Continuity and Change in the Third Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 212-246
Author(s):  
Mark R. Thatcher
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The Third ◽  
Local Identities ◽  
Major Factors

This chapter uses two case studies to explore how identities both changed and stayed the same under the changing conditions of the Hellenistic period. First, in southern Italy, Hellenic identity gained increasing prominence, especially at Taras, which understood the growing presence of non-Greeks (including Rome) as a barbarian invasion and invited Pyrrhus to assist it in support of Greekness. This discourse was not universal, however, since other cities such as Thurii were more concerned with local identities and resisting Tarantine imperialism. Second, Syracusan identity in the age of King Hieron II was articulated by three major factors: its sense of Greekness, emphasizing its role as defender of the Sicilian Greeks against barbarian enemies; the memory of the city’s past greatness, especially under the Deinomenids; and pride in its Dorian, Corinthian, and Peloponnesian origins.

scholarly journals The Kosmētai Portraits in Third Century Athens. Recutting, Style, Context and Patronage

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 139-167
Author(s):  
Marina Prusac
Keyword(s):  
Building Material ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Public Philosophy ◽  
The Third ◽  
Written Sources

Portraits of a group of thirty kosmētai, public philosophy teachers in Athens, were found among the fill in the Valerian Wall by the Roman Agora in Athens in 1861. From the Hellenistic period onwards, the kosmētai had taught the philosophy or Aristotle, though, with time, the teaching became more varied. In the first century AD, the number of students had a peak of three hundred a year. In the third century, when the portraits were buried in the Valerian Wall, the number of students had decreased, much as it had in other pedagogic institutions. The activity of the kosmētai ended about AD 280 when the Valerian Wall was built. The dating of the Valerian Wall is based on coins with the portrait of emperor Probus (AD 276-282), which have been found among the building debris. What we know about the kosmētai from the written sources leads to several questions, such as why the kosmētai portraits were used as building material at a time when the identity of the sitters could sill be remembered. Why were some of the portraits recut into those of other individuals shortly before they were put into the wall? Some of the kosmētai portraits were produced recut and discarded during the span of a few decades. This paper discusses the portraits of the kosmētai and their significance in Roman Athens and explores questions related to the disposal of them, as well as to context, style, workshop, and patronage.

scholarly journals “The Milan Papyrus” of the Posidippus as the Source of History of the Nabataeans

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Gradual Transition ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Third ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Points Of View

The author considers the content of the “Milan Papyrus” with the epigrams of Posidippus of Pella, the first edition of which was published in 2003, with reference to the history of the Nabataean Arabs. The mention of the Nabataean king in the work is the very first in narrative sources, which allows to reconsider some traditional points of view on the life of the Nabataeans in the early Hellenistic period before their transition to a settled life. It should be noted that referring to the early period of the history of the Nabataeans, researchers inevitably encounter a problem that is associated with a lack of narrative sources. The data available today do not fully restore the course of historical events, especially during the period when the Nabataean tribes led a nomadic lifestyle. To a certain extent, the fragmentariness of the written sources is compensated by the data of archeology, epigraphy and numismatics, however, the early Hellenistic period of the history of the Nabataeans, unfortunately, is still not adequately covered by the sources. Meanwhile, it was at that time when the Nabataeans experienced a gradual transition from a nomadic way of life to a sedentary one, as well as the most important historical processes that determined the path of their further existence under statehood were being held. Nevertheless, the range of sources is gradually expanding, which allows researchers to set new tasks and look for ways to solve them. Thus, as a result of the research, the author concludes that the data of the “Milan Papyrus” suggest that the royal Nabataean dynasty has deeper roots than was commonly believed, and from the middle of the third century BC at the head was the king, under whose command was the cavalry corps. This conclusion changes the generally accepted idea of the socio-political development of the Nabataean society in the early stages of its history.

