Embodied Ethos: Negotiations of Authority, Credibility, and Trust in Roman Republican Coinage and Renaissance Texts

“Embodied Ethos” explores how coins negotiate rhetors’ ethos in antiquity and how Renaissance texts illustrated with coin images reconstruct and appropriate the ethos of ancient coins. With a methodological framework that puts in conversation ancient rhetorical theories, modern theories in visual and material rhetoric, and cognitive linguistics, the project approaches ethos as an interweaving of authority, credibility, and trust, as well as a form of inter-subjectivity between rhetors and audiences. Applied to a discussion of early Greek and Roman coinage, this framework reveals that the negotiation of ethos occurs in relation to transcendental, social, or individual systems of power, truths, and values. An analysis of Roman Republican coins minted at the onset of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey suggests that the warrying factions use coin iconography and inscriptions to negotiate the leaders’ ethos and to mount responses to political crises. While Pompeian coinage invokes Rome’s past and elevates Pompey to transcendental status, Caesarean coinage invokes Rome’s future and encourages allegiance to Caesar as an individual. In the Renaissance, coin images import the ethos of ancient coins into printed texts. Guillaume Rouillé’s Promptuaire des medalles integrates coin images into literacy-based contexts and appropriates the ethos of ancient coins in order to energize the life of the text, to advance a form of literacy that balances oral and visual reading, and to help audiences negotiate their own ethos as readers. Madeleine de Scudéry’s Les Femmes illustres appropriates the ethos of ancient coins to support the ethos of women as marginalized rhetors. In this text, coin images invoke the public roles of famous women of antiquity, draw attention to the female orators as a community of speakers, and encourage audiences to accept and read a rhetorical text about women. Overall, the transmission of coin ethos from antiquity into the Renaissance suggests that, as objects of cultural significance, coins participate in complex networks of objects and texts and carry persuasive messages across cultures and time periods

(11R,11aS)-11-Hydr­oxy-1,5,11,11a-tetra­hydro-1-benzothieno[2,3-f]indolizin-3(2H)-one

The absolute configuration of the title compound, C14H13NO2S, was assigned from the synthesis and confirmed by the structure determination. The central six-membered ring of the indolizine system adopts an envelope conformation, the greatest deviation from the mean plane of the ring being 0.459 (2) Å for the N atom. The benzothieno system is planar [mean deviation = 0.009 (2) Å]. In the crystal structure, mol­ecules form chains parallel to the b axis via inter­molecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds

(8aS)-7,8,8a,9-Tetra­hydro­thieno[3,2-f]indolizin-6(4H)-one

In the mol­ecular structure of the title compound, C10H11NOS, the central six-membered ring of the indolizine unit adopts an envelope conformation, the maximum deviations from the mean plane of the ring being 0.533 (2) Å. The fused thieno ring is nearly coplanar [mean deviation = 0.007 (2) Å]. The conformation of the fused oxopyrrolidine ring is close to that of a flat-envelope, with a maximum deviation of 0.339 (3) Å. The crystal structure is stabilized by C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds

Fluorescent bacteria for colloidal iron biosensors

This research was focused on the possibility of iron sensing by means of bacterial cultures. The effect of ferric and ferrous ions on Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which has the ability to uptake the environmental iron in the form of complex iron compositions named siderophores, characterized by luminescent features, was studied. The different sensitivity to the iron from oxide compounds in comparison to the iron from chlorides and sulfate was emphasized by means of fluorescence measurements. It could be stated that Pseudomonas aeruginosa, from human body specimens could be the biological component of an iron biosensor for ferrofluid traces reminiscent after the administration for medical purposes