Old and New Faiths, AD 1–450

The Great Sea ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Abulafia
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Roman Army ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Mother Goddess ◽  
Unleavened Bread ◽  
Jewish Prayer ◽  
Continuous Use ◽  
The City ◽  
The Temple

As in any port city of the Roman world, the population of Ostia was very mixed. An extraordinary discovery was made on the outskirts of Ostia in 1961, while a road was being constructed linking Rome to its new door to the world, Fiumicino airport: the synagogue of Ostia, the oldest synagogue structure to have survived in Europe. The earliest part dates from the first century AD, but the building was repaired or partly rebuilt in the fourth century. It was in continuous use for Jewish prayer for at least 300 years. An inscription from the second century commemorates the building of the Ark for the scrolls of the Law, at the expense of a certain Mindis Faustos; the inscription is mainly in Greek, with a few Latin words, for the Jews of Rome, with their connections to the East, continued to use Greek as their daily language. The building and its annexes have an area of 856 square metres, and everything suggests that this was the major synagogue of a prosperous community of hundreds of Jews. More than a synagogue, by the fourth century the complex contained an oven, possibly for the baking of unleavened bread for Passover, and a ritual bath. There were side rooms that were probably used for teaching and for meetings of the Jewish council and of the rabbinical court. A carved architrave portrayed the great candlestick that had stood in the Temple, the ram’s horn blown at New Year, and the symbols of the Feast of Tabernacles, the citron and decorated palm branch. Nor was Judaism the only eastern cult with many followers in Ostia. A small brick-built temple elsewhere in the city has been identified as a shrine of Sarapis. Within the precinct there was a courtyard paved with a black-and-white mosaic of Nile scenes. Plenty of inscriptions refer to the cult of Isis; there were several shrines to Mithras, much favoured in the Roman army; during their wild ecstasies, male devotees of the mother-goddess Cybele, who was also worshipped at Ostia, were said to castrate themselves.

Rosaliae Signorum

1937 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. S. Hoey
Keyword(s):  
Religious Life ◽  
Roman Army ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military ◽  
The City ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Made In

In the campaign of 1931–32 at Dura-Europos on the Euphrates there was found among the military archives in the temple of Artemis Azzanathcona a papyrus document containing a list of the festivals which were officially celebrated by the Roman garrison in the city. This document, of unique interest and importance, placed by internal evidence in the reign of Severus Alexander between the years A.D. 223 and 225, contains among its entries the two lines quoted above. In them is prescribed for celebration on two different dates a hitherto unknown festival which is of some little importance both for the religious life of the Roman army and for the history of Roman festivals during the Empire. An attempt will be made in this paper to interpret its nature and to touch briefly on both these aspects of its significance.

Paestan Addenda

1959 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
A. D. Trendall
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
The City ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Opening Up

Since the publication of my Supplement to Paestan Pottery and the short Post-script covering the finds of 1952, some 300 new red-figured vases have come to light as a result of further excavations by Dr. P. C. Sestieri at Paestum in the area around the so-called Basilica and the Temple of Poseidon and of the systematic opening up of the huge fourth century necropoleis to the south of the city at Fuscillo, Spinazzo and Tempa del Prete and to the north in the Gontrade Arcioni, Andriuolo, Laghetto and Gaudo. Some of these sites have yielded painted tombs of the highest importance for our knowledge of fourth-century painting and for the parallels they offer in both subject and style to contemporary vase decoration, and the quantity of pottery they have produced increases more than fivefold the number of vases of certain Paestan provenience and establishes beyond question the location of this fabric at Paestum. Most of the vases belong either to the workshop of Asteas and Python or to the later workshops of the Painters of Naples 1778 and 2585, but one completely new artist—the Floral Painter—has emerged, as well as a good deal more in the Apulianising style of the end of the fourth century, the existence of which was first noted as a result of the finds in 1952.

Why Was the Base Where It Was, and As It Was?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon James
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
City Wall ◽  
The Third ◽  
Open Ground ◽  
Face Saving ◽  
Saving Measure ◽  
The Military ◽  
The City ◽  
The Temple

In the foregoing, it was argued that the unitary base area seen in the third century, encompassing the entire N part of the city from the W defences almost to the River Gate, resulted from expansion and coalescence of two later-second-century nuclei, one near the Temple of Bêl, the other focused on the Citadel. Subsequently, presumably increasing Roman troop numbers at Dura led to takeover of the far N part of the intramural area, linking up the military holdings. But why did it start as two nuclei? When Roman power became permanently established over Dura c.165, and a decision was made to station Palmyrene symmachiarii there, while the Realpolitik may have been that these were proxy forces holding the city for Rome, the option of sending in troops from a long-standing friend of Dura may have been chosen as a face-saving measure for the Durene elite. The Palmyrenes were likely presented as defending the newly ‘liberated’ city from Arsacid interference. Under such circumstances, a less obtrusive, peripheral location would have been appropriate. The zone around the Temple of Bêl appears at the time to have comprised only partially built-up city blocks offering open ground, with more free space along the city wall to accommodate the Palmyrene force with minimal disruption to civic life. The temple plaza also offered a ready-made military assembly space. It is further possible that the Palmyrenes attested in Arsacid Dura—visiting traders and soldiers, and resident expatriates—already tended to congregate in or use this zone, around the temple which, at least later, would become especially associated with Palmyrene Bêl. With subsequent arrival of regular Roman troops, and the proposed enrolling of the Palmyrene archers as the nucleus of the nascent cohors XX, the NW cantonment was then probably expanded as it was developed into a Roman auxiliary base. With regard to the inner wadi/Citadel zone, it was suggested above that the incoming Romans would have taken over the great inner stronghold by default, as part of the defensive circuit. They also used the flat wadi floor in its shadow as a campus.

