Bodies and Boundaries in Graeco-Roman Antiquity

Thorsten Fӧgen & Mireille M. Lee (eds). (2009). Berlin: De Gruyter.     

The intent behind this volume is to look at the different ways in which bodies, human or otherwise, engage with and become an integral part of the world around them. This investigation falls into several parts: “The Body in Performance”, “The Erotic Body”, “The Dressed Body”, “Pagan and Christian Bodies”, and “Animal Bodies and Human Bodies”. This final section provides interesting discussion of the blurring of hard boundaries between humans and animals in ancient art. The first chapter is focussed on mythological metamorphoses of human figures into animals (e.g. Actaeon being turned into a stag) on Archaic and early classical Attic vases, looking at how a still and unmoving image can capture a moment of great change as its character(s) move from one body to another. The second chapter in this section turns its attention to Greek animal statues and their initial usage for Greek votive rituals or as protection for religious sanctuaries and then their later use by the Romans who interpreted them as representations or portraits of specific animals that aided humanity.

Example quotation

This perspective brings to the fore what is most problematic about embodiment: its materiality. On the one hand having a body is a property that stretches across a continuum ranging from the divine down to inanimate objects. On the other the order of the universe depends on the observance of the hierarchy of god, man, beast, thing; that of society on the ranking of its members by social status and gender. The very order of things, then, hinges on the creation of difference between one category of bodies and the next.

(p.7)