Papers by Marina Prusac-Lindhagen
Nationalism and the Politicization of History in the Former Yugoslavia, 2021
Symbolae Osloenses, 2011
... The last example of a representation of Eudaimonia – on a volute-crater from Ruvo in ... In S... more ... The last example of a representation of Eudaimonia – on a volute-crater from Ruvo in ... In Salomon Reinach's antiquated repertoire of Greek and Roman statues from the early twentieth century ... sea was always a happy event, considering the many dangers of maritime trade.35 ...
Negotiating Memory from the Romans to the Twenty-First Century, 2020
Ehrenheim, H. v. and M. Prusac-Lindhagen, eds. Reading Roman Emotions. Visual and Textual Interpretations. Acta Instituti Romani Regni Sueciae, Series in 4º, 64, 2020
Beginning of chapter: There is a fresh interest in the role that emotions have played in historic... more Beginning of chapter: There is a fresh interest in the role that emotions have played in historical processes and past events. Revolutions have for example not only been driven by ideologies, but also by societal demands for changes, fuelled by collective emotions. Religious transformations have often derived from dissimilar readings of holy texts, but also from collective experiences of disappointment and hope. Political sympathies have been nurtured and emotions have been manipulated in public as well as in the private sphere. The more we understand of the role that emotions have played in the past, the better equipped we will be at understanding the functions and forces of emotions in present-day cultures and societies. Throughout history, visual and textual media have been used to convey messages or as tools for ideological, political, religious, or other cultural and social purposes. The material culture of ancient Rome is a potential gold mine of information with regard to emotions when socially and affectively contextualized. This volume is a contribution to the study of culturally bound emotions and emotional response in ancient Rome. Approaches to the study of ancient emotions and how they were culturally specific, appreciated and understood have recently come to the centre of attention, but not so much in the visual as in the literary culture. One of the reasons may be the imminent danger of drawing arbitrary conclusions on the basis of individual interpretations of what something may “look like” or “seem like”. Fear of subjectively drawn conclusions has discouraged psychological studies of art, and rightly so...
by Karoline Kjesrud, Nanna Løkka, Marina Prusac-Lindhagen, Unn Pedersen, Zanette Glørstad, Hanne Lovise Aannestad, Margrethe C. Stang, Ragnhild M . Bø, Bjørn Bandlien, Ingvil Brügger Budal, and Frode Iversen Dronningen i vikingtid i middelalder.
Ehrenheim, H. v. and M. Prusac-Lindhagen (eds) Reading Roman Emotions. Visual and Textual Interpretations. Acta Instituti Romani Regni Sueciae, Series in 4º, 64, 2020
The history of emotions offers a new approach to Roman portrait studies. Emotions are here unders... more The history of emotions offers a new approach to Roman portrait studies. Emotions are here understood as collective, with modes of expression that are shared and recognizable to members of a society. Earlier research on the psychology of Roman portraits was influenced by the 20th century’s arbitrary interpretations of facial expressions, and ancient sources relating to famous individuals and their character. Emotion historical perspectives differ from the individual character descriptions as they rather provides a theoretical framework for the understanding of how the imperial portraits responded to the collective emotions of the people. Collective emotions were expressed by shared reactions to changes in society that for example could be caused by political events or ideological and religious transformations. In the portrait arts, some of these reactions can be viewed as physically manifested, or as frozen facial expressions responding to collective emotions. The Roman imperial portraits can be seen as the mirror images of what the people longed for.
Acta ad Archaeologiam et Artivm Historiam Pertinentia 30: 16, 2018
Portraits of a group of thirty kosmētai, public philosophy teachers in Athens, were found among t... more Portraits of a group of thirty kosmētai, public philosophy teachers in Athens, were found among the fill in the Valerian Wall by the Roman Agora in Athens in 1861. From the Hellenistic period onwards, the kosmētai had taught the philosophy of Aristotle, though with time, the teaching became more varied. In the first century AD the number of students had a peak of three hundred a year. In the third century, when the portraits were buried in the Valerian Wall, the number of students had decreased, much as it had in other pedagogic institutions. The activity of the kosmētai ended about AD 280, when the Valerian Wall was built. The dating of the Valerian Wall is based on coins with the portrait of emperor Probus (AD 276-282), which have been found among the building debris. What we know about the kosmētai from the written sources leads to several questions, such as why the kosmētai portraits were used as building material at a time when the identity of the sitters could still be remembered. Why were some of the portraits recut into those of other individuals shortly before they were put into the wall? Some of the kosmētai portraits were produced, recut and discarded during the span of a few decades. This paper discusses the portraits of the kosmētai and their significance in Roman Athens, and explores questions related to the disposal of them, as well as to context, style, workshop and patronage.
