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Roman Portable Sundials: The Empire in Your Hand de Richard J.A. Talbert

Roman Portable Sundials: The Empire in Your Hand

Autor Richard J.A. Talbert
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 10 mar 2020

Notăm cu interes atenția deosebită acordată aspectului vizual în această ediție de la Oxford University Press. Roman Portable Sundials impresionează prin calitatea celor 99 de reproduceri alb-negru și a celor 65 de desene tehnice care permit o examinare minuțioasă a acestor „gadgeturi” antice din bronz. Formatul paperback este robust, iar claritatea tipăririi pe hârtie de calitate susține argumentația academică, oferind cititorului o experiență senzorială tactilă și vizuală necesară pentru a înțelege complexitatea unor obiecte atât de mici, dar încărcate de semnificație.

Suntem de părere că această lucrare depășește granițele unui simplu catalog arheologic. Ca și World and Hour in Roman Minds, volumul pune în valoare modul în care romanii percepeau spațiul și timpul, dar cu un accent specific pe cultura materială și pe dispozitivele portabile care permiteau „purtarea imperiului în mână”. Richard J.A. Talbert analizează cele 16 cadrane solare cunoscute până în prezent, demonstrând că acestea nu erau doar instrumente de măsurare a timpului, ci veritabile simboluri ale sofisticării cosmopolite. Deși calculele de latitudine erau adesea eronate, posesia unui astfel de obiect atesta stăpânirea intelectuală asupra geografiei vaste a Romei.

Această cercetare completează organic opera anterioară a autorului, în special Challenges of Mapping the Classical World, continuând explorarea temelor legate de cartografiere și conștiința imperială. Dacă în lucrările trecute Talbert se concentra pe hărți, aici el dezvăluie cum un obiect de mărimea unei palme putea servi drept hartă mentală a lumii romane, de la Britania la Alexandria. Este o incursiune fascinantă în psihologia elitei romane, unde tehnologia și statutul social se intersectau într-un mod surprinzător de modern.

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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780197503669
ISBN-10: 0197503667
Pagini: 262
Ilustrații: 99 b/w halftones; 65 b/w line
Dimensiuni: 231 x 165 x 15 mm
Greutate: 0.48 kg
Editura: Oxford University Press
Colecția OUP USA
Locul publicării:New York, United States

De ce să citești această carte

Recomandăm această carte pasionaților de istorie antică și tehnologie care doresc să descopere o latură mai puțin explorată a vieții cotidiene romane. Veți câștiga o perspectivă inedită asupra modului în care romanii își vizualizau imperiul prin intermediul obiectelor de lux. Este un studiu riguros, dar accesibil, care transformă niște curiozități muzeale în ferestre către mentalitatea unei civilizații ce dorea să stăpânească timpul și spațiul.

Despre autor

Richard J.A. Talbert este un istoric și clasicist de renume, profesor la University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, specializat în geografia și cartografierea lumii antice. Expertiza sa este recunoscută la nivel internațional, fiind editorul principal al monumentalului „Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World”. Prin lucrări precum Challenges of Mapping the Classical World, Talbert a redefinit modul în care cercetătorii moderni înțeleg percepția spațială a grecilor și romanilor, combinând rigoarea academică cu o analiză profundă a culturii materiale.

