Dossier : Éros en jeu

Overview & Synopsis

This issue follows in the footsteps of Eros, the ultimate divine player, as part of the project Locus Ludi. The Cultural Fabric of Play and Games in Classical Antiquity, funded by the European Research Council (ERC AdG no 741520). The figure of an immature Eros, reckless, playful, indeed cruel, and unpredictable, personifies in Ancient Greece the intricate relationship between, on one hand, childhood and game, education including the learning of self-control and social bonding, and on the other hand, emotions arousing pleasure and thus seductive power. One of the metaphorical expressions of his ambiguous power is the playful activity that serves as a common thread to the seven papers gathered here, from Nausicaa’s ball game in Homer (D. Bouvier) to the Latin elegiac poetry (G. Sissa), to his setting in pictures, from the emergence of a toddler Eros in the Greek iconography (H. Ammar) to his representation in Roman iconography (V. Dasen and N. Mathieu) and glyptic (F. Spadini, V. Räuchle, C. Weiss).