The Roman-Period Necropolis of Ariassos, Pisidia

1996 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah H. Cormack
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
The Third ◽  
Religious Architecture ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Funerary Architecture ◽  
New City ◽  
City Plan ◽  
New Evidence

New evidence of Roman tomb architecture from the necropolis at Ariassos in Pisidia demonstrates distinctive features of funerary architecture in the east. Over fifty built tombs are in different states of preservation, allowing identification of some features paralleled at other sites in Pisidia, while some features seem unique to Ariassos itself. The similarity of form of one elaborate tomb to the western podium temple reflects the influence of Roman religious architecture, while other tombs reflect features grown out of indigenous Anatolian traditions.Ariassos was founded in the Hellenistic period, and is located c. 50 km. north of the modern city of Antalya. It minted coins in the late Hellenistic period and contains buildings of Hellenistic date, including a prytaneion, bouleuterion and small temple. The majority of the ruins at the site, however, date to the Imperial period, including an extensive nymphaeum and bath complex, a triple arched gateway dating to the third century A.D., and a substantial domestic area. The site was visited in the 1880s by the Austrian team headed by K. Lanckoronski, who thought that the ruins were those of the site of Cretopolis. A few years later the site was correctly identified by a French epigraphical expedition headed by V. Bérard. The Pisidian Survey project, under British directorship, completed a new city plan, focusing attention on Ariassos after years of neglect. [See Fig. 1.]

Piracy in the Early Hellenistic Period: a Career Open to Talents

1986 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janice J. Gabbert
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Mobility ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
General Statement ◽  
The Third ◽  
Remarkable Degree ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Naval Force

Pirates were frequently employed by the Diadochoi and the Epigonoi of Alexander as an auxiliary military or naval force, and some examples are given below. Unfortunately, the surviving evidence does not allow us to do more than make the general statement. The evidence for piratical activity is largely in the form of personal anecdotes, and the evidence for the nature of Hellenistic military and naval establishments is nothing more than a record of a few persons and/or positions. The authors of our scant literary sources, especially those who wrote many generations after the events which they describe, were not attempting to analyse the role of pirates for posterity, thus they often use the word ‘pirate’ with a notable lack of precision, if they use it at all. Nevertheless, a review of the existing evidence suggests a rather remarkable degree of social and occupational mobility in the third century B.C.

Organization of Festivals and the Dionysiac Guilds

1965 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-214
Author(s):  
G. M. Sifakis
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
The Third ◽  
Theatre Production ◽  
The City ◽  
Theatrical Companies

I. We know fairly well how the City Dionysia at Athens was celebrated in classical times. But although the numerous dramatic festivals of the Hellenistic period were in many respects modelled on the Athenian Dionysia, it is not clear how the performances at these festivals were organized. The difficulty arises from the fact that apart from a few great centres which may have had their own theatre production, playwrights, actors, etc., the majority of cities depended on the travelling of Dionysos’.1 It seems that the of Dionysiac artists were formed early in the third century. Three major Dionysiac associations—the Athenian, the Isthmian and Nemean, and the Ionian and Hellespontian—operated in Greece, Asia Minor, and the islands in Hellenistic times. The question is how these associations functioned. Were they theatrical companies as well as professional guilds? Did they undertake the organization of musical and dramatic performances at various festivals? Was there a division of territories between the and were certain festivals dominated by certain guilds?

An early reference to perfect numbers? Some notes on Euphorion, SH 417

1998 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 187-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Lightfoot
Keyword(s):  
Number Theory ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Perfect Number ◽  
The Third ◽  
Perfect Numbers

Euphorion SH 417 (fr. 36 Van Groningen) deserves to be better known. A curiosity in itself—an apparent poetic reference to number theory—it is also, potentially, one of our earliest references to Euclidean material. On the authority of a late commentator on Aristotle, Euphorion, a mid-third-century b.c. Euboean poet who was also active in Athens and Antioch, is said to have mentioned perfect numbers—i.e. numbers which equal the total of all their factors, including 1 (but obviously excluding the number itself). It is a pity that the context in Euphorion does not survive, and that the line is only preserved, and indeed interpreted, by so late a source. But the wording of the fragment—if Westerink's restoration of its various corruptions (again, a pity) is plausible—would strongly suggest a reference to the notion of perfect number. The fragment has been known since Westerink published it in 1960, and was included both in Van Groningen's edition of Euphorion in 1977 and in Supplementum Hellenisticum (1983). But its implications have still not been discussed, and when David Fowler came to gather the evidence for references to Euclidean material in and after the third century b.c. in The Mathematics of Plato's Academy, his attention, unsurprisingly, was not drawn to it. Euphorion has had a bad press, as a poet of rebarbatively obscure myth and intractable vocabulary; yet he holds some interest, and we may be missing more insights into the intellectual life of the Hellenistic period which the perverse intelligence and baneful wit of the fragments display.

