Articoli di riviste sul tema "Gladiators in literature"

While restating the correct interpretation of the prologue to the Hecyra of Terence in CQ 32 (1982), 134 F. H. Sandbach has this to say: ‘Possibly the widespread view which the translators and I reject has been encouraged by disbelief that the theatre could be used for gladiatorial combat. It is true that there is no reliable evidence for such use at Rome, for Donatus' statement “hoc abhorret a nostra consuetudine uerumtamen apud antiquos gladiatores in theatro spectabantur” may be no more than inference from Terence's text.’ There is, in fact, a certain amount of evidence for gladiatorial combats in the theatres at Rome, that is at venues where ludi scaenici were performed, which it is difficult to regard as unreliable and which is consistent with what we know of the relationship between the theatre and gladiatorial games.

Correspondence which has come to light in the Edith Simon Archive at the National Library of Scotland concerns the translation and publication of Arthur Koestler's novel Der Sklavenkrieg in English as The Gladiators. Most of the letters were written by Koestler to the translator, Edith Simon (1917–2003), while her work was in progress. Since neither Koestler nor Simon left any detailed account of their collaboration over the translation, the letters provide new insight into the process which concluded with Jonathan Cape's publication of the English version of Koestler's novel in 1939. Koestler points to works that influenced his own writing style, and light is shed on the author-translator relationship.

At the age of twenty-five, Gn. Pompeius acquired the spectacular cognomen of Magnus. According to Plutarch (Pomp. 13), the name came either from the acclamation of his army in Africa, or at the instigation of Sulla. According to Livy, the practice began from the toadying of Pompeius' circle (‘ab adsentatione familiar’, 30.45.6). The cognomen invited play. At the Ludi Apollinares of July 59, Cicero tells us, the actor Diphilus won ‘a dozen encores’ when he pronounced, from a lost tragedy, the line ‘nostra miseria tu es magnus’. Four or five years later Catullus scored a fine hit, filching Pompeius' cognomen and giving it to his zealously competitive father-in-law: ‘Caesaris uisens monimenta magni’ (11.10). In Lucan's Bellum Civile such plays on the cognomen are elevated into something of considerable power, testifying to a consistent controlling design, of the sort which many still deny the poem.When Pompeius first appears he is compared with Caesar, to his detriment: ‘nec coiere pares’ (1.129). So much for Pompeius' vaunted intolerance of an equal, of which we have just been reminded: ‘nec quemquam iam ferre potest Caesarue priorem | Pompeiusue parem’ (125f.). Many of the images in this introductory section have a programmatic power, and will recur. With ‘nec coiere pares’ Lucan presents the two as an ill-matched pair of gladiators. The metaphor is ubiquitous. Note, in particular, 5.1–3, and 6.3, ‘parque suum uidere dei’. We are further told that Pompeius seeks ‘fama’, is a ‘popularis’, indulges the people, basks in the applause he receives from the mob in his theatre: ‘famaeque petitor | multa dare in uolgus, totus popularibus auris | impelli plausuque sui gaudere theatri’ (131–3). We will return later to this complex of ideas.

Resumo: A tradição dos filmes históricos que focalizam a figura do gladiador e dos jogos gladiatórios demonstra que para esse tipo de produção, preocupada especialmente com o entretenimento, é difícil a abordagem de certas questões concernentes à problemática dos jogos e ao seu papel na sociedade romana.Palavras-chave: literatura latina; filme histórico; jogos gladiatórios; sociedade romana antiga.Abstract: The tradition of epic films that focus on the gladiator’s figure as well as gladiatorial games has shown that this kind of production, which mainly emphasizes entertainment, turns out to be difficult approach regarding those questions related to problems of the games and their role in Roman society.Keywords: Latin literature; epic film; gladiatorial games; ancient Roman society.

