Socrates Corinth Democracia

Socrates turns his back to Plato, who has made him write whatever he wanted while pretending to receive it from him

jerome appears to augustine

image stands in for face, sign stands in for image

The descendants of every man who had borne a curule office were entitled to an image of that person, and at the funeral of every member of a family thus ennobled, all the images to which the ius imaginum entitled him, were produced and formed the most important part of the procession. As many as three hundred are said to have been displayed at the funeral of one person. The mind is immediately struck with the resemblance which this custom bears to that, which arose after the introduction or armorial bearings, of exhibiting at the funerals of the noble the banners and pennons to which the laws of arms entitled them, and the testimonies of their high descent and honourable connections.

Encyclopaedia heraldica

The ius imaginis is a Roman custom that (1) allowed a member of the nobility to have a wax mask (imago) of himself that would be handed down to descendants and (2) granted the privilege of a public funeral at state expense. At the funeral, the imago would be worn by an actor in the procession. The actor would also wear the clothing and insignia of the highest office and play the part (persona) of the deceased. [Incidentally, persona is the term for theatrical mask. The personae covered more than the face; the imagines, only the face.] Other actors would play the role (also, personae) of ancestors and wear their masks.

To obtain the ius imaginis right required obtaining one of the curule magistracies:

• curule aedile,
• praetor,
• censor, or
• consul.
• 
  
• 
  
• Although often called death masks, since they were used in funerals, the imagines are now thought to have been life masks, made during the lifetime of the office holder, if possible.

  Ancestral maps were displayed in the cupboards (armaria) of the family atrium, and were considered symbols of high status. They were displayed during special festivals and public sacrifices, as well as in funerals and in the atrium.

  Pollini says there is substantial evidence that the wax ancestral mask began in the second half of the 4th century B.C., after the passage of the Lex Licinia Sextia [367 B.C.] requiring that at least 1 consul be plebeian and later laws that led to the creation of a new, plebeian nobility. By obtaining a curule office, such a plebeian became a noble, a novus homo, and entitled to the ius imaginis. This was also the time the Senate first sanctioned theatrical performances (ludi Scaenici), which is worth noting, given the theatricality involved in the funeral parade.

  Source:
  Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean #13 "Ritualizing Death in Republican Rome: Memory, Religion, Class Struggle, and the Wax Ancestral Mask Tradition's Origin and Influence on Veristic Portraiture." John Pollini, University of Southern California.

unknown watchman / unknown painter / 1560

remember : them : that wache. and ward for you : their prince : and : realme : and suche. as doo' wythe, blvdy, swets : ofte tymes, deserve to gayne :























LAYING A GHOST (12 S. iii. 504). The
service as performed at Castle Acre in Norfolk,
early in the nineteenth century, consisted in
requisitioning the services of three of the
neighbouring clergy, who read in rotation
verses of Scripture, the ghost also reading
and keeping pace with them. If the clerics
managed to get a verse ahead, their power
was established and - the ghost laid.

snapshots of the revolution

1919




















In the spring of this year, during the first warm days, wierd, fantastic people crawled out on the streets of Petrograd. Where and how had they lived hitherto? Doubtless in some slum, in old, solitary, crumbling houses, hidden away from life, insulted and rejected by the world. One dominant thought cropped up in my mind every time I saw them: they have forgotten something and are trying to recall it, silently crawling about the town in search of it.
They were dressed in worn-out, tattered clothes, they were dirty and evidently very hungry, but they did not look like beggars and did not ask for alms. Very silently, very carefully, they walked along, watching the ordinary passers-by with suspicion and curiosity. As they stopped before the shop windows, they examined the things exhibited in them with the eyes of folk who are trying to discover - or remember - what use one made of all those things. Motor-cars terrified them, as they terrified country men and women twenty years ago.

Maxim Gorky / Fragments from my Diary / 1924

portrait without provenance

patrimony

St Donat's Castle

Mr. Morgan Williams died at the castle in 1909 and was succeeded by his son Godfrey. It was during his ownership that the castle is said to have been so disturbed by ghostly apparitions and noises that he put it up for sale. These manifestations included : a panther repeatedly seen in the corridors ; a bright light, like a glaring eye, appearing nightly in one of the bedrooms ; a hag of horrible appearance in the armoury and continual piano playing by invisible hands even when the piano was closed. However, an exorcist was persuaded to visit the castle and after he had prayed in one of the rooms a great gust of wind is said to have blown from the room, swept down the staircase, and all but carried the owner of the castle into the garden. The exorcism appears to have been completely successful.
In 1922 the castle was sold to an American, Mr. Richard Pennoyer, whose wife was the Dowager Countess of Shrewsbury, but it was shortly sold to another American who had a far greater effect on it.

Mr. William Randolph Hearst
From 1936 onwards times were financially difficult for Hearst and St. Donat's was put on the market in 1938 after Hearst had occupied it for a bare four months in all. He had spent an enormous amount on the castle, all of which, including the great variety of valuable silver, armour and other things he had in the castle was bought out of the proceeds of his English magazines, primarily, Good Housekeeping. However, war broke out before there was a sale and the castle was requisitioned as an officers' training centre. After the war, it continued to be looked after by the manging director of Hearst's National Magazine Company, in the name of which it had originally been bought.

There were various potential purchasers. Possible future uses included a project for turning the castle into a domestic training college for girls and the last idea was for an extensive caravan holiday camp. Planning permission for this was refused by the Cowbridge Rural District Council and at about the same time the headmaster designate, Rear Admiral D. J. Hoare, visited the castle and saw what a wonderful site it would be for the first Atlantic College. His Council agreed and Monsieur Antonin Besse very kindly bought it for the Atlantic College in 1960.