gut/butcher?). The wooden vessel on the ground is probably for offal. We find vessels on the floor of butcher shop illustrations. The silver vase with Pan heads seems decorative, but perhaps held watter. Why do such messy work in such nice clothes? Do the stripes on the tunics mean something? The catalogue says the far left object is a tray (I do see handles) and it is resting on a pillar, perhaps holding objects needed to prepare the meat or to carry the meat in side once dressed and ready for the kitchen. The scenes with Cupids show perfume making and garlend making in both cases a Psyche is the client/buyer of the goods. Is the overarching message: the mind must carefully select the fruits/labors/works of desire? The cupid occupations are both known from other frescoes. The panel picture and the limited number of figures are similar those from Herculaneum, but the color pattern and style is closer to the long continuous frieze of the more famous working cupids from the house of Vettii in Pompeii (perfume making; another perfume making scene; garland making). I struggle with all three frescos. Are they real? If so, where were they found? The funerary relief of the wool merchant L. Aelius Evangelos I have few doubts about authenticity, but do love the details of the craft. In a naughty fashion, I’ve put in two occupational reliefs from Brussels that probably should have gone in the previous post, but fit thematically better here. We have the famous ‘banker’ or ‘money-changer’ scene and also a relief of merchants weighing goods but the light was terrible for that one.

Portraits (Probably)

These are all facing I thought might be useful for teaching. I follow Elizabeth Marlowe in thinking the Capitoline ‘Flavian’ Woman is probably an early modern fantasy piece. The Hellenistic ‘not a king because no diadem’ portrait is good for showing verism beyond Rome. The Cybele looks a great deal to me like a portrait “in the guise of…”. The Etruscan bronze can be contextualized now with the San Casciano finds and and the life-size Gallo-Roman votive heads also have antecedents there (early posts). I really liked the special exhibition on the 26th Dynasty in Egypt (most objects on loan from BM). The faces help make clear that naturalism isn’t strictly Ptolemaic introduction in Egyptian portraiture. Other faces just diversify what I remember to show my students.

Arms and Armor

The statue I believe to be Virtus. Of course some would say it is indistinguishable from Roma, but I tend to think that Roman mostly covers her breasts and Virtus personified less so, and yet even this isn’t a tell tale sign (earlier blog post). The griffin helmet is a nice parallel for Roma on coins of the Republican series. The white ground lethykos I liked because of how we see the reverse of the shield and how all the parts attach to say nothing of the strapping on the scabbard of the sword (I’ve worried about straps on this blog before).

Other things that make me think

The flight is almost over so I need to bang out the rest of these. The fishnet suit that the muse of tragedy wears is hilarious. Who is she playing? Silenus? The seascape I like because the painter has allowed you to see the arches of the substructure of the pier continue below the waterline. Also I wonder if this counts as a cryptoporticus. Six winged seraphim with faces and little hands make me want to sing a praise song. The sarcophagi are complete but without portraits finished always an interesting topic to discuss with students. I tend to go for practical rather than symbolic reasons for leaving them uncarved but try to keep an open mind. The high relief faience vase is so curious–I see why the curators think it may be a Ptolemaic queen. I cannot make out the word in the legend on the pointy altar before euerget… (in Greek). That pointy altar made me look twice at the pointy one on the glass faux cameo vases with the cupid. The end of larger sarcophagus for a married couple has Achilles at Skyros being discovered in the disguise of a woman by Odysseus. One of my favorite compositions, and one I associate with the mosaics of Zeugma. The Mosaic in this set also evoked memories of the Zeugma museum in Gaziantep: so much was looted from that site and this bears many stylistic similarities. The Etruscan ring with Achilles lying in wait for Troilus reminded me so strongly of the rendering in the Tomb of the Bulls at Tarquinia, but I find myself now thinking I just don’t know the iconography of this scene as well as I should (images for comparison). The warrior on the red figure fragment caught my eye because his helmet has hair. The label said i might be the scalp of Troilus. I can’t confirm this but there is a tradition of him being beheaded and often Achilles grabs his hair (more on the myth). The late Roman gold fibula has a secrets screw compartment, like a poison ring! Other images I just liked or thought might be useful.

