Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and Religion

by Verity Platt

• ISBN13: 9780521861717
• ISBN10: 0521861713
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-09-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This is the first history of epiphany as both a phenomenon and as a cultural discourse within the Graeco-Roman world, exploring divine manifestations and their representations, in visual terms as well as in literary, historical and epigraphic accounts. Verity Platt sets the cultural analysis of epiphany within a historical framework that explores its development from the archaic period into the Roman empire. In particular, a surprisingly large number of the images that have survived from antiquity are not only religious, but epiphanically charged. Verity Platt argues that the enduring potential for divine incursions into mortal experience provides a structure of cognitive reliability that supports both ancient religion and mythology. At the same time, Graeco-Roman culture exhibits a sophisticated awareness of the difficulties of the apprehension of deity, the representation of divine presence, and the potential for the manmade sign to lead the worshipper back to an unmediated epiphanic encounter.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. viii
Acknowledgements	p. xiii
Note on the text	p. xv
List of abbreviations	p. xvi
Introduction	p. 1
	p. 29
Framing epiphany in art and text	p. 31
Material epiphany: encountering the divine in cult images	p. 77
Epiphany and authority in Hellenistic Greece	p. 124
The poetics of epiphany in Hellenistic epigram	p. 170
	p. 213
Virtual visions: piety and paideia in Second Sophistic literature	p. 215
Dream visions and cult images in Second Sophistic literature	p. 253
The apologetics of representation in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana	p. 293
	p. 333
Dying to see: epiphanic sarcophagi from imperial Rome	p. 335
Bibliography	p. 394
Index	p. 470
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