La trottola nel mondo classico. Archeologia, fonti letterarie e iconografiche

Marco Giuman

2020-01-01

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Abstract

The book investigates, through the use of literary and iconographic sources, the archaeology of the spinning top and of an entire family of rotating objects. The spinning top, already attested in ancient Egypt, appears in the Greco-Roman world linked to a great variety of terminology, which suggests a similar plurality of forms, as well as uses and meanings. From a toy, connected in a privileged way to the world of childhood, it rises in antiquity to the rank of the perfect symbolic object, precisely because of its intrinsic quality of challenging instability, in a perennial balance between movement and fall, which makes it a liminal entity. The author investigates the object's connection with the rites of passage of both the male and female spheres, highlighting how, going beyond the playful sphere, the spinning top is in reality a polysemic element. From the rite that accompanies the passage from pais to neaniskos to the ceremonies that precede the wedding, from the Orphic-Dionysian initiation to its attestation in funerary, votive and mantic contexts, the spinning top maintains its mystery intact up to the present day.