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| 1 | The Greeks painted their statues. This fact is not readily accepted even by specialists, as some mistaken translations and misinterpretations of the ancient sources amply testify. In the paper I analyze the most famous ancient testimonies and suggest, in some cases, their correct Russian translations. Thus, andrianta graphonta (Plato, Rep. 420 c 4) must be understood as an indication of painting of a statue, rather than a picture; equally well, circumlitio in Seneca (Letter LXXXVI) is related to a colorful painting, not waxing as some authors still think, etc. Ancient techniques of painting are finally illustrated by an outstanding example: a reconstruction of the funeral statue of a beautiful girl, called Phrasikleia (Athenian National Museum; Brinkmann et al. 2010). Keywords: ancient aesthetics, scientific reconstruction of art objects, painting, colors, Greek statues, Euripides, Plato, Pliny, Seneca, Quintilian, Plutarch | 2234 | ||||
| 2 | Describing Pythagoras’ activities in Croton Iamblichus summarizes the content of his public speeches addressed to young men, to the Thousand who governed the city, as well as children and women of Croton. The earliest evidences about the Pythagoras’ speeches, available to us are found in an Athenian rhetorician and a pupil of Socrates Antisthenes (450–370 BCE), the historians Dicearchus and Timaeus, and Isocrates. In the present paper I consider the content of the Pythagoras’ speeches, preserved by Iamblichus, in more details, in order to suggest a new interpretation of the famous grave relief from the Antikensammlung, Berlin (Sk 1462). The relief, found in an “Olive grove on the road to Eleusis” and dated to the first century BCE, presents an image of a sitting half-naked bearded man with a young man, also half-naked, standing behind his chair, and a group of peoples consisting of a child, an older man and a woman, standing in front of him. Our attention attracts a big and clear image of the letter “Psi” above the scene. The comparison of the content of Pythagoras’ speeches with the picture given on the relief allows us to interpret the image as following: we suggest that the sitting man, undoubtedly a philosopher, could be a Pythagorean or Pythagoras himself; he is attended by his pupil and gives speeches to different groups of peoples, symbolically represented as a young man, a public agent, a woman and a child. Admittedly, the letter “Psi” symbolizes the Pythagorean teaching about psyche (the soul), and the relief itself, contrary to general opinion, was initially designed to adorn a school or a private building rather than a funeral monument. An alternative interpretation suggested is that the sitting figure could be a wandering physician. Keywords: the images of philosophers, Pythagoras, plastic art, schools in antiquity, Asclepius | 1605 | ||||
| 3 | This work is dedicated to the history of Academy in Athens in early and late periods of its existence. I will first consider Academy in the time of Plato and then switch to the Athenian school of Neoplatonism (“the House of Proclus”) in the period of late antiquity. Using both archaeological and written evidences, fortunately sufficient in case of both of these institutions, I intend to draw a picture of their physical location and structure. Such an attitude towards the history, typical to the Annales School, will help us to place intellectual life of the ancients in proper everyday context. There is one more reason why I have chosen these objects. One can say that these two institutions represent two different approaches to the way of life and the methods of education. On the one hand, one can see here the evolution of educational system from free discourses to more familiar for our educational system formal instructions. On the other hand, Plato’s Academy reminds us of the contemporary tendency of organizing scientific life far from the densely populated cities in the form of university’s campuses, which, to some extent, constitutes a return to the classical paradigm. Keywords: topography of Athens, Plato’s Academy, Gymnasium, Square Peristyle, exedra, Athenian school of Neoplatonism, Proclus, Marin, university | 1328 | ||||
| 4 | A large number of studies have analysed the Dionysian mysteries, but it is still difficult to create a complete picture of this phenomenon. This is due to the very essence of the subject under study. The Dionysian mysteries are a set of practices and teachings that have never been institutionalised and, probably, at a certain stage of their existence merged with the Orphic and Eleusinian cults. Leaving aside the content part of the Dionysian mysteries, the article presents the visual-material side of the cult, where, with reference to ancient evidence, an attempt is made to answer the following questions: What territories were covered by this cult? Who took part in them? What could be the external side of the ritual? What actions could be performed, and what objects were used for this purpose? Obviously, the Dionysian mysteries cannot be considered in isolation from the general religious environment, in particular from the popular Eleusinian and Samothracian mysteries. Nevertheless, the objective of this study is to isolate the peculiar elements characteristic of this particular cult. When we speak of the mysteries, we mean to speak of the deep psychological involvement of the participants and specific experiences; otherwise, this type of religiosity would not have acquired its special status in ancient Greek religious culture. In the present study, the question of the nature of the mental state of the participant in a mystery is only partially touched upon, in the place where it refers to the outwardly visible features of behaviour to which the ancient authors drew attention. There were several reasons why people sought to participate in mysteries. Participants had a new religious experience, previously unknown and impossible in the context of an urban or all-Hellenic festival. It is an individual experience. Whether it is connected with the direct experience of meeting the deity is not known. Most likely it is connected with deep personal feelings, caused by the unusualness of what was happening, special rules of behaviour and restrictions on disclosure of the secrets of what was seen and heard. On the other hand, maybe it was just a desire to get out of the ordinary and feel emotionally renewed. The second reason is receiving new information. The sources keep silent about its content because the initiates were not supposed to reveal the secret. In modern studies, there are assumptions about the nature of this information; most likely it was related to the posthumous existence of the soul. In this article, the content of the mystery teachings is touched upon only when it sheds light on the place, time, or appearance of the participant. Unfortunately, many works on the reconstruction of the Dionysian doctrine are too speculative in nature, when researchers either over-extend and generalise the content of the doctrine, making it universal, or come to the conclusion that no peculiar Dionysian mysteries existed, and what is known by this name is only a part of some other cult. That is why in the present work an attempt is made, firstly, to concentrate only on the material-visual side of the question, and, secondly, having narrowed the area of consideration, still to characterise the Dionysian mysteries as a really existing cult. Keywords: Dionysus, Bacchus, mystery, Orphism, Eleusis, maenadism | 40 | ||||