Letteratura scientifica selezionata sul tema "Athens (Greece). Odeion of Herodes Atticus"

AbstractThis paper discusses the burial of Herodes Atticus as a well-attested case of élite identification through mortuary practices. It gives a close reading of Philostratus' account of Herodes' end inc. 179 (VS2.1.15) alongside the evidence of architecture, inscriptions, sculpture, and topography at Marathon, Cephisia and Athens. The intended burial of Herodes and the actual burials of his family on the Attic estates expressed wealth and territorial control, while his preference for Marathon fused personal history with civic history. The Athenian intervention in Herodes' private funeral, which led to his magnificent interment at the Panathenaic Stadium, served as a public reception for a leading citizen and benefactor. Herodes' tomb should be identified with a long foundation on the stadium's east hill that might have formed an eccentric altar-tomb, while an elegantklinêsarcophagus found nearby might have been his coffin. His epitaph was a traditional distich that stressed through language and poetic allusion his deep ties to Marathon and Rhamnous, his euergetism and his celebrity. Also found here was an altar dedicated to Herodes ‘the Marathonian hero’ with archaizing features (IGII26791). The first and last lines of the text were erased in a deliberate effort to remove his name and probably the name of a relative. A cemetery of ordinary graves developed around Herods' burial site, but by the 250s these had been disturbed, along with the altar and the sarcophagus. This new synthesis of textual and material sources for the burial of Herodes contributes to a richer understanding of status and antiquarianism in Greek urban society under the Empire. It also examines how the public memory of élites was composite and mutable, shifting through separate phases of activity — funeral, hero-cult, defacement, biography — to generate different images of the dead.

In this thesis we explore the period of renewal that Athens experienced during the second century AD. This century saw Athens at the peak of her cultural prominence in the Roman Empire: the city was the centre of the League of the Panhellenion and hosted a vibrant sophistic scene that attracted orators from across the Greek world, developments which were ideologically fuelled by contemporary conceptions of Classical Athens. While this Athenian 'golden age' is a standard feature of scholarship on Greek culture under Rome, my thesis delves further to explore the renewal of the urban and rural landscapes at this time and the relationship between that process and constructions of Athenian identity. We approach the renewal of second-century Athens through four lenses: past and present in the Ilissos area; the rhetoric of the Panhellenion; elite conflict and competition; and the character of the Attic countryside. My central conclusions are as follows: 1. The renewal of Athens was effected chiefly by Hadrian and the Athenian elite and was modelled on an ideal Athenian past, strategically manipulated to suit present purpose; the attractions of the fifth-century golden age for this programme of renewal meant that politically contentious history of radical democracy and aggressive imperialism had to be safely rewritten. 2. Athens and Attica retained their uniquely integrated character in the second century. Rural Attica was the subject of a powerful sacro-idyllic ideology and played a vital role in concepts of Athenian identity, while simultaneously serving as a functional landscape of production and inhabitation. 3. The true socio-economic importance of the Attic countryside as a settled and productive landscape should be investigated without unduly privileging the limited evidence from survey, and by combining all available sources, both literary and documentary, with attention to their content, cultural context and ideological relevance.

The final chapter completes the narrative with an examination of Hadrian’s dealings with Athens, thanks to whom the city was again made prominent in the Greek world. After discussing Hadrian’s economic and constitutional arrangements for Athens, the chapter turns to the religious and intellectual life in the city and how these appealed to a polymath like Hadrian. Most importantly there is a focus on Hadrian’s Panhellenion, a league of cities of the East created by the emperor that made Athens its center. As a result, Athens’ reputation and prestige skyrocketed once again, and it became in effect the second city of the Roman Empire after Rome. The Panhellenion also spawned a burst of building activity under Hadrian not seen since the days of Augustus. The completion of the monumental Temple to Olympian Zeus was meant to be the focal point of the Panhellenion. A section on Hadrian’s Arch is also discussed, as the monument was commissioned by the Athenians and shows the extent of Hadrian’s power over the city, Greece, and the east. As a postscript, there is a broad brushstroke description of Athens after Hadrian, including the activity of Herodes Atticus and up to the Herulian sack.

Abstract In the major cities of the ancient Mediterranean world, much of life unfolded in public settings-theaters, amphitheaters, hippodromes, odeums, stadiums, and circuses. Whereas large installations like stadi ums and circuses tended to be limited to cult centers (Greece) and large cities (Rome), theaters and odeums (small covered lecture halls) were much more common.Depending on the size of the building, crowds could vary considerably: several hundred in small theaters; several thou sand in larger theaters, such as the one at Pompeii; perhaps 50,000 in the Roman Colosseum and the stadium of Herodes Atticus at Athens; and as many as 250,000 (almost one-quarter of the city’s population) for chariot races in the Circus Maximus at Rome.