The document discusses different concepts of love throughout history, including in antiquity. In antiquity, love was viewed as something lustful, sexual, and erotic. People relied on magic for love since relationships were intensely emotional and difficult to cope with if they failed. Attitudes towards sexuality also differed, as individuals were not defined or categorized based on their sexuality. The document also discusses how children were viewed in antiquity, noting they were likely not highly regarded according to modern standards but may not have been more negatively viewed than other marginalized groups. Archaeological evidence shows children were sometimes given toys and other goods in burials.

1. TO LOVE
Your partner, your children
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Persons with Disabilities

2. It is easy to think about love in purely romantic terms, but the theme of love
occurs in the past in a variety of contexts – from cosmological speculations on
the structure of the universe to medical theories of emotions, from
philosophical investigations into the nature of friendship, from poetic
accounts of the birth of gods to purely carnal pleasure.

3. The people in antiquity viewed
love in a completely different way
than we do now. Back then, they
viewed love as something lustful,
very sexual, and erotic. With such
an intense view on love, it is
difficult for one to be sane if
events do not turn out well for
both parties.
Sarcophagus lid depicting
Larth Tetnies and Thanchvil
Tarnal (Boston, USA)
The “Lovers of Valdaro”
inhumation grave from the
Neolithic period (Mantova, Italy)
Your partner

4. Even in our world today, living with a broken
heart is difficult for one to live with. With
this in mind, it makes sense for people back
then to rely on magic for love because if it
doesn’t work out, then it is easy to blame
the gods and magic for not working properly.
Circe of Homer's Odyssey offering a cup of magic potion
to Odysseus (John William Waterhouse,
Oldham Gallery, England)

5. This is much less painful than
looking introspectively and trying
to cope with a failed relationship.
Love is just another force of
nature, nature is just art and art is
just an expression of a feeling. This
is why people in antiquity tried to
control nature with magic because
they do not understand it, but they
wanted to, they related to gods,
since they were perceived as the
protogenic movers of everything.
Roman magic, nude female
“voodoo” doll in kneeling
position, bound and pierced with
thirteen pins, from Egypt (Louvre
Museum, France)
Ankh - Egyptian symbol of life
or immortality and of the
balance between opposing
forces, for example between
masculinity and femininity

6. Detail of a painting from the limestone walls of
the Tomb of the Diver (Paestum, Italy)
In antiquity, people did not consider
themselves to be defined by such a
thing as “sexuality”, and the sex of
the person desired was not a
criterion used to define and
categorize a desiring subject.

7. It was never thought that
individuals, whether men or
women, whatever their status
(citizen, resident alien,
foreigner, or slave), their
origin or their social
background, could be
grouped under a single
heading on the sole basis that
they were attracted to
persons of the opposite sex or
on the criterion of their
attraction to persons of the
same sex.
The Warren cup (British Museum, England)

8. PIEVE D‘ALPAGO
Situla is a bronze bucket that was very
popular in the Early Iron Age and appreciated
by the aristocracy in a wide area from the
Alps and the Danube to the Adriatic and
Italian areas. Their most significant feature
and greatest contribution to the art of the
Iron Age is its visual art, a pictorial narrative
that is achieved by embossing on thin bronze
sheet in several horizontal friezes. Such
vessels were all associated with lavish
drinking sets in which wine and other
intoxicating (alcoholic) elixirs were mixed,
served during various profane and ritual, holy
banquets, ceremonies and festivities.
Bronze situla from Vače
(Narodni muzej, Slovenia)

9. It is commonly believed that Situla art reflected elite
male communities and that women were much rarer and
in more passive roles than men, while scenes of children
were extremely rare. The discovery of the situla from
Pieve D'Alpago (Belluno) showed a different "pictorial
story" and a completely new representation of the elite of
northern Italy, of the Venetian territory. Namely, it was on
that situla that for the first time in the lowest frieze the
so-called "Situla erotic comic" was depicted. It begins with
a couple of meeting, engaging in love foreplay and
explicit games, and the events culminate in a birth scene,
unique in the repertoire of Situla art.

10. However, these scenes are not hidden or
metaphorically presented; they are
human, real and sensual, just as the
brutal and real act of giving birth to a
naked woman – a mother in a standing
position who brings into the world a new
being with visible heads and arms. The
situla is an authentic masterpiece that
is considered a unicum of Situla art. It
was found as an urn in the tomb of a
rich woman from the 5th century BCE.

