Posts: 1,313
Threads: 193
Joined: Apr 2006
Reputation:
4
Great Pics, Jona!
However, I forget to specifically point out that I am looking for collapsable umbrellas/parasols (umbrellas/parasols as such must be clearly very old). Your middle pic seems to me one, the higher clearly not, the lower I cannot tell.
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
Posts: 1,313
Threads: 193
Joined: Apr 2006
Reputation:
4
I got a first hint at the existence of ancient collapsible umbrellas, but I need your help. Is the English translation from Umbrellas and Their History, p.8 correct?
Aristophanes, The Knights (424 BC):
"But your ears, by Jove, are stretched out like a parasol, and now again shut up."
http://books.google.com/books?id=N2yXB3 ... d-EeQlLSPA
Other translations I stumbled upon were:
"You knew only how to open and close your ears like asunshade."
"Your ears would flap open wide one minute, then shut tight the next, open wide and shut tight, open wide… they flapped about like little umbrellas!"
It seems the translators cannot make their mind up whether to call it parasol, umbrella or sunshade. But the idea of a
collapsible device comes out clear enough, doesn't it?
PS: Which "scholiast" is meant? (p.8 below)
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
Posts: 1,550
Threads: 81
Joined: Oct 2006
Reputation:
49
And by the eighteenth century, the umbrella was a symbol of leadership in West Africa! Clio only knows how the idea spread to there, or where it was first invented.
Nullis in verba
I have not checked this forum frequently since 2013, but I hope that these old posts have some value. I now have
a blog on books, swords, and the curious things humans do with them.
Posts: 1,313
Threads: 193
Joined: Apr 2006
Reputation:
4
Well, it is not about the umbrella as such anymore. Umbrellas and parasols were known in the ancient Middle East and Egypt by the 3rd millenium BC, and in Mycenaean Greece by the late 2nd millenium BC. All sources agree on that.
I am now specifically looking for evidence for the collapsible umbrella, one which can be opened and closed, and the earliest literary reference I found was the passage at Aristophanes, Knights, around 425 BC.
A good source I found so far is:
M.C. Miller: “The Parasol: An Oriental Status-Symbol in Late Archaic and Classical Athens,â€
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
Posts: 1,313
Threads: 193
Joined: Apr 2006
Reputation:
4
A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities says that:
Quote:The parasols of the ancients seem to have been exactly like our own parasols or umbrellas in form, and could be shut up and opened like ours (Aristoph. Equit. 1348; Schol. ad loc.; Ovid. Ar. Am. II.209).
However, I have difficulties discerning the evidence for the collapsible umbrella ascribed by the dictionary in the
Latin original of Ovid which runs:
Quote:Ipse tene distenta suis umbracula virgis,
Ipse fac in turba, qua venit illa, locum.
Ovid basically only says that the lover should protect his woman with the umbrella, doesn't he?
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
Posts: 7,668
Threads: 117
Joined: Apr 2005
Reputation:
0
Does that mean to leave the women withOUT umbrellas to their respective fates?
:lol:
M. Demetrius Abicio
(David Wills)
Saepe veritas est dura.
Posts: 1,313
Threads: 193
Joined: Apr 2006
Reputation:
4
Any idea what publication hides behind the abbreviation RE? In full: Hug, RE ii A 1 (1921) s.v. 'Schirm' 433-5.
It came with a reference to the Le Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines de Daremberg et Saglio (G. Nicole, DarSag v (1919) s.v. 'Umbella' 583-4).
Stefan (Literary references to the discussed topics are always appreciated.)
