Ancient Identity

It is widely accepted that the Liburni, at some point in the Iron Age, ruled over much of the Adriatic. Professor Slobodan Čače was the first scholar to truly challenge these narratives through a critique of the written sources.  The aim of this paper is to build upon the work of Čače in seeking to rethink identities in pre-Roman Liburnia through analysis of ancient literary sources. It also takes a multidisciplinary approach, and seeks to address ideas about identity and cultural change through material culture. A re- examination is undertaken into Liburnian identity through archaeological evidence, and the transformations it apparently went through during the Iron Age, focusing on ideas about ethno-cultural identities and ‘Hellenization’ in interpretations of developments in Liburnia during the last 4 centuries BCE.

This paper discusses two Roman reliefs from the Dalmatian hinterland, one of the goddess Diana from Proložac near Imotski, the other of the girl Lupa from Sovići near Grude in Herzegovina. Earlier scholarly discussions ascribed artistic values to the portrait of Lupa, while the relief of Diana was considered as superb crafstmanship, but artistically inferior to Lupa’s portrait. Using these two portraits as a case study, the paper will question the existing approaches to Dalmatian provincial art, in particular the notion that Graeco-Roman visual rhetoric was artistically superior to local, provincial interpretations.

This paper will deal with several instances of reclaiming the past using the example of the use of Iron Age Iapodean stone cinerary urns in Roman times. While only a few examples of this practice/phenomenon are known, the reuse and reinvention of these urns provides at least some insight into strategies of the construction of individual identities through self-presentation in this part of the Roman world.

Este artigo explora o emprego, por Luciano, de material paradoxográfico em suas introduções retóricas, prolaliai, como uma retórica oblíqua de autorreferência. Especialmente, mostra que o material paradoxográfico, gradualmente estabelecendo sofisticados paradigmas para a recepção do novo e da alteridade, é parte de uma estratégia requintada, um sistema referencial complexo, através do qual Luciano define sua poética e reflete o clima cultural multifacetado de sua época, em que tenta estabelecer a si mesmo como, paradoxalmente, uma identidade tanto heterodoxa quanto ortodoxa.

"Crise de l'identité collective, revendications communautaires, évolution des modèles sociopolitiques : autant de problématiques qui, malgré leur actualité et leur apparente modernité, constituaient déjà des défis majeurs dans l'Antiquité. Pour qui s'intéresse à la formation, à la transmission et à l’évolution des formes d’autoreprésentation collective, le monde romain offre de fait un champ d’investigation privilégié, où les diverses communautés politiques, sociales ou littéraires n’ont eu de cesse d’interroger les fondements de leur identité en érigeant des figures modèles ou des contre-modèles.


Fruit de réflexions menées pendant plusieurs années à l’ENS de Lyon par le laboratoire junior EMCA – Étude des Modèles Culturels dans l’Antiquité –, cet ouvrage aborde la question de l’histoire des origines de la cité et des grands hommes du passé, des pratiques sociales de la vie quotidienne ou encore de la perception des différents genres poétiques. Patronné par M. André Laronde, il réunit les travaux de seize chercheurs, littéraires et historiens, qui, par ces regards croisés, lancent des éclairages nouveaux sur la question de l’identité collective dans le monde romain."

The article offers a comparative analysis of the data in Armenian, English, French and Russian sources trying to comment on the political and social settings in which a native language becomes a subject of nationwide love and pride.  The author concludes that it happens when an ethnic group, which has already attained a high level of cultural awareness, adopts consistent and stable features typical of a nation.  Later, with the support of the political elite, the intelligentsia carries out the further elaboration of the national self-consciousness which, in its turn, aims to analyze the elements of the national identity (including the national language) and to give theoretical and ideological explanations substantiating their necessity and efficiency.  The author of the article states that as far back as the 5th century the Armenian intelligentsia highly regarded the cultural and political and strategic significance of the Armenian Language. Following the observations made by Pavstos By...