W każdej tradycji zło jest zwyciężane przed dobro, ciemność przez światłość, profanum przez sacrum. Analogiczne zwycięstwo odnoszą święci, a wśród nich św. Demetriusz z Tesaloniki. Mimo iż był diakonem, w sztuce najczęściej przedstawiany jest jako żołnierz. Legenda mówi, że w więzieniu pokonał znakiem krzyża skorpiona personifikującego zło. Zamiast skorpiona może także zwyciężać gladiatora Lieusa, cesarza Maksymiana, cara Kałojana lub Turka, a czyni to konno lub pieszo, za pomocą oręża lub poprzez gest calcatio. Nie tylko mówią o św. Demetriuszu źródła historyczne, teksty liturgiczne czy literatura piękna, ale także sztuka i folklor.

Questo articolo prende in esame in quanto petrotesti tre racconti di fantascienza di Primo Levi: “Cladonia rapida” (da Storie naturali, 1966), “Ottima è l’acqua” (da Vizio di forma, 1971), e “I gladiatori” (da Lilit e altri racconti, 1981). Nello specifico, i primi due di questi racconti commentano la diffusione delle automobili, mentre il terzo si occupa di inquinamento. Pur non confrontandosi in maniera diretta con questioni ambientali, l’articolo sostiene che questi racconti, dietro il velo della fantascienza, riguardano i cambiamenti drammatici imposti al paesaggio italiano dal boom economico. L’analisi adotta la lente critica della petrocultura e, insieme, del ‘dark green’ teorizzato da Heather I. Sullivan, come strumenti per cogliere le sfaccettature e le contraddizioni della rappresentazione leviana del petrolio.

Książka Magdaleny Hasiuk jest pierwszą monografią polskiego teatru więziennego. Autorka przedstawia twórczość teatralną realizowaną współcześnie w polskich więzieniach na tle historycznym (począwszy od walk gladiatorów, poprzez akty publicznych egzekucji i kar, aż po XX-wieczną reformę systemu penitencjarnego) oraz w szerokim kontekście geograficznym (Stany Zjednoczone, Wielka Brytania, Francja, Włochy). Wiele uwagi poświęca problemom i emocjom osadzonych. Szczególnie akcentuje rolę liderek teatru więziennego. Uważa, że dzięki ich obecności instytucje penitencjarne się zmieniają. Uznaje terapeutyczną rolę teatru więziennego za jego najistotniejszy aspekt, ale jej badania idą dalej. Odwołuje się nie tylko do teorii psychologicznych i socjologicznych, ale także do dorobku kulturoznawców, teoretyków teatru i artystów. Porównuje doświadczenie uwięzienia i późniejszego zwolnienia z więzienia do rytuału. Odnajduje ślady teorii i praktyki teatralnej Brooka i Grotowskiego. Pokazuje, w jaki sposób nowe media są wykorzystywane w przedstawieniach teatru więziennego. Opisuje zarówno scenę, jak i więzienie jako przestrzeń pełną ograniczeń, które trzeba pokonać. Motyw przekraczania granic przenika całą książkę. Więźniowie, przywódcy i widzowie są tymi, którzy przekraczają takie fizyczne i wewnętrzne granice.

