Иконографијата на античките божества на квалитативното време

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to gain a clearer insight into the ancient Greek concept of καιρός through the analysis of the iconography of its divine personifications: the Greek god Kairos (Καιρός) and his Roman counterparts—the goddess Occasio and the god Tempus. In Graeco-Roman antiquity, these divine anthropomorphic personifications of καιρός were worshipped as deities of a favourable or fleeting opportunity, which can be grasped as it approaches, but not once it has passed. The study of the iconography of Kairos and his Roman counterparts is entirely based on literary sources: the epigram on Lysippus’ statue of Kairos by Posidippus of Pella, the Greek poet of the first half of the 3rd century B.C. (The Greek Anthology, XVI. 275), the rhetorical ecphrasis of the same statue by Callistratus, the Greek sophist and rhetorician of the 3rd or 4th century AD (Call. Descr. 6), the epigram on the statue of Occasio by Decimus Magnus Ausonius, the Roman poet of the 3rd century AD. (Aus. Epp. 12). and the Phaedrus’ fable about Tempus (Phaed. 5. 8), which is a Latinized version of a lost fable by the Greek fabulist Aesop.