Notes on the Third Century A.D. in Spartan Epigraphy

1984 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 263-288
Author(s):  
A. J. S. Spawforth
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Imperial Cult ◽  
The Third ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

This article contains epigraphically based studies which aim to bring increased order to the chronology and prosopography of Roman Sparta. It is concluded that only one occurrence of the nomen Aurelius can be assigned with any confidence to the period before the Constitutio Antoniniana. A dedication for Septimius Severus and his family is discussed. Epigraphic evidence for M. Aurelius Aristocles of Taenarum and his family is presented. An epigraphic reference to the ‘Pitanate Lochos’ recruited by Caracalla is discussed. The dating of the occasions when the god Lycurgus is attested as eponymous patronomos is discussed, when it is argued that Woodward's dating for the fourth to eleventh patronomates (c. 180–90) is some fifty to sixty years too early. The career of the champion runner P. Aelius Alcandridas is elucidated. Texts referring to the sculptor Demetrius are discussed. An account is given of priests of the imperial cult at Sparta under the Severi, fifteen priests being identified. A list of Spartan patronomoi of the third century is compiled. In an appendix a revised text of IG v. 1. 168 + 603 is proposed.

Epigraphic Evidence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelos Chaniotis
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Voluntary Associations ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Local Traditions ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

Greek and Latin inscriptions—epitaphs, dedications, manumission records, lists of members of voluntary associations, laws, treaties, decrees, cult regulations, stamps on bricks and pottery, graffiti, and honorary inscriptions for masters and patrons—provide evidence concerning the terminology of unfree labour, attitudes towards slavery, and the origins, life, feelings, occupations, price, and legal conditions of slaves especially in urban areas from roughly the sixth century BC (Greece) and the third century BC (Italy) to Late Antiquity. Certain conventions—for example, regarding indicators of an individual’s status—mean that the use of epigraphic material for studying the complexities of slavery requires careful consideration of contexts: time, space, local traditions, addressees, language, and epigraphic habits.

The Organization of the Legion: The First Cohort and The Equites Legionis

1969 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 50-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Breeze
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Stage Ii ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Basic Point ◽  
The Third ◽  
One Stage ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

It is generally recognized that the first cohort of a legion in the Principate was larger than the other nine cohorts. It consisted of five centuries, each double the size of each of the six centuries of cohorts II to X. Literature, epigraphy and archaeology all agree over this point. Vegetius, in the Epitoma rei militaris, probably quoting a third-century source, says that the first cohort was twice as large as each of the other cohorts, but he disagrees with himself over the number of men in the cohort. At one stage (II, 6) he states that the first cohort had 1,105 pedites and 132 equites and was called a cohors miliaria, compared to the 555 pedites and sixty-six equites of each of the other nine cohorts, cohortes quingenariae. But two paragraphs later (II, 8) this number has been reduced to 1,000. This is made up of 400 men in the first century, 200 in the second, 150 in the third and fourth and 100 in the fifth. Although none of Vegetius' figures is to be trusted, his basic point remains—the first cohort of a legion was double in size. This is supported by epigraphic evidence. III, 6178, dated to about A.D. 134, lists, by cohort, the soldiers of legio V Macedonica discharged at one time. The first cohort contains at least forty names, the second seventeen, the third at least fourteen, the fourth at least ten and the ninth at least twelve. A similar situation is found on III, 14507, a laterculus, which is a dedication by veterans of VII Claudia discharged in 195. In this case the first cohort discharged forty-seven men, the second twenty-two and the third eighteen. These two inscriptions point to the fact that the first cohort was about twice as large as each of the other nine. Excavations at Inchtuthil have provided the most eloquent testimony. Here the barracks of the first cohort, ten in number, compared to the six of each of the other nine cohorts, have been revealed, in association with five large centurions' houses, situated next to the headquarters building. This is where it is placed by ‘Hyginus’ in the liber de munitionibus castrorum (3; 4), probably dated to the sole reign of Marcus Aurelius.