From Pre-Makkabaean Judaea to Hekatomnid Karia and Back Again

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boris Chrubasik
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Architectural Styles ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
The City

This chapter analyses the adaptation of Greek cultural and political practices in two distinct environments: fourth-century Karia and second-century Judaea. Both regions see a marked political transformation in their respective time periods. The Hekatomnid rulers actively fostered the foundation of poleis, experimented with Greek architectural styles, and the new polis communities and rulers publicly displayed Greek-language inscriptions. Similarly, one of the high priests of Judaea attempted to transform the city of Jerusalem into a polis and founded Greek polis institutions there. By raising the question of why Greek cultural elements were valuable to the agents of fourth-century Karia and second-century Judaea, this chapter proposes that very local reasons attracted the local elites of these regions to Greek institutions, and argues against seeing these processes as being deeply connected to global trends of a supposed Greek oikoumene.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galit Noga-Banai
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Central Places ◽  
New Jerusalem ◽  
Physical Medium ◽  
Visual Frame ◽  
Temple Mount ◽  
The City ◽  
The Temple

For the stone shall cry out of the wall and the beam out of the timber shall answer it.—Habakkuk 2:11.AMONG THE PAGAN CITIES THAT WENT THROUGH “CONVERSION” TO Christianity in the fourth century, two were linked to Jerusalem by witness of stone and wood: Aelia Capitolina and Rome. The pagan identity of Aelia Capitolina—the Roman city founded by Hadrian in 135 CE on the ruins of Jerusalem—was exposed by the sanctuaries and statues of Roman deities erected in central places, notably, the Temple Mount. During the fourth century, however, the city was defined less and less by the presence of Jupiter’s temple and more and more by the absence of the Jewish Temple. This lack of a Jewish visual frame and physical medium was made more palpable by the looming constructions that now began to mark the sites of Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection. It was time to remember the Jewish past in order to construct a meaningful configuration of the New Jerusalem. But Rome itself had laid claim to Jerusalem’s Jewish past. It was home to the Temple spoils, transferred, or better, “translated” to the city by Titus in 71 CE. Whether they were kept in the city or later taken away, the Temple cult vessels were sculpted in stone, for all to see, on the Arch of Titus. Sometime in the fourth century, a relic of the True Cross was also translated from Jerusalem to Rome, turning Rome into the home of relics of both Old and New Jerusalem....

The Population of the Piraeus in the Roman Period: A Re-Assessment of the Evidence of Funerary Inscriptions

2009 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
DIMITRIS GRIGOROPOULOS
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Roman Army ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
Funerary Inscriptions ◽  
Augustan Age ◽  
The Town

In 87–86 BCE, the Roman army under L. Cornelius Sulla invaded Attica and, after a long siege, sacked Athens and the Piraeus. In both ancient and modern eyes, Sulla's sack has been seen as a key event, which marked not only the end of Athenian independence but also the beginning of an irreversible decline for its port, the Piraeus, in antiquity. Ancient literary testimonies in the decades following the Sullan sack portray the Piraeus as an urban wasteland, crammed with ruins but devoid of life. Strabo, writing in the Augustan age, notes that the town of his time endured, but had shrunk between the two harbours (the Kantharos and Zea); Pausanias, writing later in the second century CE, mentions a number of monuments but pays more attention to the old, ‘Classical’, town than to the contemporary ‘Roman’ Piraeus. Rescue excavations in the last few decades have provided corroboration for Strabo's remark. Building remains dating to the Classical period (mainly the fourth century BCE) extend over a larger area than those of Roman date, which tend to concentrate on the isthmus between the Kantharos and Zea harbours. Nevertheless, more recent finds and a reconsideration of the available archaeological evidence has shown that settlement clustering around the main harbour did not result from the destruction of the port by Sulla but had started in Hellenistic times and was intensified in the Roman period.

