Sight and the Ancient Senses

Michael Squire is Lecturer in Classical Greek Art at King’s College London. He has a special research interest in the relationship between visual and verbal representation in antiquity, and is currently working on ideas of vision in the Elder Philostratus’ Imagines.

"Sight had a special place among the senses in antiquity. In different circumstances it was thought to be the guarantee of truth or the root of deception. In a powerful demonstration of why philosophers, art historians and literary critics need to be in constant dialogue, this book goes a long way to explaining both the causes and the consequences of sight's peculiar status for the Greeks and the Romans, as it explores both ancient theories of vision and some of the ways in which seeing and not seeing structured attitudes to knowledge and ignorance, memory and forgetfulness, life and death, the human and the divine."- Robin Osborne, Professor of Ancient History, University of Cambridge, UK"One must be grateful to Mr. Squire for having, in the spirit of the collection, contributed to the production of a coherent whole. We do not read there a meeting of autonomous texts but a book collectively thought, in which the different authors dialogue and respond. Since the work covers a very wide field, both in terms of the chronological extent and the cultural aspects envisaged, this merit must be welcomed."-Frédéric Le Blay, Université de Nantes, France, in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review

• List of Figures AcknowledgementsList of ContributorsIntroductory reflections: Making sense of ancient sight MICHAEL SQUIRE1. Sight and the Presocratics: Approaches to visual perception in early Greek philosophy KELLI RUDOLPH2. Sight and the philosophy of vision in Classical Greece: Democritus, Plato and AristotleANDREA NIGHTINGALE3. Sight and the perspectives of mathematics: The limits of ancient optics REVIEL NETZ & MICHAEL SQUIRE4. Sight and reflexivity: Theorizing vision in Greek vase-painting JONAS GRETHLEIN5. Sight and painting: Optical theory and pictorial poetics in Classical Greek art JEREMY TANNER6. Sight and light: Reified gazes and looking artefacts in the Greek cultural imagination RUTH BIELFELDT7. Sight and death: Seeing the dead through ancient eyes SUSANNE TURNER8. Sight and the gods: On the desire to see naked nymphsVERITY PLATT9. Sight and memory: The visual art of Roman mnemonicsJAŚ ELSNER & MICHAEL SQUIRE10. Sight and insight: Theorizing vision, emotion and imagination in ancient rhetoric RUTH WEBB11. Sight and Christianity: Early Christian attitudes to seeing JANE HEATH12. Sight and blindness: The mask of Thamyris LYNDSAY COO13. Sight in retrospective: The afterlife of ancient optics A. MARK SMITHBibliographyIndex