The comic adaptation of La vida es sueño by Calderón de la Barca (2018) emphasizes the emotion of anger as one of the forces that guides the plot. The protagonist, Segismundo, displays aggression through two main gestures: the clenching fist and the frown on his face. This article aims to answer the following questions: Why did the comic artist d…[Read more]

This article re-analyses in detail the meaning of the expression ludi Graeci which appears in two of Cicero’s letters (Ad Fam. 7,1 and Ad Att. 15,5). A careful examination of the first instance reveals that ludi Graeci indeed referred to theatrical performances in Greek language and not merely to Latin plays that followed Greek models. A brief s…[Read more]

At Christmas, Christians celebrate that Jesus was born on December 25 as the son of God andthe Virgin Mary. But this event is not unique. In this article, I show that the birth of Jesus hasseveral non-Christian predecessors, whereby various elements of the ritual dynamics have beenChristianized and implemented into the figure we know today as Jesus Christ.

According to the medical tradition, the temperament of bodies came from the balance of their primary qualities – hot, cold, dry, and moist. However, physicians associated additional sensory properties with temperament in the field of pharmacology. These sensations included taste, color, and odor, which allow an appraisal of the constitution and a…[Read more]

This article shows how English supporters of Jewish immigration in the 1650s articulated a universal model of Christian hospitality for all foreigners fleeing religious persecution, regardless of whether they adhered to the Protestant faith of their English hosts. It thus urges a reconsideration of the widespread assumption that European…[Read more]

Elodie Paillard, ‘Greek Theatre in Roman Italy: From Elite to Autocratic Performances’, in E. Csapo, H.R. Goette, J. R. Green, B. Le Guen, E. Paillard, J. Stoop, P. Wilson, Theatre and Autocracy in the Ancient World, De Gruyter, 2022

This book explores the staging of non-élite characters in the seven extant tragedies of Sophocles and how they related to contemporary middling citizens. The structure of fifth-century Athenian society underwent deep changes between the early and late plays of Sophocles. The appearance and growing political importance of a middling…[Read more]

This paper compares psychostasia and/or kerostasia concepts from Indo-European, Semitic and adjacent cultures, and relates them to Cognitive Metaphor Theory. In the context of metaphysical weighing, the religions of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome all associated lightness with goodness and/or a favourable outcome; Hinduism does likewise. The…[Read more]

This essay reads Raphael, the principal expositor of scientific knowledge in Milton’s Paradise Lost, as embodying divergent, virtually antithetical, dispositions towards the prospect of free engagement with natural philosophy within the public sphere. At once stimulating Adam’s curiosity about the natural world while also overzealously cur…[Read more]

This article examines how Thomas Hughes’s “The Misfortunes of Arthur” pays homage to Elizabeth I through its eclectic use of Arthurian traditions and deployment of imagery centered on corrupted sexuality and the body politic.

From antiquity, Galenic physicians extensively discussed the active powers of simple and compound drugs. In their views, simple drugs, that is, single ingredients, acted according to their material qualities and the properties of their substance. As for compound drugs, their efficacy resulted from the mutual interaction of their ingredients and…[Read more]

Este artículo visibiliza el uso que se le puede dar a una serie de proyectos de Humanidades Digitales, como son las bases de datos de Rolecall, DICAT y CATCOM o la biblioteca digital EMOTHE, a la hora de analizar las dinámicas escenográficas en el teatro español de finales del siglo XVI y principios del siglo XVII, coincidiendo con las déc…[Read more]

The Baconian oeuvre remains the most extensive and influential assault on Aristotelianism in English writing of the early modern period. Where convention respected Aristotelian logic as a viable instrument for studying natural philosophy, Bacon instead sought to initiate an instauration, or restoration, of learning by proposing his inductive…[Read more]

This paper aims to examine models by which symbolism of light and lamp in
the Mediterranean region was manifested in the early Christian visual culture,
i.e. lamp representations from Central Balkans. Lamps with Early
Christian representations are considered in the context of transculturality
of Late Antiquity, as well as political and…[Read more]

Historians have long argued that arbitration was the preferred means of
resolution for most disputes in later medieval England; but does this apply
also to the settlement of homicides? Despite the strenuous efforts of the
English legal system after the Norman Conquest to force homicides through
the royal courts, historians have argued that…[Read more]

Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714–1774), a Bolognese wax sculptor, overcame humble origins to become one of the most important anatomical artists of the eighteenth century. Working with her husband Giovanni Manzolini (c. 1700–1755), and continuing alone after his death, Morandi created remarkably lifelike and anatomically accurate wax models of the sen…[Read more]

“The Rape of the Lock” by Alexander Pope published in 1712 is a mock-heroic narrative which satirically
glorifies trivial incident of cutting of locks of protagonist Belinda. This poem was written in the
Augustan Era (1660-1784) which is marked by the period of scientific reason and rationality, whose
effect can be seen on the writers of those…[Read more]

The early history of the study of Parthian art may be profitably divided into three overlapping phases. The first phase, ‘Ordering’, begins with Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s dismissive assessment of Parthian art, at this point known mainly from coins, as derivative and barbaric. The second phase, ‘Exploration’, begins in the mid-ninet…[Read more]