Pretty as a Pictor: Painters in the Roman Mediterranean

Σαβεῖνοςζωγράφος ἐτῶνκϛʹ.εὐψύχως Sabinus, a painter, 26 years old, good luck! Fayoum 1:40=PHI 215881, Aueris (Hawāra) — Rom. Imp. period — SB 1.682. On a red marble epitaph from Hawara now in the Cairo Museum is the commemoration of a young painter living in Roman Egypt named Sabinus. We have a number of epitaphs and mentions... Continue Reading →

On Auctoritas and Antiquity

Post id tempus auctoritate omnibus praestiti, potestatis autem nihilo amplius habui quam ceteri qui mihi quoque in magistratu conlegae fuerunt. After that time, I exceeded all persons in auctoritas; however, I had no greater potestas than the others who were colleagues with me in each magistracy. Res Gestae 34.10-12. In his Res Gestae, Augustus noted that after... Continue Reading →

Introducing Pasts Imperfect: New Spaces for Public Scholarship

Theseus escapes King Minos’ labyrinth on Crete (it is a metaphor), opus vermiculatum mosaic, Roman, 200-250 CE, Carthage (Image taken by Sarah E. Bond at the Penn Museum; CC0). Pasts Imperfect is a weekly newsletter amplifying and supporting public writing focused on a global antiquity. Subscribe here: https://pastsimperfect.substack.com/ For our first newsletter, we wanted to signal boost... Continue Reading →

A Red Letter Way: Color, Writing, and Reading in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Within most medieval books of hours, there were ecclesiastical calendars that had important holy days printed in red. This was a type of textual highlighting used to call attention to important festivals; a visual language that had long indicated significant textual features, paragraph organization, and wordplay (e.g. acrostics). The Latin word for red ochre and red coloring in general was rubrīca. As such, making a text red is called "rubrication" and influenced the original use for the word "rubric." The practice of coloring significant dates in red is perhaps best known through the English idiom of a "red letter day."

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