01-24-2018, 06:51 PM
I decided that this inquiry might deserve a thread of its own.
As my own health is weak (mild cerebral palsy, so clumsy, lurching and with a gammy right arm -- hence my long standing affection for Clau- Clau- Claudius the cripple) I have decided to work this in to my Roman dress rather than only picturing myself sitting down with the toga draped over my arm.,
Obvious ideas are replacing a sparse tunic with a longer one, maybe even the ''effeminate'' talaris, wearing two tunics and adding a laena and petasus outdoors and fasciae around the legs, chest and throat (closely following Suetonius' Augustus). I have commissioned a Senecan lens, a globular bottle filled with water (see his Quaestiones Naturales)
I mention this not to curry pity but to encourage any passer by with a disability to make the best of it in reenactment, remembering that the past was not wholly stocked by people built on the lines of Ajax or with the beauty of a Helen.
Obviously, as it was the very antithesis of DIGNITAS and VIRTUS, I have never seen a Roman depiction of a walking cane. My modern veneered one would look absurd.
Presumably old men used something of the sort -- indeed, the only ancient depiction of a cane specifically carried by a frail man I know of is from a Greek piece of figural pottery, a Type B amphora, by the Syriskos Painter depicting an old man with a little African slave-boy kept at the National Museum in Copenhagen, c. 470-460 B.C.E.:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BmmW...&q&f=false
p. 139 of the attached book.
There are extremely small glimpses of an ornate walking stick used by Sian Phillips in the BBC drama ''I Claudius'', episode 5, but not all theatrical props are copied from originals. If anyone can help me I should be tremendously grateful.
As my own health is weak (mild cerebral palsy, so clumsy, lurching and with a gammy right arm -- hence my long standing affection for Clau- Clau- Claudius the cripple) I have decided to work this in to my Roman dress rather than only picturing myself sitting down with the toga draped over my arm.,
Obvious ideas are replacing a sparse tunic with a longer one, maybe even the ''effeminate'' talaris, wearing two tunics and adding a laena and petasus outdoors and fasciae around the legs, chest and throat (closely following Suetonius' Augustus). I have commissioned a Senecan lens, a globular bottle filled with water (see his Quaestiones Naturales)
I mention this not to curry pity but to encourage any passer by with a disability to make the best of it in reenactment, remembering that the past was not wholly stocked by people built on the lines of Ajax or with the beauty of a Helen.
Obviously, as it was the very antithesis of DIGNITAS and VIRTUS, I have never seen a Roman depiction of a walking cane. My modern veneered one would look absurd.
Presumably old men used something of the sort -- indeed, the only ancient depiction of a cane specifically carried by a frail man I know of is from a Greek piece of figural pottery, a Type B amphora, by the Syriskos Painter depicting an old man with a little African slave-boy kept at the National Museum in Copenhagen, c. 470-460 B.C.E.:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BmmW...&q&f=false
p. 139 of the attached book.
There are extremely small glimpses of an ornate walking stick used by Sian Phillips in the BBC drama ''I Claudius'', episode 5, but not all theatrical props are copied from originals. If anyone can help me I should be tremendously grateful.
Patrick J. Gray
'' Now. Close your eyes. It's but a short step to the boat, a short pull across the river.''
''And then?''
''And then, I promise you, you'll dream a different story altogether''
From ''I, Claudius'', by J. Pulman after R. Graves.
'' Now. Close your eyes. It's but a short step to the boat, a short pull across the river.''
''And then?''
''And then, I promise you, you'll dream a different story altogether''
From ''I, Claudius'', by J. Pulman after R. Graves.
