II. The Early Character of Roman Religion

2000 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 13-20

The fundamental principle on which the religion of the Romans used to be interpreted was the idea that the Romans were an unusually conservative society. In some respects, this is perfectly true: we can for instance show that some of the rituals that were still being practised regularly in the first century BC, and even later than that, were already in place in the sixth century BC; again we know from later Roman orators such as Cicero that they placed a great emphasis on the ancestral customs and ways of the Roman people (the mos maiorum) and it is a reasonable guess that this was not a new idea in Cicero’s day but a long-cherished attitude; again, it is quite clear that the Romans placed a great deal of emphasis on getting their rituals precisely right in every detail, so that the slightest error invalidated the whole ceremony of which it formed part. If so, and if they did this year after year, there should have been no change at all. How could conservatism be taken further?

Author(s):  
Bart J. Wilson

What is property, and why does our species happen to have it? The Property Species explores how Homo sapiens acquires, perceives, and knows the custom of property, and why it might be relevant for understanding how property works in the twenty-first century. Arguing from some hard-to-dispute facts that neither the natural sciences nor the humanities—nor the social sciences squarely in the middle—are synthesizing a full account of property, this book offers a cross-disciplinary compromise that is sure to be controversial: All human beings and only human beings have property in things, and at its core, property rests on custom, not rights. Such an alternative to conventional thinking contends that the origins of property lie not in food, mates, territory, or land, but in the very human act of creating, with symbolic thought, something new that did not previously exist. Integrating cognitive linguistics with the philosophy of property and a fresh look at property disputes in the common law, this book makes the case that symbolic-thinking humans locate the meaning of property within a thing. The provocative implications are that property—not property rights—is an inherent fundamental principle of economics, and that legal realists and the bundle-of-sticks metaphor are wrong about the facts regarding property. Written by an economist who marvels at the natural history of humankind, the book is essential reading for experts and any reader who has wondered why people claim things as “Mine!,” and what that means for our humanity.


Author(s):  
Jon Stewart

In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel treats the religions of the world under the rubric “the determinate religion.” This is a part of his corpus that has traditionally been neglected, since scholars have struggled to understand what philosophical work it is supposed to do. The present study argues that Hegel’s rich analyses of Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Egyptian and Greek polytheism, and the Roman religion are not simply irrelevant historical material, as is often thought. Instead, they play a central role in Hegel’s argument for what he regards as the truth of Christianity. Hegel believes that the different conceptions of the gods in the world religions are reflections of individual peoples at specific periods in history. These conceptions might at first glance appear random and chaotic, but there is, Hegel claims, a discernible logic in them. Simultaneously a theory of mythology, history, and philosophical anthropology, Hegel’s account of the world religions goes far beyond the field of philosophy of religion. The controversial issues surrounding his treatment of the non-European religions are still very much with us today and make his account of religion an issue of continued topicality in the academic landscape of the twenty-first century.


1991 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 484-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Consuelo Ruiz-Montero

There has been little research on the vocabulary of the Greek novelists. Gasda studied that of Chariton in the last century. He compared some of his terms with those of other authors and he concluded he should be placed in the sixth century A.D. Then Schmid considered that Chariton's language was not Atticist, and dated his novel in the second century or beginning of the third. In 1973 Chariton's language was studied by Papanikolaou. His research dealt above all with several syntactic aspects and the use of some vocabulary, which led him to conclude that this language was closer to the koiné than that of the other novelists. But Papanikolaou went further in his conclusions: finding no trace of Atticism in Chariton, he considered him a pre-Atticist writer and, using extra-linguistic data, such as the citing of the Seres, the Chinese (6.4.2), placed him in the second half of the first century B.C. This chronology has been accepted by some, but already Giangrande has observed that this lack of Atticisms could have been intentional, in which case that date would be questionable.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Susan Treggiari

First-century BC Rome controlled the Mediterranean. This empire was achieved by a militaristic citizen body and an honour-seeking ruling class. A succession of offices qualified a man to sit in the Senate, govern territories, command armies. A politician sought status conferred by the electorate. Magistrates formed the executive in Rome and in the provinces. The Senate acted as an advisory council and a pool of executives. The Roman People, the citizen body, was theoretically sovereign. Men voted in elections and on bills. Women were citizens, though they could not vote or stand for office or serve in the army. In private law, paternal power was important. Marriages between two citizens were intended for the production of children and founded on consent. An upper-class woman would hold her own property, could inherit, and divorce, and remarry. As a group, upper-class women were visible. Like men, they sought reputation.