We review the current state of taxonomy of the oribatid mite genus Metabelba Grandjean, 1936 (Damaeidae) and present an amended generic diagnosis. In contrast to Subías (2004) we consider Allobelba Kunst, 1961 and Neobelba BulanovaZachvatkina, 1967 as separate genera, not subgenera of Metabelba. We consider the subgenus Metabelba (Parametabel- ba) Mihelčič, 1964, to be a nomen nudum and propose a new subgenus—Metabelba (Pateribelba) n. subg., with type species Metabelba (Pateribelba) sphagni Strenzke, 1950—to replace it. Pateribelba n. subg. includes species of Metabelba without the propodolateral apophysis. Together with the type species, the following named species (new combinations) belong to this subgenus: Metabelba (Pateribelba) italica (Sellnick, 1931); M. (P.) romandiolae (Sellnick, 1943); M. (P.) platynotus Grandjean, 1954; M. (P.) ericius Kunst, 1957; M. (P.) rhodopeia Kunst, 1961; M. (P.) filippovi Bulanova-Zachvatkina, 1965; M. (P.) flagelliseta Bulanova-Zachvatkina, 1965; M. (P.) monilipeda Bulanova-Zachvatkina, 1965; M. (P.) pseudoitalica Bulanova-Zachvatkina, 1965; M. (P.) paraitalica Kulijev, 1967, M. (P.) glabriseta Mahunka, 1982 and M. (P.) machadoi Pérez-Iñigo, 1986. A new species Metabelba (Pateribelba) denscanis n. sp. is described and illustrated; it is characterized mainly by the presence of a notogastral cornicle in the adult. It was found in Central Bohemia (Czech Republic), Upper Silesia (Poland) and South Tyrol (Italy). Metabelba romandiolae and M. sphagni are redescribed and illustrated. Metabelba gladiator Mihelčič, 1963 is considered to be junior synonym of M. romandiolae. Metabelba lanceolata van der Hammen, 1952 is considered to be a junior synonym of M. sphagni. We also provide a ten-tative diagnostic key of the known species of Metabelba (Pateribelba) n. subg., based on detailed study of available species and a review of literature data.

An illustrated and updated checklist of the Indian Chrysididae is presented, including synonyms and distributional summaries. The list includes 105 species in 20 genera. Six species are described as new: Elampus gladiator Rosa, sp. nov. (Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, and Uttar Pradesh), Chrysis aswathiae Rosa, sp. nov. (Tamil Nadu, elegans species group), Chrysis baldocki Rosa, sp. nov. (Tamil Nadu, smaragdula group), Chrysis bernasconii Rosa, sp. nov. (Tamil Nadu, subsinuata group), Chrysis polita Rosa, sp. nov. (West Bengal, Uttaranchal, Myanmar, ignita group), and Chrysis travancoriana Rosa, sp. nov. (Kerala and Tamil Nadu, praecipua group). Six species are newly recorded: Chrysis hecate Mocsáry, 1889; Chrysis jalala Nurse, 1902; Chrysis obscura Smith, 1860; Istiochrysis ziliolii Rosa & Xu, 2016; Praestochrysis furcifera (Bingham, 1903); Primeuchroeus siamensis (Bischoff, 1910). Two new synonymies are proposed: Chrysis abuensis Nurse, 1902, syn. nov. of Chrysis wroughtoni du Buysson, 1896b; Chrysis nursei Bingham, 1903 syn. nov. of Chrysis gujaratica Nurse, 1903a. Holopyga (Hedychridium) virescens Mocsáry, 1914 is transferred to the genus Hedychridium Abeille de Perrin, 1878; the name Hedychridium virescens (Mocsáry, 1914) results a secondary homonym of Hedychridium virescens du Buysson, 1908 and it is here replaced with the new name Hedychridium mocsaryi Rosa, nom. nov. Chrysis cotesi du Buysson, 1893, sp. resurr. is here revalidated from the previous synonymy with Chrysis palliditarsis Spinola, 1838. Chrysis bahadur Nurse, 1903a is transferred from the ignita group to the splendidula group, Chrysis bhavanae Bingham, 1903 is transferred from the ignita group to the maculicornis group, and Chrysis thakur is transferred from the smaragdula group to the oculata group. Chrysis nila Bingham, 1903 and Chrysis variipes Mocsáry, 1911 are included in the newly established nila group. Spinolia kashmirae Kimsey in Kimsey & Bohart, 1991 is classified as unnecessary replacement name. The name Parnopes oberthuri du Buysson, 1904 is here emendated into Parnopes oberthueri (currently Cephaloparnops oberthueri). Potential erroneous data, misidentifications and dubious distributional records that may exist in the literature are also identified. We examined almost all type specimens, excluding taxa described by Cameron and Smith. We provide a key to Indian genera, including those expected for the country and not yet recorded, and colour images of type and non-type specimens belonging to 82 species.

