Personification, the anthropomorphic representation of any
non-human thing, is a ubiquitous feature of ancient Greek
literature and art. Natural phenomena (earth, sky, rivers), places
(cities, countries), divisions of time (seasons, months, a
lifetime), states of the body (health, sleep, death), emotions
(love, envy, fear), and political concepts (victory, democracy,
war) all appear in human, usually female, form. Some have only
fleeting incarnations, others become widely-recognised figures, and
others again became so firmly established as deities in the
imagination of the community that they received elements of cult
associated with the Olympian gods. Though often seen as a feature
of the Hellenistic period, personifications can be found in
literature, art and cult from the Archaic period onwards; with the
development of the art of allegory in the Hellenistic period, they
came to acquire more 'intellectual' overtones; the use of allegory
as an interpretative tool then enabled personifications to survive
the advent of Christianity, to remain familiar figures in the art
and literature of Late Antiquity and beyond. The twenty-one papers
presented here cover personification in Greek literature, art and
religion from its pre-Homeric origins to the Byzantine period.
Classical Athens features prominently, but other areas of both
mainland Greece and the Greek East are well represented. Issues
which come under discussion include: problems of identification and
definition; the question of gender; the status of personifications
in relation to the gods; the significance of personification as a
literary device; the uses and meanings of personification in
different visual media; personification as a means of articulating
place, time and worldly power. The papers reflect the enormous
range of contexts in which personification occurs, indicating the
ubiquity of the phenomenon in the ancient Greek world.
General
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