The Archaeological Institute of America Lincoln-Omaha Society presents a guest lecture by Mont Allen at 5:30 p.m. April 3 in Richards Hall, Room 15. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Allen is associate professor of classics and art history at Southern Illinois University. His research foci include Greek and Roman funerary sculpture, ancient sculptural tools and techniques, Greek mythology, Roman painting, and Late Antique religions, seasoned by a love of Latin and urban geography.
Allen’s lecture is “When Gods and Heroes Retreat: The Death of Myth on Roman Sarcophagi.” A strange thing happens to Roman sarcophagi during the 3rd century: Their mythic imagery vanishes. These lavishly carved coffins had featured bold mythological scenes since the very beginning of their mainstream production early in the 2nd century AD, when burial had replaced cremation as the favored means for disposing of the dead. This represents a major shift in the cultural values of the Late Empire, given the central position that sarcophagi occupied in the Roman imagination.
Allen believes that Roman sarcophagi, being some of the most beautiful, astoninishing and often whimsical objects to survive from the ancient world, give us privileged insight into Roman attitudes towards life and death.
Allen’s book on Roman sarcophagi, “The Death of Myth on Roman Sarcophagi: Allegory and Visual Narrative in Late Antiquity,” was published by Cambridge University Press last year.
Allen earned his Bachelor of Arts in geography and master’s degrees in the history of religion and European History before completing his doctorate in ancient art history from the University of California, Berkeley.
