The Consulship of 367bcand the Evolution of Roman Military Authority

Antichthon ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 124-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Military Command ◽  
Roman Military ◽  
Early Republican ◽  
Static Nature

AbstractA tension exists within the literary sources for early Rome, between the supposedly static nature of military authority, embodied by the grant ofimperiumwhich was allegedly shared both by archaicregesand republican magistrates, and the evidence for change within Rome’s military hierarchy, with the early republican army being commanded by a succession of different magistrates including the archaicpraetores, the so-called ‘consular tribunes,’ and the finally the consuls and praetors of the mid-fourth centuryBC. The differences between the magistracies and the motivations driving the evolution of the system have caused confusion for both ancient and modern writers alike, with the usual debate being focused on the number of officials involved under each system and Rome’s expanding military and bureaucratic needs. The present study will argue that, far more than just varying in number, when viewed against the wider backdrop of Roman society during the period, the sources hint that the archaicpraetoresand consular tribunes might have exercised slightly different types of military authority – possibly distinguished by the designationsimperiumandpotestas– which were unified under the office of the consulship of 367BC.1The changes in Rome’s military hierarchy during the fifth and fourth centuriesBCmay therefore not only indicate an expansion of Rome’s military command, as is usually argued, but also an evolution of military authority within Rome associated with the movement of power from thecomitia curiatato thecomitia centuriata.

Apollodoros' Mother: The Wives of Enfranchised Aliens in Athens

1991 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Carey
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Tentative Conclusion ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Status ◽  
Roman Military ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

The banker Pasion, father of the notorious fourth-century litigant and politician Apollodoros, some of whose speeches have survived under the name of Demosthenes, was originally a slave; freed by his owners, he made a substantial fortune from banking and subsequently received Athenian citizenship for his generous gifts to the city. At [Dem.] 59.2 we are given a paraphrase of the decree which enfranchised him: 'Aθηναον εἶναι Πασωνα κα κγνους τοὺς κενου ‘[the Athenian people voted] that Pasion and his descendants should be Athenian’. In common with inscriptions recording grants of citizenship, and unlike Roman military diplomata, the decree appears to have ignored Pasion's wife Archippe. The silence of the decrees of enfranchisement is echoed in the literary sources, with the result that we have no explicit testimony to the legal status of the wife of an alien who was granted Athenian citizenship. M. J. Osborne assumes that the status of the wife was in no way affected by the grant; she remained an alien. D. Whitehead has argued that in such cases the wife's status was indeterminate; in the event of the death of her first husband she might find herself married either to an Athenian citizen or to an alien, whereupon her status would be defined according to that of her husband. This article will argue that Archippe's status was unaffected by Pasion's receipt of citizenship, that is, that she remained a metic. I shall then proceed to consider the question of the implications of the difference in status of Pasion and Archippe subsequent to his enfranchisement for the legal basis of the relationship between them, and finally draw a tentative conclusion about the date of Pasion's receipt of citizenship.

Distribution and chromosome number of Sonchus palustris in Slovakia

2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 7-21
Author(s):  
M. Dudáš ◽  
P. Eliáš jun. ◽  
D. R. Letz ◽  
Z. Bártová ◽  
V. Kolarčik
Keyword(s):  
Chromosome Number ◽  
Red List ◽  
Herbarium Specimens ◽  
Distribution Map ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Different Types ◽  
New Localities ◽  
Recent Version

The distribution of Sonchus palustris in Slovakia was studied using herbarium specimens and literary sources. The herbarium studies, supplemented with targeted field search in the years 2015–2018, revealed 61 new localities and confirmed many other older locations. The species has been recorded in 19 phytogeographical districts and sub-districts of Slovakia. Most of the records are concentrated in the Podunajská nížina lowland in SW Slovakia and in the Ipel'sko-rimavská brázda region in southern Slovakia. Our results showed that the species is relatively common in different types of wetlands and its re-evaluation in the recent version of the Slovak red list is not needed. Chromosome number data for two new populations in eastern Slovakia (both 2n = 18) were counted. The distribution map is given.