Sightseeing and Spectacle at the Jewish Temple

AJS Review ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-292
Author(s):  
Benjamin D. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Significant Component ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Jewish Diaspora ◽  
Temple Complex ◽  
Walking Tour ◽  
The City ◽  
The Temple

Jerusalem in the late Second Temple period (second century BCE–70 CE) was transformed into the largest pilgrimage city of the Hellenized East and the sole locus of sacrificial worship of the Jewish God in greater Judea. As argued in this paper, it also became a place for sightseeing and spectacle. By the early Roman era, movement to the city for pilgrimage was a significant component of Mediterranean and Near Eastern travel. The Jewish festival experience may have evolved to cater to the tastes of foreigners now regularly visiting the city from the Jewish Diaspora. The architecture of Herod's Temple complex and the distinctive religious customs practiced within its walls intrigued visitors, whether Jewish or non-Jewish. For those unable to witness the Temple or participate in one of its festivals firsthand, a virtual visit through a “walking-tour” description would have to suffice. Such descriptions, which are attested from the earliest days of the Second Temple, can charter in imaginative invention in order to foster a sense of awe and wonder for the audience.

Innus: A God of Archaic Latium and His Sanctuary at Fosso dell’Incastro (Ardea)

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-286
Author(s):  
Mario Torelli
Keyword(s):  
Sand Dunes ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
Ancient Site ◽  
The Temple

Abstract In 2006, the Soprintendenza Archeologica del Lazio began an excavation at the site of Fosso dell’Incastro on the coastline of Ardea. A well-preserved settlement buried under huge sand dunes was discovered, featuring a Roman castrum created in the fourth century BCE around a sanctuary dating back to the mid-sixth century BCE. Its characteristics not only suggested that the ancient site was Castrum Inui, previously known only through the ancient literary sources (e.g., Virgil, Servius and Macrobius), but also that its sanctuary could be attributed to an inconspicuous local deity, Inuus—often correlated with Pan and Sol. In its final phase (the early Imperial period), the sanctuary housed three sacred buildings: Temple A, Temple B, and a small shrine dedicated to Aesculapius. Temple B, the site of Inuus’ worship, was constructed in the Etrusco-Italic style during the first quarter of the fifth century BCE, while Temple A was built during the mid-second century BCE. Temple B was oriented to the southwest, one typical for religious buildings connected to chthonic cults; two altars built during the fourth century BCE were placed along the façade of the temple, one facing the east and on the axis of the temple, the second close to its southwest corner. It was also enhanced with an acroterion depicting the head of a warrior with the skin and horns of a goat or cow over his helmet, a motif that establishes a connection between Innus, Pan and Faunus. Temple A, on the other hand, faced the northeast and was enhanced with a sculpted pediment in high relief showing an assembly of gods and possibly Aeneas. Both its orientation and the iconography of the pediment suggest that it was dedicated to Aeneas Indiges, a pan-Latin version of the old cult of Inuus.

Isolation and Diagnosis of Fungi from Samples of Spices in the City of Nasiriya

2020 ◽  
pp. 7-9
Keyword(s):  
Chronic Diseases ◽  
Dilution Method ◽  
Local Markets ◽  
White Pepper ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Potential Risks ◽  
The City ◽  
Isolated Species

Examination of (35) samples of spices obtained from local markets for the purposes of isolating and diagnosing fungi growing on them. Anine isolates belonging to 13 different types of fungi were diagnosed by the standard dilution method with three replications, and it has been observed that the most samples from which the fungi were isolated is ginger. It was found that the most isolated species of fungi are Penicillium, Aspergillus, and Rizupes spp. A rare colony of fungi was observed, which indicates contamination of the spices under study with the fungus. The present study aims to identify the potential risks of the presence of fungi in spices and what may result from mycotoxins that may be the cause of many chronic diseases as a result of using these spices in large quantities. The study recommends limiting the use of contaminated spices, especially ginger, in preparing food and its uses, in addition to other types such as cloves, black and white pepper, and other types of spices found in the local markets, especially the expired ones.

Death in the City

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn A. Sloan
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Violent Death ◽  
Special Relationship ◽  
Intimate Friend ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
European Heritage ◽  
The City ◽  
The Temple

Popular culture has long conflated Mexico with the macabre. Some persuasive intellectuals argue that Mexicans have a special relationship with death, formed in the crucible of their hybrid Aztec-European heritage. Death is their intimate friend; death is mocked and accepted with irony and fatalistic abandon. The commonplace nature of death desensitizes Mexicans to suffering. Death, simply put, defines Mexico. There must have been historical actors who looked away from human misery, but to essentialize a diverse group of people as possessing a unique death cult delights those who want to see the exotic in Mexico or distinguish that society from its peers. Examining tragic and untimely death—namely self-annihilation—reveals a counter narrative. What could be more chilling than suicide, especially the violent death of the young? What desperation or madness pushed the victim to raise the gun to the temple or slip the noose around the neck? A close examination of a wide range of twentieth-century historical documents proves that Mexicans did not accept death with a cavalier chuckle nor develop a unique death cult, for that matter. Quite the reverse, Mexicans behaved just as their contemporaries did in Austria, France, England, and the United States. They devoted scientific inquiry to the malady and mourned the loss of each life to suicide.

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