Ancient Syracuse

"[ Watch on Vimeo > http://vimeo.com/slucord/syracuse ]
Syracuse (Siracusa), one of the most important Greek poleis in Antiquity, is located in Sicily, the largest island of the Mediterranean Sea. This island was a crossroad of ancient waterways frequented by many peoples of all times. Directed by Silvio Luiz Cordeiro, the documentary Syracuse Ancient City presents the impressions of six contemporary Syracuse inhabitants on their Mediterranean city. Founded by Corinthian Greeks in the 8th century BC, this polis was successively occupied by different peoples that imprinted their specific marks in its urban landscape. However, the intent of this documentary is not to summarize Syracuse’s long history: its goal is not retelling it. In a sense, this video tries to get away from the common place of the current approaches to history of Syracuse, which usually focuses stories such as that of Archimedes, or the defeat of the Athenians in their war against the powerful Sicilian polis. The intention of the video was to produce a narrative that could motivate Brazilian young students to discuss, for example, the role of History in the contemporary world. This is the first audiovisual experience regarding the learning of Ancient History produced by an archaeological team in Brazil, with free distribution to the Brazilian public schools."

Il sito di Pantalica rientra geograficamente nell’estesa Riserva naturale orientata Pantalica, Valle dell’Anapo e Torrente Cavagrande, compresa tra i comuni di Ferla e Sortino, nella provincia di Siracusa. La necropoli si trova su un altopiano circoscritto da due canyon formatisi dallo scorrere a sud del fiume Anapo e a nord del Calcinara, suo affluente.

Il turismo archeologico subacqueo in Italia: opportunità e rischi
1. Una straordinaria opportunità
2. Elitismo gentrificato e slow diving
3. Una pratica virtuale ed educativa
4. Mondo blu e mondo grigio: l’alterità del turismo subacqueo
5. Una cura per un sistema cancerizzato? Il caso di Siracusa
6. La chimera del turismo sostenibile: le Cinque Terre e Capri
7. I percorsi subacquei di Ustica: turismo e archeologia
8. Autenticità e spazi marini: Ustica e Corfu
9. Turisti, archeologi o pirati? Spot e archeologia subacquea
10. Atlantide e il turismo subacqueo pseudo-archeologico
11. Ustica: il museo delle anfore tra voyeurismo e necrofilia
12. Dal mito alla realtà: i percorsi fantasma di Ustica
13. Il sontuoso mondo di Baia e la nascita del turismo
14. Il parco sommerso di Baia e il Ninfeo di Punta Epitaffio
15. La vendetta del Ciclope: un percorso difficile

Les monnaies grecques ont de tout temps été considérées comme les plus belles monnaies jamais produites. Evoquant Goethe, José Maria de Hérédia ou le Président Theodore Roosevelt, cette conférence s’interroge sur les raisons qui fondent ce sentiment. On évoquera le très haut relief, la diversité des types, la qualité de la gravure et l’adaptation à la petitesse du format. On traitera également de la beauté (fondée sur la symétrie) et du sublime (fondé sur la dissymétrie), avec une attention particulière pour les types représentés de trois quarts face et pour l’évolution du goût du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours. Platon, Longin, Raphael, Rubens, Winckelmann, Kant, Burke et Ruskin sont quelques-uns des grands noms évoqués à cette occasion.

Hiero I of Syracuse was a Sicilian monarch of the classical period, who reigned in Syracuse between 478 and 466. If royalty may have become rarefied in the political universe of Late-Archaic and Classical Greece, I contend that the reign of Hiero saw the creation, around his person, of a royal ideology: that is to say, that he represented himself and was perceived as king. Frisone's article "Experimenting Basileia: Princely Models and the Tyrants of Sicily", distinguishes two approaches to Greek kingship, one formalist and one pragmatist, where the former deals with royalties bearing established royal institutions, and the latter with royalties which, although lacking specific royal institutions, expressly assert themselves as royalties and are recognized as such. Adopting this second approach, this research works mainly in the field of representation, and therefore, focuses on discourses organized by Hiero on royal power. According to Hekster and Fowler (2005), royal ideology is constructed "by the transmission and reception of messages, between king and subject, and king and rival." And thus this research compares contemporary Greek royalties to Hiero's and attempts to show that at the turn of the Archaic and Classical periods, royalty as a factual, mythical, and religious referent, is sufficiently present in the Greek mental universe for Hiero to make a convincing interpretation of his reign as a royalty.