The Roman Martyrs

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lapidge
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The Church

The Roman Martyrs contains translations of forty Latin passiones of saints who were martyred in Rome or its near environs, during the period before the ‘peace of the Church’ (c. 312). Some of these Roman martyrs are universally known — SS. Agnes, Sebastian or Laurence, for example — but others are scarcely known outside the ecclesiastical landscape of Rome itself. Each of the translated passiones, which vary in length from a few paragraphs to over ninety, is accompanied by an individual introduction and commentary; the translations are preceded by an Introduction which describes the principal features of this little-known genre of Christian literature. The Roman passiones martyrum have never previously been collected together, and have never been translated into a modern language. They were mostly composed during the period 425 x 675, by anonymous authors who who were presumably clerics of the Roman churches or cemeteries which housed the martyrs’ remains. It is clear that they were composed in response to the huge explosion of pilgrim traffic to martyrial shrines from the late fourth century onwards, at a time when authentic records (protocols) of their trials and executions had long since vanished, and the authors of the passiones were obliged to imagine the circumstances in which martyrs were tried and executed. The passiones are works of pure fiction; and because they abound in ludicrous errors of chronology, they have been largely ignored by historians of the early Church. But although they cannot be used as evidence for the original martyrdoms, they nevertheless allow a fascinating glimpse of the concerns which animated Christians during the period in question: for example, the preservation of virginity, or the ever-present threat posed by pagan practices. And because certain aspects of Roman life will have changed little between (say) the second century and the fifth, the passiones throw valuable light on many aspects of Roman society, not least the nature of a trial before an urban prefect, and the horrendous tortures which were a central feature of such trials. Above all, perhaps, the passiones are an indispensable resource for understanding the topography of late antique Rome and its environs, since they characteristically contain detailed reference to the places where the martyrs were tried, executed, and buried. The book contains five Appendices containing translations of texts relevant to the study of Roman martyrs: the Depositio martyrum of A.D. 354 (Appendix I); the epigrammata of Pope Damasus d. 384) which pertain to Roman martyrs treated in the passiones (II); entries pertaining to Roman martyrs in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum (III); entries in seventh-century pilgrim itineraries pertaining to shrines of Roman martyrs in suburban cemeteries (IV); and entries commemorating these martyrs in early Roman liturgical books (V).

Phoenicia Under the Achaemenid Empire

2019 ◽  
pp. 87-97
Author(s):  
Vadim Jigoulov
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Economic Aspects ◽  
Achaemenid Empire ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
City States

This chapter covers several aspects of Achaemenid Phoenicia, including literary sources, epigraphy, numismatics, and material culture. Achaemenid Phoenicia was characterized by a continuity of material culture from the Neo-Babylonian period. The extant sources—literary, epigraphic, and numismatic—evince a conglomerate of independent city-states characterized by expressions of compliance with the central Achaemenid authorities while pursuing their own economic and political goals, with Sidon as the most preeminent metropolis. The end of the period in the fourth century bce saw the gradual disintegration of the Phoenician loyalties to the Achaemenids and a pivot toward the Aegean in political and economic aspects.

A new statue-base for Constantius II and the fourth-century imperial cult at Oinoanda

2015 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 181-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
N.P. Milner
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Imperial Cult ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Constantius Ii

AbstractA long-unpublished statue base for the emperor Constantius II was rediscovered at Oinoanda in 2010. It contains information that Oinoanda was a neokoros city, that is, having a special status in the imperial cult. The article attempts to trace the significance of neokoria and of images in the imperial cult in the fourth century AD, an era of rapid religious change when the Christianity of the emperors and many ordinary people co-existed with deep and widespread pagan traditions that flowed throughout Roman society.

Amulets and the Ritual Efficacy of Christian Symbols

2019 ◽  
pp. 349-366
Author(s):  
Rangar H. Cline
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Insight Into

Although “magical” amulets are often overlooked in studies of early Christian material culture, they provide unique insight into the lives of early Christians. The high number of amulets that survive from antiquity, their presence in domestic and mortuary archaeological contexts, and frequent discussions of amulets in Late Antique literary sources indicate that they constituted an integral part of the fabric of religious life for early Christians. The appearance of Christian symbols on amulets, beginning in the second century and occurring with increasing frequency in the fourth century and afterward, reveals the increasing perception of Christian symbols as ritually potent among Christians and others in the Roman Empire. The forms, texts, and images on amulets reveal the fears and hopes that occupied the daily lives of early Christians, when amulets designed for ritual efficacy if not orthodoxy were believed to provide a defense against forces that would harm body and soul.