Iconography and Archaeology

2021 ◽  
pp. 91-113
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Marlowe
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Physical Strength ◽  
The Third ◽  
Roman Villa ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Art Historians

This chapter critically examines how scholars have interpreted Roman portraits of the third century ce. It focuses on two case studies. The first is a famous portrait of Maximinus Thrax from the Albani collection and now in the Capitoline Museum. Read through the lens of late antique literary sources, the portrait has been seen by art historians as portraying Maximinus’ ferocity, physical strength, and low class, barbarian origins. The second case study is a far less well-known pair of portraits excavated at the Roman villa of Lullingstone, south of London, which became the object of a highly unusual domestic cult in late antiquity. These case studies are used to argue that the heavy reliance on iconography and literary sources required to interpret portraits lacking archaeological context is less reliable and less informative than interpretations derived from a combination of iconography and archaeology.

The Conception of India in Hellenistic and Roman Literature

1964 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 15-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albrecht Dihle
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Scientific Texts ◽  
The Third ◽  
Roman Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Big Rivers ◽  
The Ganges

Going through the literature of late antiquity, of, say, the third and fourth centuries A.D., one is likely to discover very easily three different concepts of Indian geography.(1) In literary—not in scientific—texts which belong to the classical tradition, India is usually thought of as the country of two big rivers, namely the Indus and the Ganges. This India does not include the region south of the Vindhya mountains, in spite of the fact that the commercial relations between South India and the Roman empire had been particularly close during the first and second centuries A.D. India, according to this literary tradition, was accessible by land, by following the course of Alexander's campaign, whereas Indian trade in the Roman period actually followed the passage provided by the monsoon, which had been discovered in the late Hellenistic period. Many details of that classical or rather classicistic conception of India can be gathered from Philostratus' Life of Apollonius, written early in the third century A.D., as well as from the History of Alexander, falsely attributed to Callisthenes.

Ritual for a Seleucid king at Babylon?

1983 ◽  
Vol 103 ◽  
pp. 156-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. M. Sherwin-White
Keyword(s):  
Third Century ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
The Third

A. K. Grayson's valuable volume, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, contains not only a rich collection of historiographic writing from the period before the Macedonian conquest, but has also added several new fragments to the Babylonian Chronicles series for the early hellenistic period, in addition to a useful re-edition of the Chronicle of the Diadochoi. These fragments constitute what survives (or is known at present to survive) from the apparently last chronicles of the corpus which began in the reign of Nabonassar (747–34 bc) and continued down to and into the early Seleucid period. When precisely (and why) the corpus came to an end is at present unknown. The new post-Alexander fragments are probably all from the third century bc, nos 11 and 12 from the early third century, while nos 13 and 13b are of later third century date.

Urban Landscape Development in Twelfth-Century Acre

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-274
Author(s):  
MICHAEL EHRLICH
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Mediterranean Coast ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
The West ◽  
The Third ◽  
The North ◽  
The City

Acre is situated on the northern Mediterranean coast of Israel, about 13 km to the north of Haifa. Its history since the twentieth century bce has been well-documented. Until the third century bce it stood on a mound called Tel al-Fukhar. From the Hellenistic period the city developed on the plain to the west of this mound. Acre experienced two important phases during its long existence. The first was during the Hellenistic era, when it occupied the mound, the plain, and the rocky peninsula to the south of the western sector of the plain. The second was during the Crusader period, when it occupied an even larger area. Between these two periods, the city declined, although it was still repeatedly referred to in historical sources.

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