Urban religious buildings in Iberia - WILLIAM E. MIERSE, TEMPLES AND TOWNS IN ROMAN IBERIA. THE SOCIAL AND ARCHITECTURAL DYNAMICS OF SANCTUARY DESIGNS FROM THE THIRD CENTURY B.C. TO THE THIRD CENTURY A.D. (University of California Press, Berkeley 1999). Pp. xxiii + 346, figs. 79, pls. 66. ISBN 0-520-20377-1. $65.

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 605-606
Author(s):  
Martin Millett
2012 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 531-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candida R. Moss

While the social and intellectual basis of voluntary martyrdom is fiercely debated, scholarship on Christian martyrdom has unanimously distinguished between “martyrdom” and “voluntary martyrdom” as separate phenomena, practices, and categories from the second century onward. Yet there is a startling dearth of evidence for the existence of the category of the “voluntary martyr” prior to the writings of Clement of Alexandria. This paper has two interrelated aims: to review the evidence for the category of the voluntary martyr in ancient martyrological discourse and to trace the emergence of the category of the voluntary martyr in modern scholarship on martyrdom. It will argue both that the category began to emerge only in the third century in the context of efforts to justify flight from persecution, and also that the assumption of Clement's taxonomy of approaches to martyrdom by scholars is rooted in modern constructions of the natural.


Author(s):  
Jason Moralee

Chapter 2 surveys the evidence for the maintenance of the Capitoline Hill’s temples, statues, festivals, and administrative uses into the sixth century. While imperial rites celebrated at the Capitol faded in significance by the end of the third century, the hill was at the heart of the social and administrative worlds of late antique Rome. The chapter thus turns to the ways in which the hill was embedded in multiple late Roman neighborhoods and used for administrative purposes. Even as Rome’s urban environment was undergoing serious transformations in the use of public spaces, archaeology, epigraphy, and literary sources demonstrate that the Capitoline Hill was surrounded by neighborhoods displaying a high degree of sociability and commerce throughout this period.


Author(s):  
Barbara K. Gold

This book is an overview of the Christian martyr Perpetua’s life and the cultural, religious, political, literary, social, and physical contexts in which she lived. It does not attempt to be a full biography of Perpetua because we do not have enough information about her. It discusses the narrative work in Latin, the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis, composed by her and by her editor while she was awaiting execution, and its authenticity. It also discusses the descriptions of martyrs as athletes and the gendering of martyrs in early Christian writers; the social milieu in which Perpetua lived in ancient Carthage; the conditions in Roman Africa in the third century CE; the conditions for Christians and pagans in the third century CE; Perpetua’s family, education, and social status; the social and physical conditions of martyrdom in the third century CE; and the legacy of Perpetua and her text among later writers. The book aims to discuss in depth such contested issues as whether Perpetua herself wrote the part of the text attributed to her, how fictionalized the accounts of martyrdom accounts were, and what the status of these martyrs and their stories were during the pre-Constantinian period.


1963 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 401-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert B. Crawford

Chinese state and society underwent a profound change in the Former Han period. During the early years of the Former Han the exact nature of state and society was by no means clear, but by the end of this period, the broad outlines of the imperial system had been established for all subsequent Chinese history. The Ch'in Dynasty had indicated one direction, but its collapse had revived many of those elements present at the end of the third century B.C. which could logically have developed into a limited open society.


Author(s):  
Randall S. Howarth

This chapter offers a synoptic view of the evolution of Roman war and warfare, highlighting the threshold moments and key and problematic issues pertaining to the understanding of the Romans at war. Romans routinely distributed at least seventy thousand soldiers in consular and pro-consular armies every year by the last third of the third century BC. The wars with Carthage had promoted Roman advantage. The Imperial authorities have difficulty in enrolling soldiers and maintaining the ones they had. Roman diplomatic success had connoted on partnership in the conduct of war and the sharing of its benefits. The most obvious path to prestige in Rome has been found in the management of war and its rewards. It is noted that the Roman army and the habits of Rome at war should not be regarded in isolation from the social, diplomatic, and political contexts in which they existed.


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