Visualizing the Invisible with the Human Body : : Physiognomy and Ekphrasis in the Ancient World.

• Superior document: Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Cultures Series ; v.10
• Author: Johnson, J. Cale.
• TeilnehmendeR: Stavru, Alessandro.
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin/Boston : : Walter de Gruyter GmbH,, 2019.; ©2020.
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Cultures Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (508 pages)

STMAC aims to advance an inter-disciplinary and inclusive approach to the study of science in the ancient world, ranging from mathematics and physics, medicine and magic to astronomy, astrology, and divination and covering the Mediterranean world, the Near (Middle) East, and Central and East Asia. The series is open to different types of publications including monographs and edited volumes as well as text editions and commentaries.

Table of Contents

Intro -- Contents -- Introduction to "Visualizing the invisible with the human body: Physiognomy and ekphrasis in the ancient world" -- Part I: Mesopotamia and India -- 1. Demarcating ekphrasis in Mesopotamia -- 2. Mesopotamian and Indian physiognomy -- 3. Umṣatu in omen and medical texts: An overview -- 4. The series Šumma Ea liballiṭka revisited -- 5. Late Babylonian astrological physiognomy -- Part II: Classical Antiquity -- 6. Pathos, physiognomy and ekphrasis from Aristotle to the Second Sophistic -- 7. Iconism and characterism of Polybius Rhetor, Trypho and Publius Rutilius Lupus Rhetor -- 8. Physiognomic roots in the rhetoric of Cicero and Quintilian: The application and transformation of traditional physiognomics -- 9. Good emperors, bad emperors: The function of physiognomic representation in Suetonius' De vita Caesarum and common sense physiognomics -- 10. Physiognomy, ekphrasis, and the 'ethnographicising' register in the second sophistic -- 11. Representing the insane -- Part III: Semitic traditions -- 12. The question of ekphrasis in ancient Levantine narrative -- 13. Physiognomy as a secret for the king. The chapter on physiognomy in the pseudo-Aristotelian "Secret of Secrets" -- 14. Ekphrasis of a manuscript (MS London, British Library, Or. 12070). Is the "London Physiognomy" a fake or a "semi-fake," and is it a witness to the Secret of Secrets (Sirr al-Asrār) or to one of its sources? -- 15. A lost Greek text on physiognomy by Archelaos of Alexandria in Arabic translation transmitted by Ibn Abī Ṭālib al-Dimashqī: An edition and translation of the fragments with glossaries of the Greek, Syriac, and Arabic traditions -- Index.