The collected essays in this volume focus on the presentation, representation and interpretation of ancient violence - from war to slavery, rape and murder - in the modern visual and performing arts, with special attention to videogames and dance as well as the more usual media of film, literature and theatre. Violence, fury and the dread that they provoke are factors that appear frequently in the ancient sources. The dark side of antiquity, so distant from the ideal of purity and harmony that the classical heritage until recently usually called forth, has repeatedly struck the imagination of artists, writers and scholars across ages and cultures.
A global assembly of contributors, from Europe to Brazil and from the US to New Zealand, consider historical and mythical violence in Stanley Kubrick's
Spartacus and the 2010 TV series of the same name, in Ridley Scott's
Gladiator, in the work of Lars von Trier, and in Soviet ballet and the choreography of Martha Graham and Anita Berber. Representations of Roman warfare appear in videogames such as
Ryse: Son of Rome and
Total War, as well as recent comics, and examples from both these media are analysed in the volume. Finally, interviews with two artists offer insight into the ways in which practitioners understand and engage with the complex reception of these themes.
Berti, Irene: - Irene Berti is a Teaching Fellow at the Pädagogische Hochschule, Heidelberg, Germany, and a member of the Collaborative Research Centre 'Material Text Cultures, Materiality and Presence of writing in non typographic societies'.
Carlà-Uhink, Filippo: - "Filippo Carlà-Uhink is Professor of Ancient History at Potsdam University, Germany. His main research areas are the social and economical history of Late Antiquity, the history of the Roman Republic, the cultural history of ancient Rome, with a particular attention for space concepts and the construction of space, and the reception of antiquity in modern media. He is co-editor of Bloomsbury Academic's series IMAGINES - Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts, and editor of Caesar, Attila & Co. Comics und die Antike (2014) and, with Irene Berti, Ancient Magic and the Supernatural in the Modern Visual and Performing Arts (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015)."
Castello, Maria G.: - Maria G. Castello is a Research Fellow in the Dipartimento di Studi Storici at the Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy. She has published Le segrete stanze del potere. I comites consistoriani e l'imperatore tardoantico (2012).
Lindner, Martin: - Martin Lindner is Lecturer in Ancient History and Curator of the Tom Stern Collection film archive at the University of Göttingen, Germany.
Scilabra, Carla: - Carla Scilabra received her PhD from the University of Turin in 2013, with a thesis concerning the identity of pre-adult individuals in Ancient Greece. She has cooperated to excavations in Magna Graecia, Etruria and Piedmont and is a member of the team studying the material findings coming from the research conducted by the University of Turin at Locri Epizefiri and Costigliole Saluzzo.