I ponied up the money for wifi on this flight home so I could organize, share, and think more about all the fantastic artifacts I’ve seen. Hopefully if all goes well the next post will be a round-up of the Getty Visit last weekend. I only had 2 hours in this museum so it was rather a speed walk through everything. I’m going to group photos into galleries and/or slide shows. Click on an image to see more detail and uncropped images.

Big Stuff mostly from Apamea, Syria

The mosaic of the “Therapenides” (enslaved female domestic workers) commemorates the homecoming of Odysseus and his reunion with the women of his house after the destruction of the suitors. However, the joyous dancing of the enslaved evokes also the murder of the ‘unfaithful’ enslaved women who were gruesomely hung for suffering at the hands of the suitors. The motif of happy dancing slaves especially in this type of ring composition is found through out colonial and imperialist art of the modern period (there are some images in my 2018 tree and sunset article). The kiss at the gate between the reunited enslavers strongly reminds me of iconography of Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate, esp. Giotto’s rendering. The munching scene is just one of many from the Synagogue in the museum. The model of Rome is delightful but I did not linger in the interests of time.

Pots

The highlight of this section is the black gloss cup with a relief impression created from a coin of Syracuse with the head of Arethusa. I’ve blogged about this type of cup before but then a different example. The other stamped black gloss pot (vernice nera with petites estampilles) is perhaps more typical of the genre, a fine example, but a poor photo. The askos with the ivy leaves in relief I wanted to remember for comparative iconography. The others are just delightful scenes: women rearrange the furniture, the equipment for stomping grapes to extract the juice and retain the skins and seeds, a polka dot Minotaur, funny stylized sea creatures (=Mycenaean octopus cups). Notice that the shield of the one warrior has a thunderbolt (fulmen) on it. And, the dancers are wearing an early version of the comic fat suit. Less fat, just a little paunch, also a rather small fake phallus. The women dance nude besides a necklace, but notice how their nipples point down in a rather amusing rendering.

Military stuff

The images don’t do justice to the standard top. It has so many little animal motifs and details worked in to the design that can’t be clearly seen here. The sling bullets (glandes) also have rich decoration AND interesting inscriptions–check out the labels. I thought the detail on the architectural terracotta relief was spectacular–it reminded me straight away of the battle friezes on monument of Aemilius Paulus so well studied by Michael Taylor.

Funerary Stuff

Ever since my 2004 Turkish road trip I’ve been obsessed with the image of two disembodied open hands on grave stele. Somewhere or perhaps lost forever on a fried hard drive I have dozens of images of these symbols from across Anatolia but I rarely meet them in museums outside of Turkey. Lead coffins are rare and this one has some nice sphinxes on it if you look carefully. The sarcophagus represents a lamp stand in use.

Figural terracottas

The color on the Campana plaque with Achilles and Penthesilea caught my eye but also it is just a favorite motif for how it has been adapted artistic representations of conquest in Roman art (a theme of past blog posts). There Hercules and boxers relief is a nice study in idealized hyper masculinity. Cybele’s lap cat is hilarious so needed a photo. The lamps provide examples of how it is not only disability that interests ancient artists exploring the extremes of the human body, but also how hard labor especially for the enslaved leads to disfiguration. The squatting woman I think is obese or has an abdominal tumor rather than being pregnant. The face seems older and the cup suggests a life of over indulging in wine. Perhaps a variation on the drunken woman clutching a vase.

Other objects of interest

The water spigot with the disturbingly distorted head of a black person didn’t have a label. For context I also photographed a lamp in the form of a similarly distorted head. What is up with the abuse of the mouth!? The snail shell is another bronze lamp. A fully intact wooden table from Luxor is certainly noteworthy. It has a similar share to tables depicted in some Pompeian frescoes. The lead figure in a lead box (coffin?) is almost certainly a magic object related to cursing, but it also lacked a label. The thumb is carved from bone in exquisite detail and was the handle of a knife: it and the cameo and spindle, lantern, and glass objects were all from Belgian finds, mostly tomb assemblages. The wax tablet was photographed because of the figural complexity of the scraper, the blade of which was either v smooth glass or rock crystal. I failed to make a note if the materials were listed in its label.