Turcan, Robert
"Living with Myths"
- 2005.
50
To Live with Myths : About a Recent Book. This is an expanded review of the book by P. Zanker and B. Chr. Ewald, Mit Mythen leben, Die Bilderwelt der römischen Sarkophage. The A., a recognised specialist in Roman iconography and sarcophagi, examines and sometimes disagrees with some of the basic issues in the book. « To live with myths » was natural in Antiquity, but today we are quite incapable of sharing the original response of people to the sarcophagi and their iconography. This is an absolute difficulty, and the reviewer insists on the importance of ancient literary sources as our only means of understanding sepulchral imagery.