The Euphrates as a Boundary between Rome and Parthia in the Late Republic and Early Empire

Antichthon ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 191-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Edwell
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Euphrates River ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of

AbstractIt is generally agreed that during the first century BC the Euphrates River came to represent a negotiated boundary of Roman and Parthian power in the Near East, and that this remained the case until the overthrow of the Parthians by the Sassanians in the third century AD. It was during the first century BC that the term imperium began to be used in the context of expressions of corporate Roman power; this eventually saw an additional important usage of the term evolve to that of an expression of physical territory, that is, empire, by the end of the reign of Augustus. This paper argues that it is possible to link the development of the Euphrates as a boundary of Roman and Parthian power in the first century BC with developments and changes in the usage of the term imperium. It traces the history of Roman and Parthian agreements and conflicts throughout the first century BC in the context of the development of the Euphrates as a boundary. The paper also argues that only the upper section of the Euphrates came to play this role and that previous analyses of the middle Euphrates have produced a misleading understanding of Roman and Parthian activity on this section of the river. The analysis of archaeological evidence from the first centuries BC and AD from the middle Euphrates site of Dura Europos is employed to illuminate the analysis of the Euphrates as a boundary. We arrive at a better understanding of Dura's history during this period if we considert Dura in the broader context of the Euphrates’ role in dividing Roman and Parthian power.

scholarly journals Los mártires de Libisosa: origen, transformación y pervivencia de una tradición hagiográfica

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-62
Author(s):  
José Antonio Molina Gómez ◽  
Héctor Uroz Rodríguez ◽  
José Ángel Munera Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
The Third ◽  
Local Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Local Traditions

En el presente artículo los autores estudian las tradiciones hagiográficas sobre los mártires del siglo III Vicente y Leto, quienes murieron en Libisosa (Lezuza, Albacete). El estudio se centra en la relación entre tradiciones martirológicas, la evidencia arqueológica y las tradiciones locales. Escritores modernos como Higuera y Requena podrían haber usado fuentes antiguas para (re)escribir la historia de Vicente y Leto. De acuerdo con la tradición local ambos fueron ejecutados en un lugar llamado hoy en día Vallejo de los Santos, en las inmediaciones de Lezuza, donde habría sido levantado un templo para rendirles culto. In the following article, the authors study the hagiographic tradition of the Third Century Christian Martyrs Vicente and Leto, both of which died in Libisosa (Lezuza, Albacete). Said study shall focus upon the link between the matyrological tradition, archaeological evidence and local traditions. Modern writers such as Higuera or Requena may well have employed these ancient sources while (re)writing the history of Vicente and Leto. According to local tradition, both were executed in a place now called Vallejo de los Santos, in the outskirts of Lezuza, where a temple would have been built for their worship.

scholarly journals IMAGES OF KINGS OF ADIABENE: NUMISMATIC AND SCULPTURAL EVIDENCE

Iraq ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 78 ◽  
pp. 79-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michał Marciak ◽  
Robert S. Wójcikowski
Keyword(s):  
Near East ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
Historical Origin

This paper offers the first ever discussion of all extant images of Abdissar, Monobazos I and ’tlw (Attalos), Kings of Adiabene. In analysing the numismatic and sculptural data, a few conclusions on the historical context are suggested. First, it is argued that stylistic features of the coinage of Abdissar suggest a date in the first half of the second centuryb.c.e., and this dating bears upon the question of the historical origin of the Kingdom of Adiabene. Adiabene originated as one of many “post-Seleucid” states which arose in the Near East when the Seleucid kingdom started to crumble, before the advent of the Parthians. This suggestion is also corroborated by stylistic features of the coinage which accentuate the divine investiture of royal power in Abdissar. It is also held that the Batas-Herir monument depicts King Abdissar. Second, the images on the coin of Monobazos I clearly reflect the time of Adiabene's economic prosperity and political rise to significance among Parthian “lesser kings” in the first half of the first centuryc.e. Third, the reign of King ’tlw (Attalos) remains largely obscure, but the placement of his sculpture in Hatra clearly shows good political relations and close cultural ties between the kingdoms of Adiabene and Hatra in the first half of the third centuryc.e. Additionally, the authors argue that the images of Oriental kings on the coins of Septimius Severus do not represent any particular Oriental rulers (of Edessa, Adiabene or Hatra), but are merely stereotypical images of what the Romans considered to be typical Oriental royal outfits.

