Word and Image in Ancient Greece

This volume of work explores the ways in which visual and oral communication in Greek culture interact and throws new light on their many and related functions. The subjects include the creation of the Greek myths during the early centuries of the first millennium BC when the technique of writing had been lost; the significance of words and images on painted pottery; the relationship between drama on stage and the illustration of the same stories on pottery; and the ways in which stories portrayed in monumental sculpture on temples were understood by the people who came to look at them. Classical Greece produced the beginnings of the tradition of philosophical reflection on the nature and value of images, notably in the work of Plato and Aristotle: the concept of mimesis, concerned with questions both of representation and expression, is directly addressed by several of the authors, and forms an underlying theme of the volume as a whole. The authors are drawn from the historical, archaeological, literary, philosophical and art historical fields of classical study.