Abstract According to the mashal (parable) attributed to Shimʿon ben Yoḥai in Gen. Rab. 22:9, the murder of Abel (Gen 4:8–10) may be likened to a gladiator’s death in the arena. This article argues that the parable assumes the audience’s familiarity with gladiatorial shows, which came to an end in the early fifth century CE. Tracing the transmission of the mashal in Tanḥuma ha-Nidpas (Bereshit 9) and the earliest commentaries on Genesis Rabba, it further argues that the gladiatorial allusion was not understood after the demise of the games, and that the Tanḥuma’s version is a later reformulation. The preservation of the imagery in the earliest extant manuscripts of Genesis Rabba, despite the fact that it was not well-understood when they were produced, demonstrates the conservation of a reference to a late antique public institution in medieval copies and thus contributes to the knowledge of Genesis Rabba’s textual history.

M. Weißenberger: Gunther Martin: Divine Talk. Religious Argumentation in Demosthenes Ch. Schulze: Liliane Bodson, L’interprétation des noms grecs et latins d’animaux illustrée par le cas du zoonyme sêps-seps T. Gazzarri: La Clemenza, Apocolocyntosis, Epigrammi, Frammenti di Lucio Anneo Seneca. A cura di Luciano de Biasi, Anna Maria Fer-rero, Ermanno Malaspina e Dionigi Vottero. T. Döring: Emily Greenwood, Afro-Greeks. Dialogues Between Anglophone Caribbean Literature and Classics in the Twentieth Century M. Heil: Emmanuel Lyasse, Le Principat et son fondateur. L’utilisation de la référence à Auguste de Tibère à Trajan K. Ruffing: Dennis P. Kehoe, Law and Rural Economy in the Roman Empire H.-J. Beste: Alexander Sokolicek, Diateichismata. Zu dem Phänomen innerer Befestigungsmauern im griechischen Städtebau L. Mrozewicz: Lyudmil F. Vagalinski, Kryv i zrelišta. Sportni i gladiatorski igri w elinističeska i rimska Trakija. Blood and entertainments. Sports and gladiatorial games in Hellenistic and Roman Thrace D. Nörr: Giuliano Crifò † Personalien

