Stoicism and the Principate

1975 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 7-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. A. Brunt
Keyword(s):  
Early Education ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Marcus Aurelius

The wide circulation of Stoic ideas among Romans of the upper class from the time of Panaetius in the second century B.C. to the reign of Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 161–80) is a familiar fact. Few Romans of note can indeed be marked down as committed Stoics, and even those like Seneca who avowedly belonged to the school borrowed ideas from other philosophies. Still, even if eclecticism was the mode, the Stoic element was dominant. Stoicism permeated the writings of authors like Virgil and Horace who professed no formal allegiance to the sect, and became part of the culture that men absorbed in their early education. One might think that it exercised an influence comparable in some degree with that which Christianity has often had on men ignorant or careless of the nicer points of systematic theology. It has often been supposed that it did much to humanize Roman law and government. That is a contention of which I should be rather sceptical, but it is not my present theme.

The leges municipales as a Means of Legal and Social Romanization of the Provinces of the Roman Empire

2020 ◽  
pp. 315-331
Author(s):  
Werner Eck
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Southern Spain ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Legal Regulations ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
General Phenomenon ◽  
The West ◽  
The Law

Sections of the leges municipales from at least forty different cities in Southern Spain have survived to us. These laws, understood as a powerful instrument by which Roman legal regulations were introduced into the provinces, are usually connected with Baetica. As a result it is too easy to overlook the fact that corresponding leges were issued wherever Roman or Latin cities were founded, and continued to be issued long after the Flavian era, the time to which most of the surviving fragments date. Documentary evidence has now made clear that leges municipales are a general phenomenon which continued to play a role in the second and third centuries CE. Fragments of city laws are known not only in the province of Alpes Maritimae, but also in Noricum (Lauriacum), Moesia superior (Ratiaria), and in Troesmis (Moesia inferior). The law for Troesmis is especially important because, in contrast to the laws from Baetica, it was issued for a Roman and not a Latin municipium. This demonstrates that specific Roman legal regulations, which were issued in Augustan times exclusively for Roman citizens, were still of relevance in the second century and also must have been used in the province of Moesia inferior. This material indicates that people had to obey Roman legal regulations more or less everywhere in nearly all provinces of the West. The leges municipales were thus one of the decisive means by which Roman law spread in the provinces—more so than has previously been realized—and could even be the basis for daily life.

The Epitaph of Avircius Marcellus

1939 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. M. Calder
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Marcus Aurelius

The capitals are preserved on the fragment in the Lateran Museum, the minuscules were read from the stone in the fourth century by the Writer of the Life. In 1. 7, the MSS of the Life give βασιλείαν or βασίλειαν; the former is printed by most editors in defiance of Ramsay's report that ΒΑΣ[ι]ΛΗ was on the stone when he and Sterrett saw it at Hieropolis in 1883. No disputed reading in the whole range of ancient Christian epigraphy has aroused keener controversy; no reading affects so vitally the whole purport of a document. If we read βασιλῆαν, the Pure Shepherd sent a second-century Phrygian Bishop to Rome to look upon the Emperor and Empress. If we read βασιλείαν, Avircius was sent to Rome during the reign of Marcus Aurelius to look upon Sovereignty and a Sovereign Church. The reading βασίλειαν of some MSS, implying a visit to the Empress and Princess, need not be considered. It has the advantage of βασιλείαν in point of metre, but the Epitaph elsewhere (lines 8, 14, 15, 18, to say nothing of 21, 22) is irregular in its scansion.

The Law in the Late Second Temple Period

2019 ◽  
pp. 366-382
Author(s):  
John J. Collins
Keyword(s):  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Law

The Torah of Moses was recognized as the ancestral law of Judah from the time of Ezra. Its status was revoked briefly by Antiochus Epiphanes. In the Hasmonean era there was a turn to intensive halakhic discussion, attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This was a factor in the rise of sectarianism. The papyri from the early second century ce take a flexible attitude to laws, drawing on Jewish or Roman law as seemed advantageous. The literature from the Hellenistic Diaspora treats the law broadly as a summary of Jewish tradition. Despite some claims that the law functioned as a civic law in the Diaspora, there are only a few instances in the papyri where Jews base appeals on Jewish law, and we do not know what the judges decided in those cases.

Missing Links or to the History of the Second Century AD Bosporan Kingdom under Eupator: by numismatic data

2021 ◽  
pp. 93-106
Author(s):  
Michael Choref ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Elderly ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Short Hair ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Similar Image ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

Under the Bosporan king Eupator, sestercii were issued with two busts on the obverse: an elderly bearded man in a ray crown and a woman in a high openwork crown, as well as two men: a young one, with or without a beard, and an elderly, bearded one. All men have long hair. The elderly man is no doubt Eupator. Together with him, as is commonly believed, they portrayed Aphrodite Urania and Marcus Aurelius. But this is hardly the case. After all, a very similar image of a woman, framed by the legend “Β … ΕΥΝΟΜΙΑC”, is imprinted on the reverse of the Bosporan sesterces with two male busts on the obverse. But the figures of the deities on the Bosporan coins were not signed. Judging by the crown, this was a Sarmatian queen. We believe that Eunomia, who is mentioned in the coin legend, was the wife and co-ruler of Eupator. The Roman emperors on the Bosporan coins were always depicted with short hair. We believe that the studied sestercii had portraits of Eupator, his wife Eunomia, and also their son, who ruled the Bosporus from 170/171 to 174/175 without the sanction of Rome and, as a result, did not receive the right to issue coins and did not leave lapidary inscriptions.