11. BREZJE
In antiquity, the banquets and
symposiums emphasized the
"internationally accepted" ritual of
alcohol consumption, whose role in
promoting commercialism, in the
exchange of hospitality and the
dynamics of power in the last
millennium BCE was well known. All
the standard motifs in the figurality of
Situla art established a precious
narrative that was much more complex
than a flat or purely decorative image,
especially in the classical phase of that
creation.
Silenus holding a bunch of grapes and a cup of
wine (Vatican Museums, Italy)

12. Situla art was not, nor could it
be, Biblia pauperum of the wider
community of Iron Age people.
Since then the prestige of
materiality was inferior to the
prestige of symbols, which, just
like the "international
symposium", was the
"international metalanguage" of
the communicative and cognitive
values of their time.

13. Many interpretations bring us into the spheres of legality and the
principles of the sanctity of the "love embrace" in which women
nevertheless played a decisive role. Thus, on the example of a belt plate
decorated in the Situla art from Brezje, an unusual but very strong and
explicit erotic scene is presented.

14. Essentially such an act of love was considered
the most intimate and beautiful part of human
life. The woman is also in this scene of
emphasized symbolic value and divine
character, for she dominates in lavish attire
and sits on an even more lavish throne, and the
man is in a lower position, with his head
turned. It is the woman, who will enable the
reproduction of the elite, and thus maintain
the existence of the ruling associated with
dynastic inheritance. Such a "marital embrace"
became interpreted in this masterpiece as
sublime and sacred.

15. STOBI
Non-mythological erotic scenes appear
frequently on a variety of Roman objects
intended for daily use. These images portray
a range of settings, couples, and positions
with a casualness that is foreign to modern
viewers. Both elite and non-elite Roman
spectators were, therefore, accustomed to
encountering such explicit sexual scenes on
every day, domestic objects. Erotic lamps
were particularly popular and enjoyed a
long life span in Roman culture.
Roman lamp with a caricatured depiction of
Cleopatra, shown naked and sat on a
phallus on the back of a crocodile
(British Museum, England)

16. Extant examples date from the 2nd
century BCE to the 5th century AD. We
can deduce that, when purchasing an oil
lamp, a large number of customers chose
representations of sexual scenes over
other available motifs such as
mythological representations, images of
animals, and abstract floral designs. For
the Romans, erotic images evoked
notions of pleasure rather than sin, guilt,
or shame. The sexual act represented in
these images was, above all seen as a gift
from Venus.
Roman oil lamp with erotic scene
from Naples
(British Museum, England)

17. The decoration shows a man and a woman
engaged in sexual intercourse. When this
lamp was lit, the flame’s flickering light
would have animated the figures on the bed.
Moreover, the placement of the hole for the
wick, just below the bed, is in itself a visual
pun. The couple depicted on this lamp is,
quite literally, on fire. Such idealized images
of sex were then associated with notions of
luxury, pleasure, and elite status. The erotic
scene on this lamp fragment can, therefore,
be seen as representative of Roman attitudes
towards sexuality.
Roman lamp with erotic scene from
Stobi (Gradsko, North Macedonia)

18. What is love? We all wish to have
the answer to one of the most
universal, mysterious, and all-
permeating phenomena on this
planet. And even if we perhaps have
a special feeling and intuitive insight
that love is related to everything
else we still have not found and
offered a full or finite definition of
this multifaceted, dynamic, creative
and all-encompassing phenomenon
that is love.
A red-figure drinking cup with a depiction of Eros from
Attica (Antikenmuseum Basel, Switzerland)

19. However, since love is an
ontological event, the
creation of a new being
also coincides with
different concepts
throughout history, since
each period brings a new
way of being and living.
Thus, each period in
history offers a prevailing
concept of love.
A Late Bronze Age couple in
an affectionate embrace
for 3,000 year
(Petrykiv, Ukraine)
Male couple from the Early Medieval
burial - so called Lover's skeletons
holding hands (Modena, Italy)

20. Antiquity was basically an oral, not
a written culture, and much of what
was written has been lost. Almost
everything is written by men, and a
disproportionate number of sources
come from limited geographical
areas, primarily centres such as
Rome and Egypt. Obviously, these
are serious challenges for the study
of children; however, they are not
insurmountable but can be met by
conscientious and balanced work
on the sources – especially
archaeological finds.
Neolithic Vinča culture
figurine of a female holding
a baby (Vinča, Serbia)
Statue of Queen Ankhnes-meryre
II and her son, Pharaoh Pepy II
(Brooklyn Museum, USA)
Your children