2015 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 609-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Schironi

As is well known, the work of Aristarchus on Homer is not preserved by direct tradition. We have instead many fragments preserved mainly in the Homeric scholia, the Byzantine Etymologica and the Homeric commentaries by Eustathius of Thessalonica. These fragments go back to the so-called Viermännerkommentar (abbreviated VMK), the ‘commentary of the four men’, a commentary that is dated to the fifth-sixth century c.e. and collects the works of Aristonicus, Didymus, Nicanor and Herodian. In the first century b.c.e. Aristonicus explained the meaning of Aristarchus’ critical signs in a treatise called Περὶ τῶν σημείων τῶν τῆς ᾿Ιλιάδος καὶ ᾿Οδυσσείας, while in the Περὶ τῆς ᾿Αρισταρχείου διορθώσεως Didymus studied Aristarchus’ Homeric recension. In the second century c.e. two more scholars, Herodian and Nicanor, dealt with Aristarchus while analysing questions of prosody in the Homeric language (Herodian) or the punctuation of the Homeric text (Nicanor). Not all of these four ‘men’ are equally important, however, as sources for Aristarchus. In fact, Herodian and Nicanor had aims that were quite independent of Aristarchus’ enterprise: the former was concerned with problems of prosody, accentuation and aspiration in Homer, whereas the latter had developed a new system of punctuation to elucidate the Homeric text from a syntactic point of view. Although both Herodian and Nicanor did take an interest in Aristarchus, their focus was thus different from that of their Alexandrian predecessor. The goal of Aristonicus and Didymus, on the other hand, was specifically to reconstruct Aristarchus’ work on Homer; it is for this reason that they are considered the most trustworthy witnesses for Aristarchus’ fragments.


2002 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Clifford

[Many Christians find the Christian Bible, comprised of the Old and New Testament, diffuse, lacking unity, and therefore difficult to use in systematic theology. Yet the Bible itself uses a powerful organizing principle that spans both testaments and unites them, namely the Exodus in its dual aspects of liberation and formation. There are three Exodus moments. Exodus I is the thirteenth-century B.C.E. foundational event. Exodus II is its sixth-century renewal. Exodus III is the first-century C.E. climactic renewal of Israel by Jesus.]


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuraeni Nuraeni

Religious pluralism in Indonesia is a necessity that cannot be avoided because it adheres to diversity. As we know that in Indonesia there are six religions recognized by the government namely (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism and Kong hu chu) and every Indonesian citizen must embrace one of these religions, besides that human beings themselves are part of pluralism itself, so we live in pluralism.Normatively, doctrinaire of religion always teaches kindness, love and harmony. But sociological reality shows the opposite, religion is actually used as a source of ongoing conflict, both internal and external conflicts, such as clashes between the Early Church Christians with Jews, Christians with adherents of Roman religion (imperial religion) in the first century to the third century. Not much different from that in Indonesia, so we need to find a meeting point or Sawa sentence, looking for a conducive and prospective approach to the realization of sacred religious values (fundamental values) to be applicable solutions in looking at this plural future. 


Author(s):  
Luca Giuliani

Luca Giuliani evaluates Laocoon as an ‘analytical tool’ for twenty-first-century classical archaeology. In doing so, he returns to some of the same literary case studies that so engrossed Lessing 250 years ago—and none more so than Homer’s Iliad. By probing Lessing’s theories of the respective workings of art and text, and exploring them in the context of ancient depictions of the Iliad (especially seventh- and sixth-century BC vase-paintings), the chapter explores both the virtues and the problems of Lessing’s account. As Giuliani argues, this historical perspective can help us formulate the analytical importance of Lessing’s framework; at the same time, the perspective of ancient art can help us see how Lessing’s text is as much a treatise against as about the visual arts.


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