Ioannis Mylonopoulos, Professor of Greek Art and Archaeology, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University” will address the topic “Ancient Greek cult statues in the Roman Empire: Globalization through theft, copying and repetition.”
The event will take place at the “Nikos Mazarakis Family Lecture Hall” at Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies, Nafplio. The lecture will be delivered in Greek.
The Events Series 2016 is organized in cooperation with the Municipalities of Nafplion, Argos – Mycenae, Ermionida and Epidaurus.
Synopsis of the lecture
Recent publications assume that the Roman aristocracy wished to demonstrate its Greek culture and education through the possession and demonstration of Greek statues, paintings and other luxury items. Without degrading the desire of part of the Roman aristocracy to participate in what was regarded as Greek culture, the lecture will try to restore the discussion to the extreme brutality of the abduction and looting of works of Greek art that will also mark its globalization. It will also show that for a long time the main objective of the Romans was simply the enrichment, but also the cultural subordination of the Greek East.
Ioannis Mylonopoulos’ brief resume
Ioannis Mylonopoulos is associate professor of Classical Archaeology at the Department of Art History and Archaeology of Columbia University in the city of New York. After the completion of his PhD dissertation on the sacred sites on the Peloponnese dedicated to Poseidon (Award for the best dissertation in Classical Studies in German language in 2002) he has worked in the Universities of Heidelberg, Erfurt, and Vienna. He has received fellowships and grants from the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation, the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Since the summer of 2014 he leads the excavation of the sacred site of Poseidon at Boeotian Onchestos under the auspices of the Athens Archaeological Society.