Images on Greek coins serve as a means of identifying the sights and inhabitants of the city-states that minted them. The reproduction of spaces and places in face design is an interesting phenomenon: alongside actually existing places, face design also depicts imaginary spatial structures representative of the city that issued the coins. This study shows, within the scope of a collection of artifacts, which spatial configurations were portrayed on archaic and classical Greek coins, and why these were chosen to characterize and represent their respective cities. Widely dispersed geographically and produced in rapid succession, Greek coins, more than almost any other art form, present an excellent opportunity for a visual-studies analysis of the representation of space and spatiality in antiquity.

Since Antiquity dialogue was one of the paradigmatic genres in theoretical discourse and its cognitive function was of fundamental significance in Renaissance theory of dialogue. This importance was considered for the first time by Carlo Sigonio in his De dialogo liber. Referring to Aristotle’s Topica, Sigonio defined dialogue as a written imitation of a dialectical disputation. He considered the arguments in a dialogue as well as in a dialectical disputation not to be based on scientific propositions, which are necessarily true, but to be based on commonly accepted premises. In consequence thereof, dialogue is not intended to generate indubitable knowledge but to foster „opinions“ (opinio), „beliefs“ and „convictions“ (fides), whose epistemological value is a matter of discussion. The intention of this paper is to present the arguments developed by Sigonio in order to explain that opinio and fides are not only legitimate epistemic goals, but sometimes the only reasonable ones. A further topic is the functions of dialectic and rhetoric within the framework of this cognitive concept.

The diameter of classical columns slightly decreases with height. Vitruvius calls it “entasis” and cites aesthetic reasons for its use already in Greek architecture. However, the exact geometrical shape of the entasis remained unexplained. It was subject to wide speculation even in later times. The large columns at the Porticus of the Pantheon in Rome are made with an entasis. This article describes the exact measurements of their proportion and a method to determine the geometry of the entasis. The Bern Digital Pantheon Model is used as the data source.

The article reviews the annual conference „Places – Hierarchies – Oscillations. Spatialisation through Knowledge and Spatial Structure of Knowledge“ hosted by the HKFZ Trier. After summarizing the symposium’s questions, the conference contributions are discussed to connectivity and debatable subjects for the literature- and art-historically as well as cultural-scientific oriented research projects in Topoi’s post-ancient investigations. Finally, the article analyses analogies and generalizes insights, which are gathered from the conference and their different disciplinal-anchored contributions concerning the allunderlying correlative space – knowledge.

A workshop devoted to parallel spatial concepts and organized by Svend Hansen and Michael Meyer was held for Research Group A-I of the Excellence Cluster TOPOI on 15–17 March 2010 at the Topoi-Haus of the Freie Universität Berlin. The 23 contributions shared a common theme: potential insights into archeology in light of parallel forms of spatial perception and usage in societies. Analysis can be conducted of such parallelisms existing between diverse identity groups as well as between the traditional and newly emerging spatial usage of a collective entity.