Search results for "Roman culture"

Review of S. D. Smith, Man and Animal in Severan Rome: The Literary Imagination of Claudius Aelianus' (Cambridge, CUP, 2014)

2015

Through a detailed review of S. D. Smith's book on Aelian's De Natura Animalium, the present article discusses relevant trends and debates in the study of the ancient representation of animals.

Coming to Know Epicurus’ Truth: Distributed Cognition in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura

2020

Until recently, Descartes' idea that the human mind is, by definition, a non-extended entity (res cogitans, non extensa), enclosed in the body but constitutionally different from common bodily and external realities, found wide acceptance among students of cognitive sciences. But in the past few years the barriers between outer and inner worlds have begun to blur, projecting the process of cognition as a complex distributed phenomenon. According to the so-called distributed cognition thesis (and its more “radical” version, the extended mind hypothesis), “the thinker in this world is a very special medium that can provide coordination among many structured media – some internal, some externa…

Review of M. Beretta, La rivoluzione culturale di Lucrezio. Filosofia e scienza nell'antica Roma (Rome: Carocci, 2015)

2018

By reviewing Marco Beretta's recent book on Lucretius' "cultural revolution" and its intellectual foundations, the present article re-assesses several key issues of the current debate about the literary, philosophical, and scientific value of De Rerum Natura.

Evil, Progress, and Fall: Moral Readings of Time and Cultural Development in Roman Literature and Philosophy

2014

L'identità individuale: doppi e gemelli - L'identità collettiva: cittadino vs straniero

2021

The article, which is part of a new 'encyclopaedic' assessment of ancient myth, offers a general overview of the socio-anthropological models underlying some of the most well-known Roman myths about twins, Doppelgänger, and foreigners.

Physiologizing (In)fertility in the Roman World: Lucretius on Sacrifice, Nature, and Generation

2016

The present paper reassesses the intellectual background of Lucretius’ treatment of infertility in 4.1233-1241, pointing out the author’s ability to combine genuine Epicurean doctrine and Roman cultural patterns. Lucretius’ denigration of religious mentality and his efforts to offer an entirely rational explanation of (in)fertility are interpreted in light of both internal evidence in the De Rerum Natura (e.g. 1.1-20; 248-264; 2.581- 660) and differents kinds of external evidence - including the so-called Laudatio Turiae, Rome’s fertility cults, and underused Epicurean sources such as PHerc 908/1390. Indeed, while systematically delegitimizing the traditional connection between supernatural…

Barking at the Threshold

2019

Over the past few years, students of ancient Mediterranean societies have shown consistent interest in the cultural construction of dogs as reflected in texts, artefacts, and other media. However, whereas the cultural and literary implications of the Greek representation of dogs have been the subject of thorough investigations, Roman dogs have remained at the margins of the scholarly debate. By adopting an interdisciplinary methodology that combines cognitive theory, rhetorical analysis, and socio-anthropological research, the present paper discusses some affordances of dogs (in the terms of James Gibson’s 'ecological approach to visual perception') that are given special significance withi…