This book is born from a desire to understand how Plato influenced and was influenced by the intellectual culture of Western Greece, the ancient Hellenic cities of Sicily and Southern Italy. In 2018, a seminar on Plato at Syracuse was organized, in which a small group of scholars discussed a new translation of the Seventh Letter and several essays on the topic.  The seminar was intense but friendly, having attracted a diverse group of scholars that ranged from graduate students to senior professors, hailing from at least three different continents, and representing a variety of academic specialties. We tried to create a book that would invite further study of the topic by identifying new questions to be asked while addressing enduring issues. The essays consider the historical, political, and philosophical implications of Plato’s involvement in Syracuse. They also look at the reception of his voyage among fellow philosophers, ancient and modern. Readers may come to their own conclusions, but one thing is clear: the history of philosophy was profoundly influenced by Plato’s voyages in Western Greece. 


The book begins with a new translation of Plato’s Seventh Letter by Jonah Radding, as well as the epitaph for Dion attributed to Plato.  An introduction by editors Heather Reid and Mark Ralkowski is followed by essays from Carolina Araújo, Christos C. Evangeliou, Filippo Forcignanò, Francisco J. Gonzalez, Jill Gordon, Andrew Hull, Tony Leyh, Marina Marren, Mary R. McHugh, Robert Metcalf, Marion Theresa Schneider, Karen Sieben, and Nickolas Pappas.

Coins, Artists, and Tyrants contains the first fully translated and revised text of Lauri Tudeer, Die Tetradrachmenprägung von Syrakus in der Periode der signierenden Künstler, as well as a biography of Tudeer, plus a completely new evaluation of signed coin dies and the artists who produced them. Over 100 years after its first publication, the author completely updates the scholarship and bibliography on signed Syracusan tetradrachms, making this book the single most important source on the subject. The book includes plates, a full-color die-link chart, and three pull-outs featuring Syracusan tetradrachms and hoards.

Il volume integra gli studi precedenti dell’autore sugli Aegyptiaca della penisola appenninica, sulla Sardegna fenicia e punica e sulle isole maltesi. Vi si trattano le importazioni dalla terra del Nilo e gli oggetti egittizzanti di altra origine, scoperti in siti della Sicilia greca e d’influenza greca. Oltre a reperti eccezionali come i frammenti di un vaso di Ramesse II, ricostruito con il metodo fotogrammetrico, proveniente da Siracusa, una situla in bronzo o uno straordinario falco in blu egiziano, ambedue recuperati a Selinunte, sono esaminati gli scarabei egizi provenienti da tombe della seconda metà dell’VIII sec. a.C. (Villasmundo, vicino a Siracusa), molti scarabei di produzione egea e alcuni fenici con motivi egizi, vasi, amuleti (tra cui bellissime cipree) e statuette in faïence egizia di varia origine del VII secolo, così come i prodotti dell’insediamento greco a Naukratis situato nel Delta del Nilo (VI sec. a.C.).
Illustrano il volume 40 tavole, in parte a colori.
Con il contributo di Elfriede Haslauer sugli ushabti di Lipari

Our Lady Goddess & The Femicide of the Heroes is a time travel illuminating our society. The tale is told by an old man of average culture, exclaiming in surprise at each step, and laughing, or getting angry, like a child.

The back cover announces « A vast “deconstruction” of archaeological beliefs along Ariadne's Thread: from Malta’s Neolithic temples to Bronze Age and classical Greece. An essay & a travel log & an educative, smiling, off-road pamphlet. Small doses every evening can help solve old problems.»

The newsboy makes a long story short:
«Archaeological find unveils origin of machismo, gang-rape and femicide!»
He is right, but there is much more to it, and he did not read the 13 bonus tracks, nor answered the quiz.

After a distribution ad personam that caused great pain or exultation in many fields, we publish here, as an exclusivity for Academia.edu, this full, uncensored version of Our Lady Goddess & The Femicide of the Heroes. We advise the reader to download it before it is too late. Sooner or later, some greedy publisher will ask the author to remove it from Academia.edu where it is available in three languages, for free. The author will bow down because he, too, loves money.

This paper resumes and completes the understudied topic of the relations among
Carthaginians, Italiotes and Italics between the fourth and the third century B.C.
The used sources show that the existing relations of philia, emporia and xenologia
with the cities and the peoples of Megale Hellas, which has already begun at the
time of Dionysius I and Dionysius II of Syracuse, were further strengthened in
the second half of the fourth century; they influenced the military strategy of the
basileus Agathocles against Brettians in an anti–Punic way. Some sourse also show
that the relationship with Carthage still existed at the time of Pyrrhus military
expedition in Italy and Sicily; this intervention had not only resulted in a closer link
between the Romans and the Carthaginians, but it led, in an unforeseeable way, to
an inevitable military encounter.

