Schemata. Comunicazione non verbale nella Grecia antica

What characterises and perpetuates the pose and iconography of a God, a warrior or a hero depicted in painting and sculpture in Ancient Greece? What makes constant and effective the iconographic vocabulary that is confidently resorted to, to make values known?
The term schema shows that mousike - music and dance - is the main factor in building up iconographic vocabulary and constant associations between specific schemata and specific values. Not only painting, sculpture or dance - with the poses and gestures of the characters they represent -, but also the way of walking, talking and appearing in public, the etiquette, are mimetic arts, whose vocabulary the ancient citizen understands even actively: he knows, in his own body, the schemata and values they diffuse. Trust in the language of schemata however brings a risk with it: manipulation of the schema, dissociation between content and form, between being and appearing and the possible deception of appearance.
The mimetic arts are therefore a means of building citizenship and social values and so become a political theme: the stability of a State depends to a large extent on the stability of values shared and the mimetic arts have the power to perpetuate them.
But also to subvert them.
By studing the uses of schema in Ancient Greece, this essay analuses the complex strategies of non-verbal communication and their role in the social and political sphere: a problem of great interest even today.