21. According to modern standards, children probably cannot be said to be highly
regarded in the past. When observed against similar groups, however, the answer may
be quite different. It remains an open question whether attitudes towards children
were more negative than towards others, at least when we measure them against
other marginalized groups such as slaves, elderly, and disabled.
Roman funerary sculpture depicting a teacher
and pupils (Naumagen, Rheinisches Landesmuseum
Trier, Germany)
Greek sculpture of a mother and
child (National Archaeological
Museum of Athens, Greece)
Greek Goddesses rearing
children (Carlsberg
Glyptotek, Denmark)

22. ATENICA
In Atenica near Čačak in today’s
Serbia, in grave 2, located in the
periphery of the impressive tumulus
1, the grave of a younger male person
of aristocratic, perhaps the highest
social authority in the central Balkan
area was discovered. Discovered were
numerous gold, silver and bronze
objects, as well as glass and bone
ornaments, but surprising was the
largest number of amber objects.
Reconstruction of the Iron Age tumuli in Atenica
(Čačak, Serbia)

23. Numerous grave goods were actually small insignias, manipulated in a complicated
pars pro toto scenario, demonstrating that the social importance of the deceased was
not accentuated only with the selection of grave goods, but also with the complex
manipulations with them. A child was buried who left this world prematurely and
who, precisely because of this fate, received exactly certain objects suitable "for
travel" of his age and social status.

24. STOBI
Taking into consideration the premodern
birth and survival rates, the most
underrepresented element in the
archaeological record are the burials of
infants and small children. However, among
the discovered ones especially rare are the
burials of children with grave goods
addressing their age and status in the society
– burials that included toys. The latter being
not only functional but artefacts full of
symbolic meaning alluding to the premature
death on one and the grief of the parents on
the other side. Childs grave during excavations in
Stobi (Gradsko, North Macedonia)

25. In ancient Stobi one such cremated burial
was discovered. Besides the general grave
goods such as an eroded coin and an oil
lamp, enabling the dating of the burial into
the first half of the 1st century, it included
several toys. The most interesting was a
ceramic model of a horse on wheels –
unfortunately, they were not preserved
indicating that most probably they were
made from wood and not from ceramic as in
numerous other, such toys. Horses on wheels
were discovered all across the Roman
Empire, but their origins could be traced
back to the Iron if not even Copper Age.
Toy from the grave from Stobi
(Gradsko, North Macedonia)

26. KOPER – SERVITE MONASTERY
There is a general perception that, in the Middle
Ages, children were not valued by their families
or by society as a whole. Perhaps no time in
history has sentimentalized infants, toddlers, and
waifs as has modern culture, but it doesn't
necessarily follow that children were undervalued
in earlier times. In part, a lack of representation
in medieval popular culture is responsible for this
perception. Contemporary chronicles and
biographies that include childhood details are
rare and the literature of the times rarely
touched on the hero's tender years, and medieval
artwork offering visual clues about children other
than the Christ Child is almost non-existent.
Madonna and Christ Child
(Ambrogio Lorenzetti,
Pinacoteca di Brera, Italy)

27. This lack of representation in and of itself
has led some observers to conclude that
children were of limited interest, and
therefore of limited importance, to
medieval society at large. Medieval
cemeteries demonstrate quite the opposite.
The Servite order in Koper performed their
vocation and the monastery must have acted
as a hospital. In the garden in the centre,
one crypt included young children from the
age of 2 to 4. It seems that children
considered special were buried in a
prominent position of the monastery and
their peace was not disturbed even later
when the specification of the complex
changed.

28. Children were also made objects of
admiration, particularly by being
idealized or sentimentalized. This
can be seen as a positive evaluation
of children, but may equally well be
reflecting the needs of adults to
touch up the harsh realities of their
own lives. As not fully human they
were seen as beings on the
threshold of another world, who, in
their purity, were able to mediate
truths from the gods.
Cult relief dedicated to Nutrices discovered on Panorama hill
(Ptuj, Slovenia)

29. An illustration of Neve's burial, showing the infant wrapped in a shell-adorned sling (Cave Arma Veirana, Italy)
The strong underrepresentation of infants in the archaeological record cannot
simply be explained by the condition and preservation of the archaeological
material – it may point to the separate or special burial of the youngest, to
infanticide and death due to exposure, even to sacrifice. Further modes of burial
were evolving according to the age of the dead child and displayed considerable
variation depending on the social status of the deceased and their families.

30. TO LOVE
Your partner, your children
Accessible and Digitalized Cultural Heritage for
Persons with Disabilities
Thank you for your attention!