La prova tangibile dell’avvenuto insediamento della Compagnia di Gesù a Genova è costituita non solo dall’edificazione della chiesa del Gesù, ma anche dall’atteggiamento dei nobili cittadini che, come si legge nell’Historia Domus Professa,  pur di celebrare il proprio legame con l’Ordine “facevano a gara per chiedere di decorare le cappelle” della chiesa della Casa Professa.
Il fatto che il processo di stanziamento, indubbiamente difficoltoso, fosse stato portato a compimento con successo è testimoniato anche dall’intervento di Andrea Pozzo.
Stando alle fonti, l’artista gesuita, sovente inviato dall’ordine ad operare nelle varie sedi della Compagnia, realizza in Liguria complessivamente sei opere di cui due risultano oggi perdute.
Benché la cronologia degli spostamenti del Pozzo, come anche le fasi della sua formazione, non sia stata ancora completamente definita, è stato ipotizzato che le tele liguri siano le sue prime grandi pale d’altare.
Dalla loro analisi è possibile trarre dunque importanti informazioni circa il tentativo dell’artista trentino di individuare i modelli e le modalità migliori con cui esprimere i principi della spiritualità gesuitica.
La tela raffigurante San Francesco Borgia, conservata nella chiesa del Gesù, costituisce un perfetto esempio di questa particolare ricerca.
In quest’opera, infatti, non solo l’artista dà dimostrazione di essersi avvalso di specifici testi devozionali, elaborati all’interno dell’ordine, al fine di meglio esprimere la personalità del santo spagnolo ma propone, forse per la prima volta, il modello, in seguito replicato, della figura maschile inginocchiata intenta a reggere un libro.
L’assenza, nell’opera genovese, dell’elemento del tomo si deve probabilmente alla controversa vicenda dei restauri ottocenteschi che interessarono la chiesa del Gesù e, in particolare, le opere del Pozzo.
Un episodio poco noto che permette di gettare una luce nuova sull’opera del maestro trentino e che dimostra come spesso dietro a dettagli apparentemente insignificanti si celino scoperte sorprendenti.

Various explanations have been proposed for the diffusion of Rhodian amphora stamps in the Adriatic area, none of them wholly convincing. A new interpretative framework is proposed here. It relies on a corpus of 157 stamps which have been compared with the material found at two key sites in Magna Graecia. At Taranto, the first massive attestation of Rhodian stamps belongs to the years 220-211 and is probably related to the provisioning of the Carthaginians who took the city and besieged the acropolis in 212-209 BC. The true take-off of Rhodian imports is somewhat later and is especially marked at Syracuse in the first two decades of the II century BC. It seems fairly certain that merchants based on Rhodes sold wine to buy grain, the latter being either consumed in the city or sold on to provide new income, especially needed at a time of war. By contrast, Rhodian amphora stamps, although widely spread in the Adriatic area, do not occur there in such huge quantities as at Syracuse and Taranto: linguistic difficulties may have inhibited Greek-speaking merchants from developing a commercial network in this part of the Mediterranean. The increasing quantity of finds from after ca. 180 are evidence for the new popularity of Greek wines in Italy, which were redistributed from Magna Graecia or market places like Delos. The consumers were either local elites or Roman soldiers. For the former, Greek wine was a marker of social identity associated with funerary practices and lost its value when consumed by the latter; hence Rhodian amphoras are not likely to be found in burials near military settlements.
-------On p. 125, §3, l. 4, read "tracico" instead of "taurico"-------

In diesem Aufsatz werden die oberirdischen Grabmarkierungen der Gräberfelder griechischer Koloniegründungen in der Magna Graecia näher betrachtet, d. h. entlang der Westküste Kampaniens, der Küste des ionischen Golfes von Taras über Metapont und Herakleia Minoa bis Lokroi Epizephyrioi und der Ost- und Südküste Siziliens von Naxos bis Selinus.
In vorliegender Zusammenstellung der bekannten großgriechischen Grabmarker zeigt sich ein breites Spektrum oberirdischer Grabmarkierungen. Lokale Kreationen, kolonieübergreifende Typen und Einflüsse aus dem Mutterland sind gleichermaßen zu beobachten.
Die unterschiedlichen Grabbekrönungen der Kolonien kommen in verschiedener Kombinationen vor; wir finden jeweils mehrere Grabmarkertypen pro Ort. Ein gewisser Zeitbezug der verbreitet auftretenden Typen läßt sich ebenfalls beobachten: die Grabskulptur gehört der archaischen Zeit an, der Grabbau der spätarchaischen und klassischen Zeit, die Epitymbia v. a. der hellenistischen, das figürliche Relief der klassischen und hellenistischen Zeit, und mit dem Aufkommen der Naiskoi werden Grabbau, Relief und Skulptur in einem Grabmal vereint.

