Aither is a double-blind peer review, Open Access online academic journal. It is indexed at ERIH+ and Scopus. It is published by the Faculty of Arts of the Palacký University in Olomouc in cooperation with the Philosophical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It comes out twice a year. Every second issue is international and contains foreign-language articles (mainly in English, but also in German and French). The journal is registered under the number ISSN 1803-7860.
Aither 27/2022:58-95
This paper explores what was meant by the face in various genres in antiquity from the earliest times to the beginning of Hellenism. The face originally represented a place where strong feelings were expressed, especially grief, shame and disgrace. If the face was somehow damaged or questioned, it diminished a person‘s value in life and after death and brought with it shame for the person and those close to him. Descriptions of the face were for a long time only very brief and general, but they still served to make aesthetic and moral judgments or to suggest how one‘s face should look in a particular situation. This prescriptive aspect was intensified in physiognomy, which, however, concentrated only on some partial features of the face (especially the eyes), while the face itself or as a whole was given little consideration. Physiognomists did not strive to depict the individual as faithfully as possible, but rather tried to identify him or her with one of a limited number of character types and to determine his or her proximity or distance to ideal values and models. Similar efforts and practices can also be observed in Greek portraiture and theatre, probably not only due to the influence of physiognomy. Although the Greeks gradually began to create more realistic and individualised portraits, they were generally more interested in typological features of the face and character.
Received: October 16, 2022; Revised: October 16, 2022; Accepted: February 10, 2023; Published: February 21, 2023 Show citation
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