Acta Classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debreceniensis

Medicine and magico-religious practices went hand in hand in Greco-Roman societies, because they attached enormous importance to divine manifestations. Insofar as the gods were present everywhere and in all circumstances, it was necessary to scrupulously respect the rituals which were practised in their honour. Without these rituals, peace with the gods could be disrupted. In the town of Palestrina (Lazio), a votive deposit was unearthed near the foundations of a sanctuary. It contained several effigies of Juno as well as eight very original little statuettes with the breasts of a woman but the body of a weasel. In addition, there were also weasel’s bones and metal keys. Even though it seems logical to think that the religious complex and these offerings were evoted to the goddess, it is more difficult, however, to understand the link between Juno and the different offerings. Why were they placed there and by whom?

Émilie Thibaut

Women and Weasels: a Medico-religious Approach to Maternity in a Republican City of Lazio

女性与黄鼠狼：拉齐奥共和国城市中产科的医学-宗教方法

For the Greeks, the peony plant had exceptional properties. It was used for many medicinal remedies. The most frequent were gynecological, nervous and mental diseases (insanity), as well as other minor, varied uses. This plant becomes visible at night when the moonlight falls on it. For this reason, it soon became associated with astrological and magical superstitions. These beliefs passed into the Latin world. It appears in herbaria and in medical treatises. In the Middle Ages it was still a plant frequently used in rural areas.

Sabino Perea Yébenes

Farmacopea de la peonia, la planta de la Luna

《牡丹的药典，月亮之花》

The Curae herbarum is a late antique medical recipe book made up of 64 chapters; it is mostly based on a Latin translation of the De materia medica by Dioscorides. Chapters 1–32 always end with a precatio to the plant so that it ‘comes with all its healing powers’. The article argues for an erudite origin for the precationes of the Curae herbarum, which borrow epithets, phraseology, and verbs of entreaty from the Precatio Terrae and the Precatio omnium herbarum. Moreover, the study of internal references in the precationes demonstrates that they were written with the intention of being placed before the medical recipes, but, for unknown reasons, were instead copied at the end of the chapters without ever occupying the place they were intended for.

Arsenio Ferraces Rodríguez

Precatio Terrae y la Precatio omnium herbarum a un texto inacabado: las precationes herbarum de un recetario médico tardoantiguo

《未完成文本中的“大地祈祷”与“百草祈祷”：晚期古代医学抄本中的草药祈祷》

The so-called foot of Serapis sculptures (i.e. those in the round with a bust of Serapis directly on top of a right foot) are well known and studied. Nevertheless, it was still necessary to take into account the representations of this motif in other media, such as gems and coins. And that is precisely the purpose of the present paper. In the following pages, these images are analyzed in the iconographical context of their period (1st and 2nd centuries CE). Such an approach allows us to observe the development of the motif in the different materials. In addition, this analysis will help us better understand the meaning of this image, and also to formulate some theories concerning the possible uses of these gems.

Dominique Barcat

pied de Sérapis de la sculpture à l’intaille : étude d’un thème isiaque caractéristique

塞拉皮斯之足：从雕塑到浮雕——一项典型的伊西斯主题研究

In the Ancient World illness was thought to be the effect not of accidental or natural causes, but rather the result of a negative agency, an external attack on the victim’s body. This paper focuses on the diverse strategies used in healing magic attested in the material and textual records from the ancient Near East to Late Antiquity, with special attention paid to how the cultural status of objects and substances was changed through ritual, a process that, along with the invocations of demons and gods, allowed objects to acquire agency to counterattack the harm inflicted on the victim’s body.

Francisco Marco Simón

Materiality, Oral Incantations and Supernatural Agency in Ancient Healing Magic

物质性、口头咒语与古代疗愈魔法中的超自然力量

The major influence of Claudian on Neo-Latin poetry is well known but the reception of the late antique poet is still poorly studied in its details. This paper examines four typical imitations of Claudian’s splendid description of the realm of Venus. The influence of the ekphrasis will be analysed in Boccaccio’s description of the afterlife (Buccolicum carmen), in Baptista Mantuanus’ depiction of the Garden of Eden (Parthenice), in the exotic landscapes of Lorenzo Gambara’s epic poem (De navigatione Christophori Columbi), and finally in a metapoetic elegy by Girolamo Balbi.

L. Zoltán Simon

Zur Rezeption Claudians: Das Wunderreich der Venus (Epithalamium de nuptiis Honori Augusti 47–98)

克劳狄安的接受：维纳斯的奇迹王国（《贺奥诺里乌斯皇帝婚礼颂歌》第47-98行）

Heroes were generally imagined by the ancient Greeks as historical personalities from a distant past who were remembered even centuries later and whose deeds became legendary. Although this concept is occasionally found even today, it is much more probable and indeed it is generally agreed that mythical heroes were not created in this way, but myths somehow evolved from/in tandem with rituals and/or as aetiological tales. On the other hand, the close connections between folktales and myths were always acknowledged, even if the nature of their relationship remains controversial. In this paper, the mythical biography of Pelops is discussed because I think it offers an instructive case-study illustrating the complexities involved. All the episodes of Pelops’ myths follow distinct folktale patterns and each of them was most probably inspired by different factors such as geography (strange rock formations around Mount Sipylos), popular etymology (the name of the Peloponnese) and ritual (some special cult practices in early Iron Age Olympia). The episodes of the hero’s life (childhood, marriage, kingship) were only loosely connected to each other and they were not amalgamated into a coherent biography until the end of the 19th century.

András Patay-Horváth

Pelops: The Emergence of a Mythical Personality From Folktale, Ritual and Geography

佩洛普斯：从民间故事、仪式和地理中浮现的神话人物

By analysing Pliny's Naturalis Historia and placing it in the broader context of ancient knowledge, I describe the knowledge and myths about the islands of the western and eastern edges of the known world in antiquity, with particular reference to Pliny's subjective ideas.

Melinda Székely

From the Isles of the Blessed to Taprobane

从福岛到塔普罗巴纳

It has always been a much-debated question how the two final stanzas of Horace’s Second Roman Ode fit to what came before in this poem. This paper will venture to place the apparent anomaly of these two verses within a new context emphasizing the strong and traditional connection between the constitution of the Roman State and the pax deorum. The second section of the poem (verses 5-6) portrays the workings of virtus as something incompatible with the usual ways and protocols of the late Republican political procedure in Rome. The all-changing power can be regarded as an inevitable consequence of the nature of the virtus, but at the same time, it can cause religious anxiety from somebody seeing and understanding this transformation. The last two verses about a religious panic do not contrast with the poem's previous passages but represent a new voice in the political discourse.

Attila Ferenczi

The Two Metamorphosesin Horace’s Second Roman Ode

贺拉斯第二首罗马颂歌中的两次变形

According to the preface, Pliny’s Natural History belongs to the genre of historia, of which subject is the nature. At the same time, the preface offers other genre classifications as well: encyclios paideia, thaesaurus. Pliny himself points out the novelty of his work: Libros naturalis historiae […] novicium opus (praef. 1.). Regarding Pliny’s peculiar concept of nature, in terms of the genre and literary history, Natural History can be interpreted as a borderline case.

Publication Information	Publisher: Department of Classical Philology and Ancient History, University of Debrecen，Publishing cycle: ，Journal Type: journal，Open Access Journals: No
Basic data	Year of publication: 2019，Proportion of original research papers: ，Self Citation Rate:， Gold OA Rate:

Acta Classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debreceniensis

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