Historien om Helena og hennes sønn, keiser Konstantin den Store, er historien om seieren, korset,... more Historien om Helena og hennes sønn, keiser Konstantin den Store, er historien om seieren, korset, kappen og tronen, og om forholdet mellom keiser-og keiserinne-makt og religion. Det er også begynnelsen på historien om den rollen keiserinner og dronninger har spilt som religiøse forbilder og idealer i politisk kultur, og om hvordan de har kommunisert gjennom symboler og praksiser. Fremfor alt handler denne historien om en dronnings rolle i en av de største transformasjonene som har funnet sted i Europas historie: overgangen fra gresk-romersk hedensk til kristen tid. Dette kapitlet handler med andre ord om Helena i rollen som dronningidealet fremfor noe annet, som har påvirket ideen om hva en dronning er, og skulle vaere, fra antikken og frem til i dag. Hun fikk en unik posisjon som moren til Konstantin, keiseren som gjorde kristendommen lovlig. Helena som karakter, hennes politiske autoritet, og den religiøse fromheten hun brukte som et politisk virkemiddel, dannet grunnlaget for europeiske dronninger gjennom middelalderen, slik mange av bidragene i denne boken viser. I virkeligheten var hun sannsynligvis datteren til en vertshuseier. Figur 1. Sittende statue av Helena fra Kapitolmuseet i Roma. Portrettet er omarbeidet fra et tidligere portrett av keiserinne Faustina den yngre, fra det andre århundre. Portrettet av Helena er fra det fjerde århundre e. Kr. Gjenbruket av skulpturen var ikke tilfeldig. Faustina den yngre var keiser Marcus Aurelius' hustru, og sammen utgjorde de et godt likt par, som var kjent for sin fromhet.
COMUNICATO STAMPA Roma, 16 marzo 2016 Dopo oltre trent'anni riapre al pubblico con una mostra San... more COMUNICATO STAMPA Roma, 16 marzo 2016 Dopo oltre trent'anni riapre al pubblico con una mostra Santa Maria Antiqua, la basilica nel Foro Romano scoperta nel 1900 alle pendici del Palatino. La chiesa conserva sulle pareti un patrimonio di pitture unico nel mondo cristiano del primo millennio, databile dal VI al IX secolo, quando fu abbandonata a seguito dei crolli del terremoto dell'847.
This paper will examine changes in burial ritual from the perspective of the evolving cultural id... more This paper will examine changes in burial ritual from the perspective of the evolving cultural identities which appeared in Illyria/Dalmatia in the early Roman period. Different cultural identities were expressed through burial customs among Illyrians and Romans respectively in the earliest period of Roman rule, and later mainly through the iconography of grave stelae and sarcophagi. The variation in cultural identities in Illyria, especially in the imperial period, probably reflects a similarly rich spectrum of religious beliefs and therefore also different burial rituals. Numerous grave stelae from Dalmatia illustrate the combination of indigenous iconography and Roman epigraphic tradition, which was a hybrid result of the encounters between Illyrian and Roman funerary cultures. Hybrid elements reveal that memories of the indigenous past were transformative and individually manageable cultural values. Over time, however, burial customs changed into a predominantly ‘Roman’ style, as also seen in other parts of the Roman Empire, but they were not ‘standardized’. In the following it is argued that the changes and adjustments in burial rituals that took place during the ‘Romanization’ of Dalmatia allowed for new expressions of individual ideas about the afterlife.
Keywords
Illyria, Dalmatia, burial ritual, changes, cultural encounters, hybrid memories
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Papers by Marina Prusac-Lindhagen
Keywords
Illyria, Dalmatia, burial ritual, changes, cultural encounters, hybrid memories
Keywords
Illyria, Dalmatia, burial ritual, changes, cultural encounters, hybrid memories
Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love…
Suns can set and rise again: we when once our brief light
has set must sleep through a perpetual night.
Give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred…
Catullus 84–54 BC
A love poem. A reminder that everything must die. But also, that some things are eternal. Words are easy to understand, but emotions can also be retrieved from things. An image of a god or ruler conveys respect or reverence to those who have power. Funerary art reveals hope of an eternal life. A gift can be given out of love, and a drinking cup can bear witness to the joys of gathering around a table. This book is produced at the occasion of an exhibition with a table set with items that allow us to glimpse emotions from Antiquity and ancient Egypt. Some emotions can be understood across time and space, others are culturally defined. Emotions can be manipulated and controlled. They have overturned regimes and started wars. But it is in the small and everyday things that we come to meet the individual.
Norwegian version:
La oss leve, Lesbia, og elske…
Solen kan synke og gjenoppstå, mens
vi må dø med vårt korte lys, for vår søvn
er en evig natt. Gi meg tusen kyss,
og hundre til…
Catull 84-54 f.Kr.
Et kjærlighetsdikt. En påminnelse om at alt må dø. Men også om at noe er evig. Ordene er lette å forstå, men følelser kan også leses ut av ting. Et bilde av en gud eller hersker forteller om respekt eller ærefrykt for den som har makt. Gravkunst handler ofte om sorg, men også om håp om et liv etter døden. En gave kan bli gitt i kjærlighet, og et vinbeger vitner om bordets gleder. Denne boken er produsert i forbindelse med en utstilling der et bord er dekket med gjenstander som bærer med seg glimt av følelser fra antikken og det gamle Egypt. Noen følelser kan forstås på tvers av tid og rom, andre er kulturelt betinget. Følelser kan manipuleres og kontrolleres. De har veltet regimer og startet kriger. Men det er i de små og hverdagslige tingene vi kan møte det enkelte menneske.