The Four Seasons of Boeotian, and Particularly Thespian, Onomastics

2019 ◽  
pp. 71-99
Author(s):  
Denis Knoepfler
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Complete Disappearance ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
The Third ◽  
Four Seasons ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Diachronic Study ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

More than Euboea, Boeotia lends itself to a diachronic study of personal names since the epigraphic evidence is evenly distributed across the centuries, from the 5th BC to the third century. AD. Using a seasonal metaphor; the spring season of Boeotian onomastics extends from the archaic period to the 4th century BC. For Thespiae it is represented by the great funerary monument for the battle of Delion (424) with more than a hundred names, of which many are hapax legomena. Summer is incontestably the high Hellenistic period, down to the middle of the 2nd century BC. This is also the best documented period, thanks to military catalogues. It is only around 150 BC that the autumn of Boeotian onomastics takes over from the phase here treated as the summer. Thespiae offers abundant material and is marked by the conspicuous growth in names of PanHellenic character without, however, the complete disappearance of epichoric, in particular, theophoric, names. The decrease in inscriptions after the middle of the 3rd century justifies regarding this period as a kind of late autumn of Boeotian anthroponymy, even if the most radical rupture did not occur until the beginning of the Byzantine period in the strict sense.

scholarly journals Epigraphy and Ambition: Building Inscriptions in the Hinterland of Carthage

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 57-90
Author(s):  
Monica Hellström
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Imperial Cult ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Building Activity ◽  
Good Proxy ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

abstractBuilding inscriptions are not a good proxy for building activity or, by extension, prosperity. In the part of Roman North Africa where they are the most common, the majority of surviving building inscriptions document the construction of religious buildings by holders of local priesthoods, usually of the imperial cult. The rise of such texts in the second century a.d., and their demise in the early third century, have no parallel in the epigraphic evidence for other types of construction, and should not be used as evidence for the pace of construction overall. Rather than economic change, these developments reflect shifts in the prospects of aspirational local elites, for whom priesthoods served as springboards to more prestigious positions. These positions were linked to Carthage through administrative arrangements that made this city the metropolis for scores of dependent towns and their ambitious elites.

Historical Fragments’ Mobile Echo

Transfers ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Bell ◽  
Kathy Davis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
The Third ◽  
Opium War ◽  
The Subject

Translocation – Transformation is an ambitious contribution to the subject of mobility. Materially, it interlinks seemingly disparate objects into a surprisingly unified exhibition on mobile histories and heritages: twelve bronze zodiac heads, silk and bamboo creatures, worn life vests, pressed Pu-erh tea, thousands of broken antique teapot spouts, and an ancestral wooden temple from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) used by a tea-trading family. Historically and politically, the exhibition engages Chinese stories from the third century BCE, empires in eighteenth-century Austria and China, the Second Opium War in the nineteenth century, the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the mid-twentieth century, and today’s global refugee crisis.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara K. Gold
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Status ◽  
Key Issues

This chapter discusses the key issues surrounding Perpetua’s life and her narrative, the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis. It introduces the most perplexing circumstances around her life and times: the authorship of her Passio (which is written in at least three different hands); her life and family; the conditions of her martyrdom and of martyrdoms during the pre-Constantinian period; the status of martyrdom texts as personal, social, or historical documents; whether persecutions can be historically verified or were exaggerated by the Christians and others; and the afterlife of Perpetua and her text in writers from the third century to contemporary times. The introduction lays out the arguments for these thorny issues and tries to find a reasonable position on each one.

Letters from High to Low in the Graeco-Roman Period

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willy Clarysse
Keyword(s):  
Roman Period ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Test Cases ◽  
The Third ◽  
Total Lack

In this chapter, papyrus letters sent from superiors to their inferiors are studied on the basis of test cases ranging across the Graeco-Roman period in Egypt, from the third century BCE to the third century CE. This correspondence is drawn from four archival groups of texts: the archive of Zenon; the letters of L. Bellienus Gemellus and the letters of the sons of Patron; and the Heroninus archive. The letters are usually short, full of imperatives, and characterized by the absence of philophronetic formulae. Recurrent themes of the correspondence are urgency, rebukes, orders, and interdictions, and there is an almost total lack of polite phrases.

‘At last Roman, at last restored to the true light of Empire’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrastos Omissi
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Military ◽  
Late Roman

This chapter begins by considering what made the late Roman state distinctive from the early Empire, exploring the political developments of the later third century, in particular the military, administrative, and economic reforms undertaken by the tetrarchs. It then explores the presentation of the war between the tetrarchy and the British Empire of Carausius and Allectus (286‒96), taking as its core sources Pan. Lat. X, XI, and VIII. These speeches are unique in the panegyrical corpus, in that two of them (X and XI) were delivered while the usurpation they describe was still under way, the third (VIII) after it was defeated. In this chapter, we see how the British Empire was ‘othered’ as piratical and barbarian, and how conflict with it helped to create the distinctive ideology of the tetrarchy.

Inscriptions and the Narrative of Roman History

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Potter
Keyword(s):  
Roman History ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
The Third ◽  
Literary Sources

This chapter offers an analysis of how inscriptions can complement the narratives of Roman history from the third century BCE to the third century CE provided in literary sources. They reveal certain historical events or details that would otherwise be unknown, and they supplement the information offered by the surviving Roman historians .

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