9. Image in Distress? The death of Meleager on Roman sarcophagi

Lorenz, Katharina

doi:10.1515/9783110216783.309

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“…See furtherElsner 1995: 33-9; 2007: 128- 31; Neer 2010. 18 The mode of viewing invited is more expansive than the approach to the 'openness' of sarcophagi in Zanker and Ewald 2012: 49, which privileges artistic intention, and 51, on 'narrative "excess"'.19 See especiallyKoortbojian 1995: 49, 132-5;Zanker 1999;Lorenz 2011;Zanker 2012; J. Balty 2013. 20 On sarcophagi as narrative and allegory, see especially Giuliani 1989: 37-9.…”

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Death by Analogy: Identity Crises on a Roman Sarcophagus

Clifford

2023

J. Rom. Stud.

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This article examines how images on a sarcophagus involved Roman viewers in processes of thinking by analogy and so invited them to engage in meditation on death. This more thanatological slant is sidelined in current approaches that emphasise how exemplary figures on sarcophagi consoled the bereaved and praised the dead. Building on these approaches, together with work on the mediating role played by artefacts in thought, this article proposes that analogies on sarcophagi also invited the living to think about their own death and the possibilities and limitations of analogy for thanatological reflection. It argues, further, that sarcophagi should be read more expansively, allowing for figures and scenes to have more than one identity rather than collapsing them into one: this multiplicity reinforces meditation on death. The article focuses on Roman sarcophagi that feature Adonis, with emphasis on the Rinuccini sarcophagus; this unusual sarcophagus explicitly juxtaposes real-life and mythological scenes.

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Death by Analogy: Identity Crises on a Roman Sarcophagus

Clifford

2023

J. Rom. Stud.

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Retelling Greek Myths on Roman Sarcophagi

Newby

2022

The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography

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This chapter focuses on the mythological narratives that decorated Roman sarcophagi of the 2nd to 3rd centuries ce, considering how they might be read and understood within the wider framework of mythography. It considers how they compare to different types of mythography—systematic mythography that collects and organises myths into coherent accounts, and interpretative mythography, which seeks to explain myths by rationalising them, or reading them as allegories of philosophical or ethical truths. These two approaches are first discussed with relation to two different retellings of the myth of Theseus and Ariadne. The chapter then looks at the thematic grouping of myths on sarcophagi before turning to discuss the ways that the mythological narratives of the deaths of Hector and Patroclus were treated differently on sarcophagi produced in different areas of the Roman world. Mythological sarcophagi selected from the wider corpus of myths those which could be particularly related to the funerary context. However, individual retellings could vary between more narrative versions, where the funerary message was left open for the viewer or purchaser to create, to those where the funerary symbolism was more explicitly stated by the use of particular visual techniques such as adding portrait features, or by displaying comparable mythological stories together.

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9. Image in Distress? The death of Meleager on Roman sarcophagi

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Death by Analogy: Identity Crises on a Roman Sarcophagus

Death by Analogy: Identity Crises on a Roman Sarcophagus

Retelling Greek Myths on Roman Sarcophagi

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