Claudian's methods of borrowing in ‘De Raptu Proserpinae’

1952 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 4-7
Author(s):  
A. K. Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Classical Culture

The literary sources upon which Claudian drew for De Raptu Proserpinae were recognized early. A great number were noted by Parrhasius in his edition of the poem (1500), and others by the editors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly Heinsius. The eighteenth-century editors of Claudian had less work to do in this field. Gesner's edition (1759) made an important contribution to the study of Claudian, but the value of his commentary, both on the De Raptu and on the other poems, lay in judicious observation rather than discovery. Birt's edition in M.G.H. (1892) assembled the material in a valuable form, yet with the omission of some significant parallels and the addition of some which are slight and even questionable. Our task now is not so much to discover the sources of Claudian's language as to examine his use of them, and in attempting this we have two advantages. We have a better knowledge than our predecessors of Claudian's milieu and of classical culture at the end of the fourth century A.D.; and we have not been accustomed to regard poetry as necessarily less original because it is a grouping of associations.

“Bands of Brothers”: Warfare and Fraternity in Early Rome

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Early Republican

AbstractFamily bonds, and particularly fraternal relationships, play key roles in many of the narratives relating to Rome’s Regal and early Republican periods. In particular, the literary sources for these periods are full of references to brothers standing side by side, fighting for, and in many ways embodying (sometimes quite literally), the various social and political entities which were struggling for supremacy in archaic Latium. The present study will endeavour to tease out some of the nuances of this bond and explain how the concept of brotherhood in early Roman narratives seems to differ from that presented in accounts relating to the late Republic. It will accomplish this using four case studies in early Roman brotherhood—Romulus and Remus, the Dioscuri, the Battle of the Champions, and the archaic

Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity, 350-450

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maijastina Kahlos
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Religious Dissent ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Roman

Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity reconsiders the religious history of the late Roman Empire, focusing on the shifting position of dissenting religious groups. The groups under consideration are non-Christians (‘pagans’) and deviant Christians (‘heretics’). The period from the mid-fourth century until the mid-fifth century CE witnessed a significant transformation of late Roman society and a gradual shift from the world of polytheistic religions into the Christian Empire. This book demonstrates that the narrative is much more nuanced than the simple Christian triumph over the classical world. It looks at everyday life, economic aspects, day-to-day practices, and conflicts of interest in the relations of religious groups. The book addresses two aspects: rhetoric and realities, and consequently delves into the interplay between the manifest ideologies and daily life found in late antique sources. We perceive constant flux between moderation and coercion that marked the relations of religious groups, both majorities and minorities, as well as the imperial government and religious communities. Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity is a detailed analysis of selected themes and a close reading of selected texts, tracing key elements and developments in the treatment of dissident religious groups. The book focuses on specific themes, such as the limits of imperial legislation and ecclesiastical control, the end of sacrifices, and the label of magic. It also examines the ways in which dissident religious groups were construed as religious outsiders in late Roman society.

ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE ‘ARIAN CONTROVERSY’ IN THE FOURTH CENTURY

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 229-263
Author(s):  
David M. Gwynn
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
The Church ◽  
Archaeological Approach ◽  
Arian Controversy

The so-called ‘Arian Controversy’ that divided the Christian Church in the 4th c. has been the subject of considerable scholarly debate in recent decades. The literary sources from which the majority of our knowledge of the controversy derives are highly polemical and distorted, written almost exclusively from the perspective of those whose positions would come to be accepted as ‘orthodox’, and this in turn has directly influenced scholarly interpretations of the material evidence from this crucial period in the history of the Church. In this paper I wish to reconsider that material evidence and ask how an archaeological approach independent of the biases of our literary sources might broaden our understanding of the controversy and its impact upon the 4th c. Roman empire.

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