scholarly journals THE ANTIKYTHERA WRECK: A NUMISMATIC APPROACH

2021 ◽  
pp. 105-120
Author(s):  
Daniele Castrizio
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
Relative Chronology ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

The paper examines the coins found inside the Antikythera wreck. The wreck of Antikythera was discovered by chance by some sponge fishermen in October 1900, in the northern part of the island of Antikythera. The archaeological excavation of the wreck has allowed the recovery of many finds in marble and bronze, with acquisitions of human skeletons related to the crew of the sunken ship, in addition to the famous “Antikythera mechanism”. Various proposals have been made for the chronology of the shipwreck, as well as the port of departure of the ship, which have been based on literary sources or on the chronology of ceramic finds. As far as coins are concerned, it should be remembered that thirty-six silver coins and some forty bronze coins were recovered in 1976, all corroded and covered by encrustations. The separate study of the two classes of materials, those Aegean and those Sicilian allows to deepen the history of the ship shipwrecked to Antikythera. The treasury of silver coinage is composed of thirty-six silver cistophoric tetradrachms, 32 of which are attributable to the mint of Pergamon and 4 to that of Ephesus. From the chronological point of view, the coins minted in Pergamon have been attributed by scholars to the years from 104/98 B.C. to 76/67 B.C., the date that marks the end of the coinage until 59 B.C. The coins of Ephesus are easier to date because they report the year of issue, even if, in the specimens found, the only legible refers to the year 53, corresponding to our 77/76 B.C., if it is assumed as the beginning of the era of Ephesus its elevation to the capital of the province of Asia in 129 B.C., or 82/81 B.C., if we consider 134/133 B.C., the year of the creation of the Provincia Asiana. As for the three legible bronzes, we note that there are a specimen of Cnidus and two of Ephesus. The coin of the city of Caria was dated by scholars in the second half of the third century B.C. The two bronzes of Ephesus are dated almost unanimously around the middle of the first century B.C., although this fundamental data was never considered for the dating of the shipwreck. The remaining three legible bronzes from Asian mints, two from the Katane mint and one from the Panormos mint, belong to a completely different geographical context, such as Sicily, with its own circulation of coins. The two coins of Katane show a typology with a right-facing head of Dionysus with ivy crown, while on the reverse we find the figures of the Pii Fratres of Katane, Amphinomos and Anapias, with their parents on their shoulders. The specimen of Panormos has on the front the graduated head of Zeus turned to the left, and on the verse the standing figure of a warrior with whole panoply, in the act of offering a libation, with on the left the monogram of the name of the mint. As regards the series of Katane, usually dated to the second century B.C., it should be noted, as, moreover, had already noticed Michael Crawford, that there is an extraordinary similarity between the reverse of these bronzes and that of the issuance of silver denarii in the name of Sextus Pompey, that have on the front the head of the general, facing right, and towards the two brothers from Katane on the sides of a figure of Neptune with an aplustre in his right hand, and the foot resting on the bow of the ship, dated around 40 B.C., during the course of the Bellum siculum. We wonder how it is possible to justify the presence in a wreck of the half of the first century B.C. of two specimens of a very rare series of one hundred and fifty years before, but well known to the engravers of the coins of Sextus Pompey. The only possible answer is that Katane coins have been minted more recently than scholars have established. For the coin series of Panormos, then, it must be kept in mind that there are three different variants of the same type of reverse, for which it is not possible to indicate a relative chronology. In one coin issue, the legend of the ethnic is written in Greek characters all around the warrior; in another coin we have a monogram that can be easily dissolved as an abbreviation of the name of the city of Panormos; in the third, in addition to the same monogram, we find the legend CATO, written in Latin characters. In our opinion, this legend must necessarily refer to the presence in Sicily of Marcus Porcius Cato of Utica, with the charge of propraetor in the year 49 B.C. Drawing the necessary consequences from the in-depth analysis, the data of the Sicilian coins seem to attest to their production towards the middle of the first century B.C., in line with what is obtained from the ceramic material found inside the shipwrecked ship, and from the dating of the coins of Ephesus. The study of numismatic materials and a proposal of more precise dating allows to offer a new chronological data for the sinking of the ship. The presence of rare bronze coins of Sicilian mints suggests that the ship came from a port on the island, most likely from that of Katane.

