Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 115-118
Author(s):  
Heidi Marx
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Christian Women ◽  
Women's Lives

Sosipatra’s life helps us to understand important facets of elite women’s lives in the late ancient world in general. The wealth of both Christian and non-Christian women allowed them a range of opportunities for being cultural and intellectual leaders. However, by the end of the fourth century, non-Christian women had to be more careful about their philosophical views and their leadership activities, as we see in the case of Hypatia of Alexandria. Similarly, diversity in Christian theologizing was also subject to critique and persecution. Sosipatra is one of the last female Platonists we have record of from the ancient world.

The distribution of Greek loan–words in Terence

1985 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Maltby
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Statistical Evidence ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Social Standing ◽  
Loan Words ◽  
Comprehensive List ◽  
Previous Note ◽  
The Law ◽  
Linguistic Means

The aim of this paper is to discuss Terence's use of Greek loan-words and to examine their distribution by plays and by characters. How far are they used for stylistic effect and what relationship do they have to the themes of different plays? Is there any evidence for the concentration of these words, which often tend to be colloquial in tone, in the mouths of slaves and characters of low social status for the purposes of linguistic characterisation? Finally, does Terence's use of these words develop in the course of his short career? The usefuleness of a previous note on this subject by J. N. Hough is limited by the absence of any comprehensive list of occurrences, so that its objectivity is difficult to check. A more helpful discussion by P. Oksala gives a fuller list, but concentrates mainly on a comparison with Plautine usage in the type and frequency of these words and does not discuss their distribution within the Terentian corpus.The question of characterisation by linguistic means, particularly in the field of New Comedy, has received considerable attention in recent years. The doctrine that a character's speech should be appropriate to his or her age, sex or social status, is well attested in the ancient world, with reference both to the theatre and to the law-courts. The ancient scholia on Aristophanes, as well as the fourth-century commentary on Terence that goes under the name of Donatus, contain comments on the appropriateness of particular words and phrases to particular character types. Leo, commenting long ago on the distribution of Greek words in Plautus, observed that they were used predominantly by slaves and characters of low social standing, a point made earlier by N. Tuchhaendler. More recently M. E. Gilleland has produced detailed statistical evidence for both Plautus and Terence which tends to back up these observations.

The Length of the Sarissa

Antichthon ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 79-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Matthew
Keyword(s):  
Critical Review ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The Face

AbstractIn an age when size really did matter, the length of the long pike (sarissa) employed by armies of the Hellenistic Age (c. 350-168 BC) was consistently altered by successive armies trying to gain an advantage over their opponents. These alterations are well attested in the ancient sources — albeit in an ancient Greek unit of measure. But how big were these pikes in terms of modern units of measure? This has been a topic of scholarly debate for some time. This article engages with these debates, and the evidence and theories that these arguments are based upon. A critical review of this evidence not only allows the changing length of thesarissato be calculated in a modern unit of measure, but also examines descriptions in the ancient sources that suggest the forerunner to the Hellenistic pike phalanx was created a generation before the rise of Macedon as a military power in the mid fourth century BC. This, in turn, allows for the configuration of one of the weapons that changed the face of warfare in the ancient world to be much better understood.

Heracles and the Apples of the Hesperides: A New Type

1905 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 157-162
Author(s):  
K. A. McDowall
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Greek Art

Of all types of Heracles in Greek art, that with the apples of the Hesperides is perhaps the most familiar. Yet in the archaic period it scarcely occurs, and even in the fifth century, though the scene is often represented among the Labours, when accessory figures are consequently present, there are few examples of the hero holding the apples in free sculpture. With the fourth century, however, the subject becomes common, for it is to Lysippus and his followers that we owe the type of the Wearied Heracles holding the apples, which has given rise to the popular conception. That this became the stock representation to the ancient world as to the modern we learn from Suidas καὶ γράφουσι δορὰν λέοντος φοροῦντα, καὶ ῥόπαλον φέροντα, καί γε μῆλα κρατοῦντα. The earliest representation of the type, best known from the Heracles Farnese, appears to be on a tetradrachm of Alexander, and there can be little doubt that its origin is due to Lysippus. The replica in the Pitti bears the inscription ΛΥΣΙΠΠΟΥ ΕΡΓΟΝ.

scholarly journals DID THE GREEKS BELIEVE IN THEIR ROBOTS?

2013 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 52-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Devecka
Keyword(s):  
Social Institutions ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Greek Literature

This paper investigates the ‘prehistory’ of automata in fourth-century Greece. It argues, first, that automata appear more frequently in the philosophy and drama of this period than has usually been recognised; second, that robots function in classical Greek literature as a utopian substitute for slavery or other forms of bound labour; and, finally, that the failure of Hellenistic automata to realise this utopia illustrates some basic constraints on the power of technology to disturb social institutions in the ancient world.

Heavenly Scents

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Reinarz
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Christian Practices

This chapter focuses exclusively on sacred scents and traces smell's role in the realm of religion, particularly the Christian tradition. It concentrates on the fourth century, when scent began to play an increasingly important role in early Christian practices. Initially, smells were present in ancient Christian texts, often as undercurrents within the text's larger purpose. Ancient Christians found numerous biblical models for experiencing a domain that lay beyond the physical senses but to which the senses provided access. Through sense encounters, people in the ancient world expected and experienced interaction with their gods, even when this implied communication with realms beyond the physically finite world.

The Most Silent Women of Greece and Rome: Rural Labour and Women's Life in The Ancient World (II)

1996 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Scheidel
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
First Century ◽  
Second Line ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Status ◽  
Of Greece

How can these ideas be linked to the ancient sources? Focusing first of all on women's contribution to arable cultivation and arboriculture, we immediately face the first of many blanks. To the best of my knowledge, we do not have any explicit evidence of ploughing by women in the Greco-Roman world. Only two lines from Hesiod's Works and Days seem to establish a connection between women and ploughing: according to Hesiod, a proper head of a household would need ‘first of all a house, and then a woman and oxen for ploughing – a slave woman, not a wife, to follow the oxen [or: to care for the oxen]’ (405 f.). In the fourth century B.C., however, the second line that specifies the status and the function of the desired woman was apparently not yet part of the received text, since Aristotle could still regard her as a free woman (Pol. 1252a llff). Not until the first century B.C. did Philodemos of Gadara quote and defend the reading that defined Hesiod's woman as a slave labourer. Even so, the wording does not make it clear whether this woman was meant to follow the harnessed oxen, that is, to do the ploughing, or to care for the oxen in the stable.

Poverty, Inequality, and Well-Being in Fourth-Century Athens

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Greek World

This concluding chapter brings together some of the threads running through the book. It argues that there is much to gain by viewing poverty in the ancient world as multidimensional, that poverty and well-being are fundamentally shaped by social relations, and the viewing the economic history of the Greek world through the perspective of the penetes and other groups who are categorized as poor is valuable and necessary.

Census Records of the Later Roman Empire

1953 ◽  
Vol 43 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 49-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. H. M. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
New System

There survive from a number of places in Western Asia Minor and the islands of the Aegean inscriptions recording census registrations. They are undated, but were probably engraved in the late third or early fourth century A.D., when Diocletian and his colleagues and successors are known to have been active in carrying out censuses to serve as the basis of their new system of taxation. All are fragmentary, but some are of sufficient length to yield results of some statistical value on the distribution of landed property, on the density of the agricultural population, and on the proportion of slave to free labour. In view of the extreme paucity of any statistical data for the ancient world they are worth analysis.

scholarly journals A guest at the table of the gods: Religion and the origins of academic life

2015 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-76
Author(s):  
Peter Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Academic Life ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Critical Task

Proceeding from the Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man, this paper is an attempt to survey the historical premises of the academic study of religion, both as a practice of detaching the subject matter of religion from its institutional restrictions, and as a practice of rehearsing certain modalities of thought and action (philosophical as well as religious) flourishing in the ancient world long before Christianity conquered the sphere of public worship in the fourth century. By paying particular attention to themes of suspension and commensality in religious practice and discourse, an attempt is made to reconsider the critical task of the history of religions, famously devised by Bruce Lincoln as a reversal of the orientation of religious discourse.

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