In my paper, I reconsider the syngramma of Moschio reported by Athenaeus (Moschio ap. Ath. 5, 206d-209e). This text contained a large description of the Syrakosia, the great ship of king Hiero II of Syracuse. In the first part of my paper, I shall review the main readings and interpretations of Moschion’s text. In the second part, I shall argue
that the syngramma of Moschio does not describe a real ship but the polis of Syracuse in an allegorical form. I shall discuss the historical context in which this allegorical representation was formulated, and I shall argue that it is Syracuse at the time of Hiero. In conclusion, I shall argue that this allegorical representation is an example of ‘thought city’, a way to imagine and represent the cityscape very different of our geometrical and cartographic representations.

This article explores the evidence for the Corinthian family of calendars, including the seasons of the months, in light of the calendar recently discovered on the Metonic Spiral of the Antikythera Mechanism. Specifically, it will be argued that the calendar on the Antikythera Mechanism cannot be that of Syracuse (the home of Archimedes), and that it is likely to be the Epirote calendar (this helps explain why the relatively minor Naan games of Dodona appear on the Antikythera Mechanism’s Games Dial). It will further be argued that this calendar was probably adopted by the Epirotes from a Corinthian colony in Epiros, possibly from Ambrakia, whose inhabitants continued to use unchanged, or with very few changes, the calendar of their mother city, Corinth. It will also be argued that the first month of this calendar, Phoinikaios, was ideally the month in which the autumn equinox fell (although in some states it or its equivalent probably started a month earlier at times), and that the start-up of the calendar on the Metonic Spiral began shortly after the astronomical new moon of August 23, 205 B.C. (which chronology helps explain the ca. 32° clockwise off-set of the Exeligmos Dial). Along the way it will be noted that the sixth set of games on the Games Dial of the Antikythera Mechanism are the Halieia of Rhodes (which will be argued to have been celebrated in the Rhodian month of Panamos). This suggests that the Antikythera Mechanism, as had long been suspected by some, was built on Rhodes, possibly for a client from Epiros. Furthermore, it will be suggested that the Antikythera Mechanism was an adaptation of a prototype designed for the Rhodian calendar. Finally, there will be other observations on the Doric calendars of Argos, Epidauros and Rhodes.

During the Archaic period Syracuse grew from a newly established colony to become a colonial power itself and its hegemony spread across the south-east part of Sicily. The motivations behind the expansion process and the foundation of multiple new settlements is the central theme of this thesis. The most notable are Heloros (late eighth century BC), Akrai (664 BC), Kasmenai (644 BC) and Kamarina (599 BC). The traditional interpretation behind this expansion is based on ancient literary sources and it stresses military intentions of Syracuse.  However, even though the foundations did have a strategic motivation behind them, more central was the desire for wealth accumulation through access to new agricultural land and creation of an inland trade route.  The aim of the methodologies (architectural energetics, population estimates and degrees of primacy) used in the thesis is to build a clearer picture of the settlements at key stages of their development from foundation to the end of Archaic period. Architectural energetics is used to estimate the comparative labour costs of building each settlement. Assessment of the architectural development of each site also supports the non-military motivation behind their foundation.

Nel mio elaborato ho voluto focalizzare l'attenzione sulla figura storica di Ducezio nei rapporti tra le popolazioni sicule e la città di Siracusa nel V secolo A.C.. A questo tipo di studio mi ha spinto la volontà di comprendere meglio l'atteggiamento che tennero i Siculi nei confronti di Atene durante la prima spedizione in Sicilia (427-424 a.C.).

There is a tendency perhaps to ignore the contribution of essentially piratical behavior in ancient Greek history simply because of the mistaken belief that the various Hellenic states were organized on a proto-modern basis and that being users of coinage did not require the contribution of plunder, from various ventures, to keep a healthy balance in the public treasuries. Two such methods of enhancing public finances at Syracuse are highlighted here, namely the proceeds obtained from sacking temples and from the enforced movement of conquered populations.

Scholars have assumed for a long time that Plutarch, writing from the mid first century to early second century AD, held a wholly negative view of democracy, and especially the radical Athenian variant. These scholars have not looked, however, at how and in which contexts Plutarch actually used the word δημοκρατία in his Parallel Lives and Moralia, and what sorts of institutions and ideals he attached to δημοκρατία as an actual, practiced form of government. Plutarch did not exclusively identify δημοκρατία with Athens, nor did he exclusively identify it with the famous radical form of democracy that Athens practiced in parts of the 5th and 4th century BC. When Plutarch discussed or characterized δημοκρατίαι, he did so in a broader sense than has been previously acknowledged, to discuss multiple different states, including non-Greek states, from very different periods of time and space, nor did he always speak negatively of δημοκρατία.