Greek and Latin authors did not pay much attention to the popular culture of their civilisations. Material evidence on the daily life of the popular classes is also limited, compared to official public and religious documentation. A folklore of the ancients, however, does exist. Authors have referred to it with the lexicon of ‘belief’ (λέγεται, dicitur) or of the ‘countryside’ (ἄγροικοι, rustic), but also of the ‘popular’ (δῆμος, vulgus), albeit more rarely. Artists and craftsmen depicted it mainly as a funerary tribute or as a curious incursion into everyday life.
There emerge, from precious testimonia, beliefs and superstitions, fables and proverbs, figures of the imagination, songs and other types of musical forms, pharmacopoeia and medicinal remedies, apotropaic gestures and practices, and many other traits of a popular culture of the ancients. A conception of the world that reveals, in the final analysis, the widespread sense of fragility of the ancient man in the face of the fatigue and the uncertainty of work, of many natural phenomena, of life and death.
I am thrilled to share with you the release of Folklorikum online, an archive of Ancient Folklore https://www.folkloricum.it/folkloricum/