scholarly journals Mogontiacum: czynniki rozwoju

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leszek Mrozewicz
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Military Base ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Real City

The history of Mogontiacum spans the period from 17/16 BCE to the end of the fourth century CE. It was a strong military base (with two legions stationed there in the first century) and a major settlement centre, though without municipal rights. However, the demographic and economic development, as well as the superior administrative and political status enabled Mogontiacum to transform – in socio-economic and urbanistic terms – into a real city. This process was crowned in the latter half of the third century with the construction of the city walls.

Roman Water-Power

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-194
Author(s):  
Andrew Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Water Power ◽  
The Third ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Grain Milling ◽  
Over Time

This chapter summarizes the archaeological evidence currently known for Roman water-mills, tracing the development and spread of water-powered grain milling over time across the Roman Empire. Problems of quantification and evidence bias, both documentary and archaeological, are addressed. In particular, it is argued that large discoidal millstones, formerly thought to derive either from animal-powered or water-powered mills, must come from water-mills, and that the idea of Roman animal-driven mills with discoidal millstones is a myth. This dramatically increases the amount of evidence available for water-powered grain milling, although very unevenly spread across the empire, and heavily dependent on the intensity of research in particular regions—good for Britain, parts of France, and Switzerland; poor everywhere else. The chapter also summarizes the state of knowledge on other applications of water-power—for ore-crushing machines at hard-rock gold and silver mines (by the first century AD), trip-hammers, tanning and fulling mills, and marble sawing (by the third century AD). The picture is fast-changing and the body of evidence continues to grow with new archaeological discoveries. The chapter ends with some thoughts about the place of water-power in the overall economy of the Roman world, and on the transmission of water-powered technologies between the Roman and medieval periods.

Writing Jewish Astronomy in the Early Hellenistic Age: The Enochic Astronomical Book as Aramaic Wisdom and Archival Impulse

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annette Yoshiko Reed
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Politics ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Near East ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Potential Significance ◽  
The Third ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
History Of

The full publication of 4Q208 and 4Q209 in 2000 has enabled a renaissance of research on the Enochic Astronomical Book, illumining its deep connections with Babylonian scholasticism and spurring debate about the precise channels by which such “scientific” knowledge came to reach Jewish scribes. This article asks whether attention to Aramaic manuscripts related to the Astronomical Book might also reveal something about Jewish scribal pedagogy and literary production in the early Hellenistic age, particularly prior to the Maccabean Revolt. Engaging recent studies from Classics and the History of Science concerning astronomy, pedagogy, and the place of scribes and books in the cultural politics of the third century bce, it uses the test-case of the Astronomical Book to explore the potential significance of Aramaic sources for charting changes within Jewish literary cultures at the advent of Macedonian rule in the Near East.

A Cancelled Marriage Contract from the Judaean Desert (XHev/Se Gr. 2)

1994 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
pp. 64-86
Author(s):  
Hannah Cotton
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Near East ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
Marriage Contract ◽  
Roman Near East

With the publication of the Greek part of the Babatha Archive in 1989 and some of the documents from the Greek-Syriac archives of Mesopotamia and the Middle Euphrates in 1989–1991, the contribution of perishable material from places other than Egypt to the study of the Roman Near East and the Roman Empire in general has become obvious. But this is just the tip of an iceberg that has been surfacing for a while. The parchments and papyri from Dura Europus, discovered in the 1920s, were published in final form in 1959: they range from the first century C.E. to the middle of the third century C.E. with texts mainly in Latin and Greek, a few in Aramaic and Iranian and one in Syriac.

