Wheat in thn Roman World: an addendum

1984 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Mayerson
Keyword(s):  
Source Material ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Specific Data ◽  
Wheat Production ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Bona Fide

J. K. Evans' well-documented article, ‘Wheat production and its social consequences in the Roman world’, correctly makes the point that ‘the evidence with regard to wheat yields is at once meagre and plainly contradictory’. The difficulty in assessing yields arises, of course, from the character of the available source material; namely, literary sources. The information comes from the hands of men such as Cicero and Varro who were concerned with matters other than specific data on the cultivation and production of grains, and who probably never sowed or reaped a modius of wheat. What was lacking until recently was a bona-fide document from the hands of a farmer or a community intimately concerned with the growing of wheat. We now have one such document, P. Colt 82 of the seventh century A.D., that fills a gap in the evidence for yields for both wheat and barley.

Wheat Production and its Social Consequences in the Roman World

1981 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 428-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. K. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Overwhelming Majority ◽  
Wheat Production ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Roman People ◽  
The Republic

In every generation the overwhelming majority of those who inhabited the imperium Romanum worked on the land and derived their sustenance directly from it. The notion is commonplace and scarcely admits of debate, but its implications for long have suffered unwarranted neglect. The well-being of any society ultimately rests upon the quantity and diversity of its food supplies, but the immediacy of their contact with the soil continually reminded the Roman people of this platitude with a force which few students of their history today can readily appreciate. The annual yield of wheat in particular, always a staple item in the Roman diet, and to a lesser extent of such cereals as panic and millet, acutely affected every segment of the Roman community. One example will serve to illustrate the point. The dependence of the plebs urbana upon imported surpluses is notorious, equally the intense suffering and violence which typically accompanied any disruption of their supply. Such outbreaks frequently punctuated the chaotic final decades of the Republic, but they also scarred more than one régime during the first two centuries of the Principate.

Same Essence, Same Food: Nourishment, Formation, and Education in Early Christianity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John David Penniman
Keyword(s):  
Source Material ◽  
World Food ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Human Formation ◽  
False Dichotomy ◽  
The One ◽  
Intellectual Formation ◽  
Inside Out

Ancient theories of intellectual formation depended upon corresponding theories of the power of material food to shape both body and mind. These theories show little investment in a stark distinction between literal and metaphoric nourishment. This introduction unpacks the dynamic relationship between literal and symbolic food within ancient discussions of human formation. It argues that, in the Greco-Roman world, food was understood to contain an essence that was transferred to the one being fed, transforming them from the inside out. Scholarship on ancient education has often overlooked this crucial emphasis on food and nurturance within the source material and that this has resulted in a false dichotomy between “literal food” and metaphorical references to “food for the soul.” Discussing the ambiguous Greek and Latin vocabulary for food and formation, and engaging post-structural linguistic theory, the introduction concludes that the proper education and formation of children was, throughout antiquity, dependent upon the material provision of food and the ways in which that provision was theorized and regulated.

scholarly journals Roman Inscriptions 2006–2010

2012 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 172-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison E. Cooley ◽  
Benet Salway
Keyword(s):  
Seventh Century ◽  
Geographical Range ◽  
General Interest ◽  
Primary Interest ◽  
Electronic Resources ◽  
Roman World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Language Literature

AbstractThe aim of this quinquennial survey remains the same as its predecessor, as for the most part does the format, though the team is regrettably reduced by one. With an eye to the study of the Roman world, we hope to signal the most important newly published inscriptions, significant reinterpretations of previously published material, new trends in scholarship, recent studies that draw heavily on epigraphic sources, and noteworthy developments in the various aids to understanding inscriptions (both traditional printed material and electronic resources). In the context of this journal, the geographical range and chronological scope reflect the contours and history of the Roman state from its beginnings down to the end of the seventh century. As such, not only does the survey naturally take in Greek as well as Latin texts, but also epigraphic material in other languages relevant to the Roman world. In the hope that they might usefully reflect the various fields of primary interest to readers of this journal, we have maintained the categories established in the last survey. These comprise, after material of general interest and significance, principal divisions under the headings of (II) Government, law, and authority, (III) Cities, (IV) Funerary epigraphy, (V) Religions, and (VI) Language, literature, and onomastics. The structure of the first section has been changed somewhat in order to give greater prominence to those inscriptions here singled out as historical highlights. The organization of the discussion within each section (or subsection) generally moves between the thematic, chronological, and geographical, as seems to suit the material best.

Adomnán’s Plans in the Context of his Imagining ‘the Most Famous City’

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas O’loughlin
Keyword(s):  
Seventh Century ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Holy Places ◽  
Parallel Text ◽  
Visual Materials ◽  
The Church

Adomnán of Iona's work on the holy places of Jerusalem and surrounding regions (De locis sanctis) has been used as a guide to seventh-century Palestine. In particular, its plans of monuments such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre have been used by archaeologists for information about buildings, while their form interests historians of cartography. However, these plans must be read with the book's several purposes in mind. They attempt to harmonize biblical data (and Adomnán's other literary sources) visually. In addition, they project elements of Iona's monastic liturgy into an alien liturgical space. The plans are not simply illustrations to clarify the text but constitute a distinct, parallel text of their own, with elements shown that Adomnán would not have asserted in writing. They indicate that, for Adomnán, there were different orders of verification for written texts and visual materials such as plans.

