Divine Images and Human Imaginations in Ancient Greece and Rome. This item is unavailable.Divine Images and Human Imaginations in Ancient Greece and Rome

The polytheistic religious systems of ancient Greece and Rome reveal an imaginative attitude towards the construction of the divine. One of the most important instruments in this process was certainly the visualisation. Images of the gods transformed the divine world into a visually experienceable entity, comprehensible even without a theoretical or theological superstructure. For the illiterates, images were together with oral traditions and rituals the only possibility to approach the idea of the divine; for the intellectuals, images of the gods could be allegorically transcended symbols to reflect upon. Based on the art historical and textual evidence, this volume offers a fresh view on the historical, literary, and artistic significance of divine images as powerful visual media of religious and intellectual communication.

Joannis Mylonopoulos, Ph.D. (2001) in Classical Archaeology, University of Heidelberg, is Assistant Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. He has published extensively on the archaeology of Greek religion including Πελοπόννησος οἰκητήριον Ποσειδῶνος. Heiligtümer und Kulte des Poseidon auf der Peloponnes (CIERGA, 2003) and Archäologie und Ritual (Phoibos, 2006).