A Cultural History of Fame in Antiquity

Download or read book A Cultural History of Fame in Antiquity written by Charles W. Hedrick (Jr.) and published by Bloomsbury Academic Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. This book was released on 2025 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Cultural History of Fame in Antiquity covers the period from 1000 BCE to 600 CE. From the time of the Homeric poems to the end of antiquity, fame in Greco-Roman culture was strongly associated with civic virtue - a quality expressed exclusively in either warfare or politics. Excellence and achievement in other arenas - in art, poetry, philosophy, theatre, or sport - was always overshadowed by the prestige of soldiers and statesmen. This idealization of fame as an enduring and merited reward for real civic achievement was fundamentally aristocratic in both conception and purpose. As a legacy of antiquity, this notion of fame came to serve as a pure ideal, a foil to the emergence of a new kind of renown, ephemeral, unmerited, monetized: 'celebrity'. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Fame explores the meaning of fame and celebrity from antiquity to today. The themes covered in each volume are the communication of fame; the arts, philosophy and attention; politics, leadership and power; religion, spirituality, immortality and renown; visibility of events, places and things; infamy and scandal; innovation, science and its public expression; and the construction and presentation of heroes"--