Paternal Power in Late Antiquity

1998 ◽  
Vol 88 ◽  
pp. 147-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antti Arjava
Keyword(s):  
Distinctive Feature ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Family System ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Second Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
Roman Society

One of the most peculiar features of Roman law was the father's dominant position. In theory, he exercised an almost absolute authority, patria potestas, over his descendants until his own death. The uniqueness of their family system did not escape the Romans themselves. In his mid-second-century legal textbook Gaius explained:Item in potestate nostra sunt liberi nostri quos iustis nuptiis procreavimus. Quod ius proprium civium Romanorum est; fere enim nulli alii sunt homines, qui talem in filios suos habent potestatem, qualem nos habemus. Idque divus Hadrianus edicto, quod proposuit de his, qui sibi liberisque suis ab eo civitatem Romanam petebant, significavit. Nec me praeterit Galatarum gentem credere in potestate parentum liberos esse. (Inst. 1.55)Again, we have in our power our children, the offspring of a Roman law marriage. This right is one which only Roman citizens have; there are virtually no other peoples who have such power over their sons as we have over ours. This was made known by the emperor Hadrian in an edict which he issued concerning those who applied to him for Roman citizenship for themselves and their children. I have not forgotten that the Galatians believe that children are in the power of their parents. (Translated by W. M. Gordon and O. F. Robinson, The Institutes of Gaius (1988))This account immediately raises at least one fundamental question: If patria potestas was a distinctive feature of Roman society, how did the other peoples of the Empire react to it after the universal grant of the Roman citizenship in A.D. 212?

Rome and the Eastern Provinces at the end of the Second Century B.C.

1974 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 195-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Hassall ◽  
Michael Crawford ◽  
Joyce Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Greek Translation ◽  
New Information ◽  
Final Integration

A new inscription discovered by some workmen at Cnidos during excavations conducted by Professor Iris Love preserves considerable portions of a Roman law in a Greek translation, in date and content closely related to (perhaps identical with) the text found at Delphi, commonly known as the ‘Piracy Law’. We give below the Cnidos text and a revision of the Delphi text which is necessitated by the new information, together with a brief commentary designed to bring out what seem to us to be the major implications for Roman historians. The original transcription of the Cnidos text was made by Hassall, but all three authors have checked and improved the readings, both from photographs taken by him and by Professor Love, and from the stones; the revision of the Delphi text, begun by Hassall, is in the event largely the work of Crawford. Archaeological information is contributed by Hassall; to the commentary we have all three made our contributions. The final integration of these and of our concluding remarks is due to Crawford.

A Hypochondriac and his God

1952 ◽  
Vol 21 (61) ◽  
pp. 23-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. D. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Extraordinary Experiences ◽  
Hieroi Logoi

One of the less known but by no means of the less voluminous or peculiar among the Greek writers of the imperial age was Publius Aelius Aristides of the second century, Roman citizen, Greek landowner and rhetorician, and unique in surviving literature as a nervous hypochondriac and lifelong devotee of Asclepius. The details of his career, as recorded in his own writings and in Philostratus' Lives of the Sophists, have been conveniently set forth with full references by André Boulanger in his exhaustive, but very readable, study, Aelius Aristide. Only the framework can be indicated here, to be filled in at certain points with the extraordinary experiences which befell Aristides after illness had altered the course of his life. These are described at length and in great confusion in his Hieroi Logoi, written to glorify Asclepius, which perhaps they do; of Aristides they give a picture which deserves greater fame than it enjoys. Their testimony is of particular value because they have not been selected and edited by an interested priesthood, but are the remnants of a collection which bears all the marks of individual sincerity and private eccentricity.Aristides was born in A.D. 118 on his family's estate at Laneum in Mysia, near Hadrianutherae. His father Eudaemon, who died in his childhood, was a philosopher and priest of Zeus, and evidently a man of wealth and refinement. As a boy he was sent to study under the famous grammaticus, Alexander of Cotiaeum, who was later tutor to Marcus Aurelius, and by him instructed most thoroughly in the poets, orators, historians, and philosophers.

Law in Graeco-Roman Egypt: Hellenization, Fusion, Romanization

2011 ◽  
pp. 540-560
Author(s):  
Uri Yiftach
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Major Elements ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Entire Population ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Law Of Succession

The Ptolemaic kings of Egypt ruled a variety of ethnic groups that were diverse in language, culture, religion, and legal practices. The main themes were tolerance and even the protection of particular legal traditions. By the beginning of the Roman period, changes were under way. The autonomous courts of law had by then ceased to exist. The second century ce witnessed the abandonment of demotic script in legal documents and the emergence of a new law, “the law of the Egyptian”, which was applied by the entire population and consisted of Greek and Egyptian elements alike. In the late third century bce, agoranomeia were established in the throughout Egypt to allow the state to monitor foreclosure on assets placed as security for debts. In the Roman empire, Roman citizens in Egypt followed major elements of the Roman law of succession, family, and personal status.

scholarly journals ‘In both our languages’: Greek–Latin code-switching in Roman literature

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mullen
Keyword(s):  
Code Switching ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Letter Writing ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Roman Literature ◽  
Roman Letter

After a short introduction to code-switching and Classics, this article offers an overview of the phenomenon of code-switching in Roman literature with some comments on possible generic restrictions, followed by a survey of Roman attitudes to the practice. The analysis then focuses on Roman letter writing and investigates code-switching in the second-century correspondence of Fronto (mainly letters between Marcus Aurelius, who became Emperor in AD 161, and his tutor Fronto). This discussion uses part of a new detailed database of Greek code-switches in Roman epistolography and is largely sociolinguistic in approach. It makes comparisons with other ancient and modern corpora where possible and highlights the value of code-switching research in responding to a range of (socio)linguistic, literary and historical questions.

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