Descriere

In an unscientific era when maps were rarities, how did ancient Romans envisage their far flung empire? This was done by various means for certain, including with the aid of an ingenious type of portable sundial that has barely attracted notice. As the Romans understood before the first century BCE, to track the passage of the sun across the sky hour-by-hour one needed to know one's latitude and the time of year, and that, furthermore, sundials did not have to be fixed objects. These portable instruments, crafted in bronze, were adjustable for the changes of latitude to be expected on long journeys--say, for instance, from Britain to Spain, or from Alexandria to Rome, or even on a Mediterranean tour. For convenient reference, these sundials incorporated lists of twenty to thirty names of cities or regions, each with its specific latitude. One of the insights of Roman Portable Sundials is that the choice of locations offers unique clues to the mental world-map and self-identity of individuals able to visualize Rome's vast empire latitudinally. The sixteen such sundials known to date share common features but designers also vied to create enhancements. Comparison with modern calculations shows that often the latitudes listed are incorrect, in which case the sundial may not perform at its best. But then the nature of Romans' time-consciousness (or lack of it) must be taken into consideration. Richard Talbert suspects that owners might prize these sundials not so much for practical use but rather as prestige objects attesting to scientific awareness as well as imperial mastery of time and space. In retrospect, they may be seen as Roman precursors to comparable Islamic and European instruments from the Middle Ages onwards, and even to today's luxury watches which display eye-catching proof of their purchasers' wealth, sophistication, and cosmopolitanism. Richly enhanced with detailed photographs, line drawings, maps, a gazetteer, and a table of latitudes and locations, Roman Portable Sundials brings these overlooked gadgets out of the shadows at last to reveal their hitherto untapped layers of meaning.

Recenzii

It is useful to think of this book as the historical counterpart of what in literary studies would be the first major scholarly edition and commentary on a recently discovered text. Talbert writes (p. xiii): 'My hope is that the book will both enlighten and intrigue readers across disciplines by uncovering a fresh, imaginative vision of the world shared by what might be termed a loose community of Romans.' Mission accomplished.
[Richard Talbert] is to be congratulated on producing a fine example not only of microhistory, but also of how to investigate the social and cultural history of science and technology, as opposed to the history of science and technology itself.
The objects are fascinating, and Talbert burrows into the data they present to reconstruct a convincing image of the meaning of the empire's geography to Roman intellectuals.
This fascinating text is recommended for students of the classics, world geography and history, archaeology, and astronomy. ... Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; faculty and professionals.
Richard Talbert's loving study...A short and beautifully illustrated cataglogue is at the heart of the book.
This is a fascinating and eminently scholarly book that is the first to focus attention on this important aspect of Roman timekeeping, and Oxford University Press is to be commended for publishing the many photographs with the clarity required to see the fine details commented upon by the author.
If you open this elegant volume, copiously illustrated with black and white photographs, charts, maps and tables, anticipating 'a technical study' aimed at 'chronometric specialists' (p.3), you will not be disappointed...Although displaying some lighter touches, such as the proposal of Trimalchio as the likeliest sort of person to own a geographical portable sundial (pp.169f.), this study remains primarily a book for scholarly specialists.
Without Richard Talbert's important work over the last decades, any attempt at mapping the ancient world would simply be impossible today. In his new work, he leaves the realm of the Tabula Peutingeriana and zooms into a different kind of evidence: portable sundials. Only a scholar with the experience, detailed knowledge, and ardent love for the classical world, which are the author's hallmarks, could explain how these rare, and rarely studied, artifacts can contribute to a better understanding of the Roman Empire and the people in whose hands they lay."-Kai Brodersen, Professor of Ancient Culture, University of Erfurt
It is hard to imagine that such a pathbreaking book might arise from sixteen small objects. To such rebarbative and seemingly unpromising material the author has brought unmatched cartographic, epigraphic, and cultural historical expertise. The result is fascinating and unexpected insight into everyday geographical knowledge. This book will engage anyone who cares about ancient Roman society, the history of maps, or the history of time-reckoning."-Grant Parker, Professor of Classics, Stanford University
A valuable study of surviving Greco-Roman portable sundials, which offers an original geographical analysis, and neatly places them in their broader historical context. A striking demonstration of how much artifact studies can contribute to the analysis of past societies, and a foundation for all future work."-Anthony Turner, author of Mathematical Instruments in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Notă biografică

Richard Talbert is a Cambridge Classics graduate who taught in the United Kingdom and Canada before becoming Kenan Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he has established the Ancient World Mapping Center. His many books include The Senate of Imperial Rome, the collaborative Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, and Rome's World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered.