1. Rome

2018 ◽  
pp. 13-33
Author(s):  
David Weir
Keyword(s):  
Classical Model ◽  
Gustave Flaubert ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Walter Pater ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
Moral Philosopher ◽  
Fall Of Rome

Ancient Roman writers whose work inspired latter-day decadents include the biographer Suetonius (69–122 CE) and the historian Tacitus (56–120 CE), who both wrote about the depraved behavior of Caligula, Nero, Vitellius, and other decadent emperors. Their accounts of outrageous behavior, as well as The Satyricon (an important novel about first-century Rome attributed to Petronius), form the classical model of Roman decadence. Later influential commentators on the fall of Rome were the French moral philosopher Montesquieu (1689–1755) and the British historian Edward Gibbon (1737–1794). Historical novels about ancient Rome by Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) and Walter Pater (1839–1894) also had a bearing on the development of decadence.

Japanese Suicide

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul S. Atkins
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Forthcoming Article ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Double Suicide ◽  
Religious Systems ◽  
Forms Of Violence

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. Please check back later for the full article. Suicide in Japan has a relationship with various belief systems, including secular belief systems, such as Bushidō (‘the way of the warrior’) and emperor worship, as well as religious systems, such as Shintō, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Christianity, from the earliest times to the early twenty-first century. Cultural and religious environments in Japan have tended to take a neutral or even positive attitude toward suicide to some extent, similar to that seen elsewhere, for example, in ancient Rome, but in contrast to the stigma attached to suicide by the Abrahamic religions. Iconized Japanese practices of suicide, including seppuku/harakiri (ritualized self-disembowelment), junshi (suicide for the purposes of following one’s lord in death), shinjū (double suicide or murder–suicide by lovers), and the kamikaze of World War II (lit. “divine winds,” usually referred to as tokkōtai “special attack units” in Japanese) show the links between suicide in Japan and the construction of Japanese identity and are further expanded upon in literary and dramatic texts, in addition to religious and philosophical treatises and historical records. Suicide in Japan also intersects and overlaps with other forms of violence, such as warfare, capital punishment, and murder. In addition to causes and motives, of interest are preferred or unusual methods of suicide in Japan, their distinctive aspects in comparison with other cultures, and the symbolic and ritual elements of Japanese suicide.

Rich and Poor: the Great Divide in Ancient Rome and Victorian England

1990 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. J. Bastomsky
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Third World ◽  
First Century ◽  
Absolute Maximum ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
World Series ◽  
The Poor ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cost

In his book, The Roman Empire (Fontana History of the Ancient World Series), Colin Wells mentions incomes and the cost of living in first-century Italy. He concludes that a wage of 4 sesterces a day was an ‘absolute maximum’ and goes on to comment that ‘it is hard to tell whether the discrepancy between the really rich and the labouring poor was greater in some third-world countries today, or in Victorian England… To prove his point Wells gives £300,000 per annum for the Marquess of Bute as an example of an enormous income in the nineteenth century, though he does not tell us what the poor would have earned then.

The International Civil Service

2019 ◽  
pp. 164-181
Author(s):  
Edward Newman ◽  
Ellen Jenny Ravndal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Civil Service ◽  
Classical Model ◽  
First Century ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Ideal Model ◽  
Relevant Today ◽  
Model Following ◽  
Twenty First Century

The international civil service (ICS) offers—in theory at least—an ideal model of administration within international organizations. This chapter explores the origins and evolution of the ICS from the classical model following WWI to the twenty-first century era. For its early supporters, the ICS was the international community’s hope for the peaceful coexistence of states and functional cooperation. Yet tensions between these normative ideals and the reality facing international secretariats have never been resolved. The ICS operates under tremendous pressure from states, and in the twenty-first century, increasingly from the global public too. How does an ICS ethos that was developed in the early twentieth century travel to the twenty-first century? Is the concept still relevant today?

scholarly journals Radiocarbon Dates from the Jewish Catacombs of Rome

Radiocarbon ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 541-547 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard V Rutgers ◽  
Arie F M De Jong ◽  
Klaas van der Borg
Keyword(s):  
Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry ◽  
First Century ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Ams Dating

This paper reports on the first chronological assessment of the Jewish Catacombs of the ancient Rome performed by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating of small-size charcoal fragments scattered in the mortar used for sealing off the graves in the Villa Torlonia Catacomb complex. The significance of the obtained 14C readings has been carefully evaluated by taking into consideration the known technologies of quicklime production during Roman and recent times. The new data are of great concern for providing evidence that the Jewish catacombs were used for burial since the first century AD, thus some two centuries prior to the period traditionally believed to be the starting point of burial in the Jewish catacombs of ancient Rome. Such a significant aging of the Jewish catacombs could result in a deep re-examination of the current understanding of the beginning and the evolution of the custom of catacomb burial in both Jewish and early Christian communities in Rome.

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