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The modius is a type of flat-topped cylindrical headdress or crown found in ancient Egyptian art and art of the Greco-Roman world. The name was given by modern scholars based on its resemblance to the jar used as a Roman unit of dry measure, but it probably does represent a grain-measure, and symbolizing one's ability to learn new information by having an open mind with an empty cup. Serapis was the main idol/figurehead at the Library of Alexandria during the ancient Egyptian & Roman alliance.
The planetae, were the five naked-eye planets known to ancient Greek and Roman astronomers, who assigned them a variety of names, associated them with different gods, and ascribed various qualities to their apparent behaviour in the sky. Some scholars included the Sun and Moon, making seven planets, representing the seven heavenly bodies that moved against the fixed background of stars. This concept survives in astrology, which was not clearly differentiated from astronomy before modern times. Others added the fixed stars, representing a single planet, along with the earth itself, and the antichthon, to make a system of ten.
References
- ↑ Karl Siegfried Guthke, The Gender of Death: A Cultural History in Art and Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 24 et passim.
- ↑ Diana Burton, "The Gender of Death," in Personification in the Greek World (Ashgate, 2005), pp. 57–58.
- ↑ Horace, Carmina 1.4.14–15.
- ↑ Avidis ... dentibus: Seneca, Hercules Furens 555.
- ↑ Tibullus 1.3.3.
- ↑ Guthke, The Gender of Death, pp. 24, 41, et passim.
- ↑ Guthke, The Gender of Death, pp. 45–46.
- ↑ Remigius of Auxerre, In Martianum 36.7: "Mars is called so as if mors (death)," as cited by Jane Chance, Medieval Mythography: From Roman North Africa to the School of Chartres, A.D. 433–1177 (University Press of Florida, 1994), p. 578, note 70. The etymology-by-association of Remigius should be distinguished from scientific linguistics.