Myth, Ethos, and Actuality: Official Art in Fifth Century B.C. Athens (Wisconsin Studies in Classics) - Softcover

David Castriota

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0299133540 ISBN 13: 9780299133542

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992

Synopsis

Using material remains, as well as the evidence of contemporary Greek history, rhetoric, and poetry, David Castriota interprets the Athenian monuments as vehicles of an official ideology intended to celebrate and justify the present in terms of the past.

    Castriota focuses on the strategy of ethical antithesis that asserted Greek moral superiority over the “barbaric” Persians, whose invasion had been repelled a generation earlier.  He examines how, in major public programs of painting and sculpture, the leading artists of the period recast the Persians in the guise of wild and impious mythic antagonists to associate them with the ethical flaws or weaknesses commonly ascribed to women, animals, and foreigners.  The Athenians, in contrast, were compared to mythic protagonists representing the excellence and triumph of Hellenic culture.

    Castriota’s study is innovative in emphasizing the ethical implication of mythic precedents, which required substantial alterations to render them more effective as archetypes for the defense of Greek culture against a foreign, morally inferior enemy.  The book looks in new ways at how the patrons and planners sought to manipulate viewer response through the selective presentation or repackaging of mythic traditions.

About this title

About the Author

David Castriota is assistant professor of art history at Duke University. 

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0299133540
• ISBN 13: 9780299133542
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320