Kafizin and the Cypriot Syllabary

1950 ◽  
Vol 44 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 97-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. B. Mitford
Keyword(s):  
Life Span ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

The late Sir George Hill in the first volume of his monumental History of Cyprus remarks that the Cypriot syllabary is found in use until the third century B.C. This, it may be noted, is the traditional opinion which for some sixty years has stood the test of time. I read therefore with interest on p. 330 of the same volume, among the addenda, that ‘pottery with incised inscriptions, discovered in 1939 in an excavation four miles from Nicosia, shows that the syllabary continued to be used as late as the first century B.C.’ Sir George Hill in effect is here accepting the claim of Mrs. E. H. Dohan and Professor R. G. Kent, which he has hitherto ignored, that the syllabary survived until 50 B.C. Now this is an important claim, partly because it would add from two to three centuries to the life-span of a script already in possession of a long and reputable lineage; more particularly because, if true, it will convict the ancient Cypriot, admittedly a conservative individual, of a degree of conservatism with which I find it hard to credit even him. That there should still have been men in the hinterland of the island under the governorship of Cicero so little affected by the impact of the whole Hellenistic age that they were prepared to write Greek in a manner so uncouth and preserve, incidentally, certain elements of their old Arcadian tongue, is to my thinking highly improbable. A fresh examination of the evidence on which Mrs. Dohan and Professor Kent based their claim is clearly called for.

The Innocence of Pontius Pilate

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lloyd Dusenbury
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
History Of Empire

The gospels and ancient historians agree: Jesus was sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate, the Roman imperial prefect in Jerusalem. To this day, Christians of all churches confess that Jesus died 'under Pontius Pilate'. But what exactly does that mean? Within decades of Jesus' death, Christians began suggesting that it was the Judaean authorities who had crucified Jesus—a notion later echoed in the Qur'an. In the third century, one philosopher raised the notion that, although Pilate had condemned Jesus, he'd done so justly; this idea survives in one of the main strands of modern New Testament criticism. So what is the truth of the matter? And what is the history of that truth? David Lloyd Dusenbury reveals Pilate's 'innocence' as not only a neglected theological question, but a recurring theme in the history of European political thought. He argues that Jesus' interrogation by Pilate, and Augustine of Hippo's African sermon on that trial, led to the concept of secularity and the logic of tolerance emerging in early modern Europe. Without the Roman trial of Jesus, and the arguments over Pilate's innocence, the history of empire—from the first century to the twenty-first—would have been radically different.

V. Republican Veii

1961 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 52-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. B. Ward-Perkins
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Roman Poet ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Short Time ◽  
The Temple ◽  
The Town

‘O Veii veteres, et vos tum regna fuistisEt vestro posita est aurea sella foro:Nunc intra muros pastoris bucina lentiCantat, et in vestris ossibus arva metunt.’(Propertius IV, 10, 27–30.)So the Roman poet Propertius, writing in the closing years of the first century B.C., only a very short time before the establishment of the Augustan municipality on the site of the ancient town; and it is the conventional reading of the history of Veii that the four hundred odd years intervening between the sack of the town in 396 B.C. and the foundation of the Municipium Augustum Veiens were years of abandonment and desolation. This view has been challenged recently by Dr. Maria Santangelo in her publication of two small jugs of the third century B.C. with archaic latin dedicatory inscriptions, the one from the Portonaccio cemetery, inscribed L(ucius) Tolonio(s) ded(et) Menerva(e), the other from the Campetti votive deposit Caere (or Crere) L(ucius) Tolonio(s) d(edet). These two dedications are evidence not only of the survival of at least two of the sanctuaries, but also of the continuing residence at or near Veii of a descendent of the Velthur Tulumne who dedicated a bucchero cup in the same Portonaccio sanctuary three centuries earlier (Not. Scav., 1930, pp. 341–343), and of the Lars Tolumnius who was killed in battle and whose armour hung, for all to see, in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius (Prop. loc. cit.).

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