Regionality under the new order: The seventh to tenth centuries

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Rippon
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
New Order ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Final Phase ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
New Material ◽  
Grave Goods

Around the late sixth century dress styles and burial practices started to change, with regionally distinctive sets of grave goods giving way initially to the greater uniformity seen in ‘final phase’ cemeteries before the regular deposition of artefacts ceased altogether in the late seventh century. It has been argued that this reflects how a common identity had started to emerge across Anglo-Saxon society, and that the change in the character of grave goods away from those expressing a strongly Germanic identity to ones with a more Romano-Byzantine character reflects how kings sought to legitimize their power through association with the Roman world (e.g. Geake 1997, 133–5; 1999b). This hypothesis, however, presents something of a paradox because, just as the archaeologically visible and regionally distinctive group identities expressed in material culture such as dress accessories disappeared, a new form of territoriality was emerging in the form of relatively stable kingdoms within which one might imagine the expression of identity was just as important. Indeed, many have argued that changes in the character of grave goods being deposited in ‘final phase’ cemeteries had less to do with secular identity and kingship and was instead associated with the spread of Augustinian Christianity, which was both a unifying cultural tradition and one with strong associations with the Roman world (e.g. Crawford 2004; Hoggett 2010, 107). It seems inherently unlikely that group identities will have disappeared just as stable kingdoms started to emerge, and it is therefore likely that identity was expressed in other ways. This is in fact exactly what we see if we look beyond the burial record: while eighth-century and later graves contain few expressions of identity, as Christianity dictated a uniform burial practice, the circulation of new forms of material culture, such as coinage and mass-produced pottery, was closely tied to particular political territories. This new material culture was associated with specialist forms of settlement that were closely involved in the circulation of coinage both in coastal emporia and in inland places that archaeologists have termed ‘productive sites’.

Cattle, community and corrals

2005 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Creighton
Keyword(s):  
Southern Africa ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
Temperate Europe ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Area Of Influence

Jean and John Comaroff's paper provides an elegant narrative describing the processes at work behind the adoption of coinage amongst the Tswana of southern Africa under the influence of European missionaries and colonists. My own particular interests are set back two thousand years earlier with the adoption of coin in France and Britain. At this time Rome was the up-and-coming imperial power engaged in trade, and then conquest, stretching its area of influence and dominions from the Mediterranean littoral into temperate Europe. As such I envy the Comaroff's ability to use a rich array of source material that is unavailable to me with my much poorer archaeological remains and fragmentary literary sources. None the less, many of the themes have echoes of processes that must have taken place many years before in this other time and place.

Onomasticon Thracicum (Onom Thrac). Répertoire des noms indigènes de Thrace, Macédoine Orientale, Mésies, Dacie et Bithynie

2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Dana
Keyword(s):  
Research Tool ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Roman Army ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
New Research

Abstract The purpose of the Onomasticon Thracicum project is to realize a repertory of all the Thracian personal names, supplanting the outdated book of D. Detschew (1957). The gathering and the critical examination of these native names in literary sources, inscriptions (epitaphs, dedications, lists, graffiti, military diplomas), papyri and coins will provide a new research tool, rich of about 1400 different names. A large number of Thracian names is documented elsewhere in the Greek (especial Hellenistic) and Roman world, principally because the utilization of the Thracians as soldiers by the Hellenistic kings, thereafter in all the units of the Roman army. This aspect is extremely important for the constitution of their onomastic repertory, completing the more or less plentiful data from the Thracian space. Recently, more new data about Thracian onomastics are available, improving our knowledge, especially for some regions or, very important, for the feminine names. OnomThrac will pay more attention to the study of this peculiar onomastics in its geographical and chronological context. At least four distinct onomastic territories are now obvious for the Thracian complex: Thracian names; Daco-Moesian names; western Thracian names; Bithynian names. More indexes (as a reverse index; or the Genitive forms), as well as a general bibliography, will accompany the repertory.

The Abbasids and the Relics of the Prophet

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-96
Author(s):  
Tayeb El-Hibri
Keyword(s):  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Family ◽  
Ambivalent Attitude

The study of the relics of the Prophet has not received sufficient analysis in modern scholarship. The origin of importance of certain personal objects of these relics, such as the mantle and the staff, has long been dated to the reign of Muʿāwiya and the first/seventh century in general. This article surveys attestations to key relics of the Prophet in historical, religious, and literary sources, and argues that the genesis of interest in prophetic relics was rooted in the early Abbasid period, and the Abbasid family’s search for tools that could enhance its political legitimacy and connection to the religious authority of the Prophet. The growth of Abbasid palace culture during the Samarra period further strengthened the use of certain relics as insignia of power and as objects of public attention. During the same early Abbasid periodḥadīthcollections showed an ambivalent attitude to discussing these objects. Whileḥadīthtexts preserved mention of certain prophetic belongings, a growing Sunnism after theMiḥnabecame wary of endowing these objects with a mystique that could overlap with Shiʿi ideas on the higher authority of imams from the family of the Prophet.

COINS AND POLITICS IN THE LATE ROMAN WORLD

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-137
Author(s):  
Richard Reece
Keyword(s):  
Money Supply ◽  
Source Material ◽  
State Control ◽  
Local Production ◽  
Authority Control ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The One ◽  
And Control ◽  
Late Roman

Coins constitute source material: explicitly, from what is written and portrayed on them or the place and authority in which they were struck, and implicitly, from the portrait style and type. They are also objects of metal, sometimes precious, the use and control of which reflects politics. Around 294, portraiture changed very sharply from individuality to the representation of authority. Reverse types were also now much more limited and concentrated than under the Principate. The change occurred around 274 to 294, when city mints also ceased local production and were either closed or made branches of the one Imperial mint. These are signs of a move towards a heavily centralised money supply, dictated by more strongly emphasised authority. Control of metals, especially gold, followed the same path, though reforms in the mid-4th c. may suggest that silver was let out of state control and ‘privatised’.

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