School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, Classics RHD Seminars Funding Athenian War-making in the 370s BC presented by Annabel Florence and Banquets of the Enemy: Literary and Iconographic portrayals of Etruscan Banquets? presented by David Andersen

Event Details

Date:

Friday, 27 March 2015

Time:

3:30 pm - 5:30 pm

Room:

Room E303

UQ Location:

Forgan Smith Building (St Lucia)

Event category(s):

Full Description:: ANNABEL FLORENCE: Athens after the Peloponnesian war has traditionally been seen as a city that was critically short of the required revenue to fund its democracy, festival program and war. The costs of war-making in particular were exceedingly high. In spite of this, during the 370s Athens was at war constantly. This paper examines the revenue-raising strategies of this important decade and tests whether or not recent estimates of the costs of war-making in the 370s can be met. Additionally, it draws some conclusions about the financing of war-making during the 370s and what it says about the Athenian financial system of the time.

DAVID ANDERSEN: Analysis of portrayals of Etruscan banqueting reveals how the banquet was a malleable ideological motif in antiquity. The uppermost elite of Tarquinia buried their dead in tombs that were often decorated with scenes of the banquet, which are unambiguously positive portrayals of the banquet in that city. On the other hand, the literary tradition treats Etruscan banqueting culture collectively as a byword for the moral decay and effeminacy of the civilization. Literary portrayals of Etruscan banquets functioned as a negative foil for the proper Roman convivium, or Greek symposion. Although elements of truth are maintained, far more is revealed about the cultural anxieties of the authors than of the Tarquinians or the Etruscans wholly.