Book contents
- The Death of Myth on Roman Sarcophagi
- Greek Culture in the Roman World
- The Death of Myth on Roman Sarcophagi
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Text
- Introduction
- One Myth a Casualty of Christianity
- Two Bucolic Sarcophagi and Elite Retreat
- Three Refuge from the Third-Century Crisis
- Four Culture, Status, and Rising Populism
- Five Myth Abstracted
- Six Distinguishing the Mythological
- Seven Conclusion
- Eight Coda
- Works Cited
- Index of Objects by City/Museum
- General Index
Seven - Conclusion
Myth, History, and the Desire for Proximity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2023
Book contents
- The Death of Myth on Roman Sarcophagi
- Greek Culture in the Roman World
- The Death of Myth on Roman Sarcophagi
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Text
- Introduction
- One Myth a Casualty of Christianity
- Two Bucolic Sarcophagi and Elite Retreat
- Three Refuge from the Third-Century Crisis
- Four Culture, Status, and Rising Populism
- Five Myth Abstracted
- Six Distinguishing the Mythological
- Seven Conclusion
- Eight Coda
- Works Cited
- Index of Objects by City/Museum
- General Index
Summary
This chapter unveils the author’s view of what was at stake in demythologization: the viewer’s attitude to chronology, to temporality, to characters defined by their residence in earlier time. For confirmation of this claim, the chapter studies archaeological evidence from Rome’s suburbium, examining the altered spatial relationships between house and tomb that came to dominate in the Late Empire. This reveals what was at stake in the third-century disappearance of mythic figures from sarcophagi: new demands among the living, manifested in multiple domains of Roman life, for greater proximity to their dead.
Keywords
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- Information
- The Death of Myth on Roman SarcophagiAllegory and Visual Narrative in the Late Empire, pp. 197 - 214Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022