The doppelgänger (literally ‘double-goer’) of 18th and 19th century European literature and lore is a sinister likeness that dogs and shadows a protagonist heralding their death or descent into madness – a ‘spectral presentiment of disaster’ (Schwartz 84). Recently the term ‘digital doppelgänger’ has been adopted by the English-speaking entertainment and technology press to refer to a digital image of an actor or performer; whether that image is a computer-generated wire-frame model, an amalgamation of old film footage and artistry, or a three dimensional laser scan of the face and body’s topography. (Magid, Chimielewski) This paper examines some of the implications of this term and its linkage to a set of anxieties about the relationship between the self and its image. According to Friedrich Kittler, media of recording and storing bodily data are central to how many of us imagine identity today. Technologies such as photography and film ushered in a ‘technological rechristening of the soul’ (149). Kittler contends that these image technologies have had an impact on identity by creating ‘mechanised likenesses [that] roam the databanks that store bodies’ (96). In this context the use of the term ‘digital doppelgänger’ suggests some kind of perceived disruption to the way identity and image, or original and copy, relate. For example, a short article in Variety, ‘Garner finds viewing her digital doppelgänger surreal’, promotes the release of the videogame version of the television show Alias. But instead of the usual emphasis on the entertainment value of the game and its potential to extend the pleasures of the televisual text, this blurb focuses on the uncanniness of an encounter between the show’s lead, Jennifer Garner, and the digitally animated game character modelled from her features (Fritz 2003). An actor’s digital likeness can be made to perform actions that are beyond the will or physicality of the actor themselves. Such images have a variety of uses. In action cinema the digital likeness often replaces the actor’s stunt double, removing much of the risk previously borne by the human body in filming explosions, car chases and acrobatic leaps. Through its multiplication or manipulation the digital doppelgänger can expand the performative limits of the actor’s body and face. These figures also have an important role in video game versions of popular action or science fiction films such as the Wachowski brothers’ Matrix trilogy. The digital doppelgänger therefore extends the capabilities of the human performer’s image, bestowing ‘superhuman’ qualities and granting it entry to interactive media forms. The most serendipitous use of these images, however, is in the completion of films where an actor has died in mid-production, as when, for instance, Oliver Reed famously passed on during the filming of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. In such cases the image literally substitutes for the once-living; its digitally animated gestures and expressions filling in for an inanimate body that can express and gesture no longer and never will again. The history of doppelgängers and doubles, you see, is intimately bound up with human mortality and the origins of image making. According to Otto Rank, the earliest connotations of the double in Indo-European lore were benign, entailing the immortality of the self. This incarnation stems from animistic beliefs in the manifestation of the soul in shadows, reflections and images (49-77) and is intimately connected to the magical origins of figurative representation. Andre Bazin argues that the most enduring form of image magic has been that concerned with rendering the subject immortal. In his essay ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’, he emphasises that the basic psychological impulse beneath the origins of the plastic arts was a desire to snatch mortal things from the indifferent flow of time – to cheat death through the creation of a substitute, a double, for the living body (9). However, by the post-Enlightenment era, Western belief in the preservative powers of the double had eroded, and subsequently, the meaning of this figure in folktales and literature came to be inverted. The double or doppelgänger became a spectral projection of the self, an ‘uncanny harbinger of death’ (Freud 324-5). Meanwhile, even as the haunted image persists as a motif in short stories, novels and film, rationally: No one believes any longer in the ontological identity of model and image, but all are agreed that the image helps us to remember the subject and to preserve him from a second spiritual death (Bazin 9). Photographic and filmic images have aided Western cultures in keeping the dead in view, saving them from being totally forgotten. These images are filled in or animated by the subjective memory of the viewer. The digital likeness, however, is birthed in a computer and made to gesture in the performer’s stead, promising not just a ‘technological rechristening of the soul’, but the possibility of future career resurrection. Ron Magid reports: Cyberware president David Addleman is hopeful that all stars will eventually stockpile their data, like the suspended bodies in Coma, just waiting for the day when technology will resurrect them for as yet undreamed-of projects. (Magid) This reference to the 1970s horror film, Coma, with its connotations of lifeless bodies and sinister scientific procedures, brings to mind unconscious forms, zombies awaiting resurrection, an actor’s image as puppet, a mindless figure forced to gesture at the control of another. These are fears of decorporealised detachment from one’s own likeness. It is a fear of the image being in exile from its referent, being endowed with the semblance of life though digital processes. In this fear we can hear the echoes of earlier anxieties about the double. But these fears also revisit earlier responses