Statues and Cities - Honorific Portraits and Civic Identity in the Hellenistic World

Why say thank you with a portrait statue? This book combines two different and quite specialized fields, archaeology and epigraphy, to explore the phenomenon of portraits in ancient art within the historical and anthropological context of city-states honouring worthy individuals through erecting statues, and the development of families imitating this practice. This transaction tells us a lot about the history of these cities and how ancient art worked as a construction of relations during the Hellenistic period (c. 350 BC-c. AD 1), which is marked by a political culture of civic devotion, common decision making, and publicness. As honorific statues were considered public art, the volume also investigates the workings of images, representations, memory, and the monumental public form of permanent inscription, to see what stories the Hellenistic city-states can reveal about themselves.

Product details

• Authors: John Ma, John (Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History Ma, Ma John
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 11.06.2015
• EAN: 9780198738930
• ISBN: 978-0-19-873893-0
• No. of pages: 410
• Dimensions: 190 mm x 250 mm x 30 mm
• Series: Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture & Representation; Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture & Representation; Oxford Studies in Ancient Cult; Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture Representation
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Plastic arts; Non-fiction book; HISTORY / Ancient / General, ART / History / Ancient & Classical, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Archaeology, History of Art, Ancient World, Ancient History, Classical history / classical civilisation, Archaeology by period / region, Ancient history: to c 500 CE, Classical style, History of art: ancient & classical art,BCE to c 500 CE, Classical Greek & Roman archaeology