to the cinematic recording of the human image, ones that now may seem quaint to us in a culture where people fantasise of becoming media celebrities and indeed queue in their thousands for the chance. To put this into some historical perspective, it is worth noting how the figure of the double played a part in some responses to then new cinema technologies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Yuri Tsivian writes of the unease expressed in the early 1900s by Russian performers when encountering their own moving image on screen. For some the root of their discomfort was a belief that encountering their projected moving image would play havoc with their own internal self-image. For others, their unease was compounded by non-standardised projection speeds. Until the mid to late 1910s both camera and projector were cranked by hand. It was common for a projectionist to lend some haste to the action on the screen in order to finish work at the auditorium early. Early Russian writers on film were well aware of the projectionist’s role in transforming ‘calm fluent gesture’ into a ‘jerky convulsive twitch’, and making the ‘actors gesture like puppets’ (cited in Tsivian 53-54). Luigi Pirandello’s novel Shoot! from 1916 dealt with a cinema actress traumatised by the sight of her own ‘altered and disordered’ screen image (59-60). A playwright, Pirandello condemned the new media as reducing the craft of the living, breathing stage-actor to an insubstantial flickering phantom, a ‘dumb image’ subtracted from a moment of live action before the camera (105-6). Walter Benjamin refers to Pirandello’s novel in ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, recognising it as one of the first discourses on the relationship between the actor and their screen image. For Benjamin the screen actor is in exile from their image. He or she sends out his or her shadow to face the public and this decorporealised shadow heralds a diminishment of presence and aura for the audience (222). Benjamin suggests that in compensation for this diminishment of presence, the film industry ‘responds to the shrivelling of the aura with an artificial build-up of the “personality” outside the studio’ (224). The development of star-image discourse and celebrity works to collapse the split between person and decorporealised shadow, enveloping the two in the electrified glow of interconnected texts such as roles, studio publicity, glamour photography, interviews, and gossip. Star personality, celebrity scandal and gossip discourse have smoothed over this early unease, as have (importantly) the sheer ubiquity and democracy of mediated self-images. The mundane culture of home video has banished this sense of dark magic at work from the appearance of our own faces on screens. In the context of these arguments it remains to be seen what impact the ‘digital doppelgänger’ will have on notions of public identity and stardom, concepts of cinematic performance and media immortality. Further research is also required in order to uncover the implications of the digital double for the image cultures of indigenous peoples or for cinema industries such as Bollywood. As for the term ‘digital doppelgänger’ itself, perhaps with ubiquity and overuse, its older and more sinister connotations will be gradually papered over and forgotten. The term ‘doppelgänger’ suggests a copy that threatens its original with usurpation, but it may be that the digital doppelgänger functions in a not dissimilar way to the waxwork models at Madame Tussauds – as a confirmation of a celebrity’s place in the media galaxy, wholly reliant on the original star for its meaning and very existence. References Bazin, A. “The Ontology of the Photographic Image.” What is Cinema? Ed./Trans. Hugh Gray. Berkeley & London: U of California P, 1967. 9-16. Benjamin, W. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. London: Fonatan, 1992. 211-44. Chimielewski, D. “Meet Sunny’s Digital Doppelganger.” The Age (5 January 2005). http://www.theage.com.au/news/Film/Meet-Sunnys-digital-doppelganger/2005/01/04/1104601340883.html>. Freud, S. “The ‘Uncanny.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. Ed. James Strachey, Anna Freud et al. Vol. xvii (1917-19). London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1955. 219-52. Fritz, B. “Garner Finds Viewing Her Digital Doppelganger Surreal.” Variety (27 August 2003). http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=upsell_article&articleID=VR1117891622&cs=1>. Kittler, F. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Trans. and intro. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz. Stanford, California: Stanford UP, 1999. Magid, R. “New Media: Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Wired News (March 1998). http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,10645,00.html>. Parisi, P. “Silicon Stars: The New Hollywood.” Wired (December 1995): 144-5, 202-10. http:www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,10645,00.html>. Pirandello, L. Shoot! (Si Gira) The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematographer Operator. Trans. C.F. Scott Moncrieff. New York: E.P. Dutton and Co.,1926. Rank, O. The Double: A Psychoanalytical Study. Trans./ed. Harry Tucker, Jr. North Carolina: U of North Carolina P, 1971. Schwartz, H. The Culture of the Copy: Striking Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimiles. New York: Zone, 1996. Tsivian, Y. Early Russian Cinema and Its Cultural Reception. Trans. A. Bodger. Ed. R. Taylor. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1998. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Bode, Lisa. "Digital Doppelgängers." M/C Journal 8.3 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0507/07-bode.php>. APA Style Bode, L. (Jul. 2005) "Digital Doppelgängers," M/C Journal, 8(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0507/07-bode.php>.