Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 126-128
Author(s):  
Ersin Hussein
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Near East ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Roman Provinces ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Cultural Networks ◽  
Written Sources

The Conclusion revisits the questions that lie at the heart of studies of the Roman provinces and that have driven this study. What is the best way to tell the story of a landscape, and its peoples, that have been the subject of successive conquests throughout history and when the few written sources have been composed by outsiders? What approach should be taken to draw out information from a landscape’s material culture to bring the voices and experiences of those who inhabited its space to the fore? Is it ever possible to ensure that certain evidence types and perspectives are not privileged over others to draw balanced conclusions? The main findings of this work are that the Cypriots were not passive participants in the Roman Empire. They were in fact active and dynamic in negotiating their individual and collective identities. The legacies of deep-rooted connections between mainland Greece, Egypt, Asia Minor, and the Near East were maintained into the Roman period and acknowledged by both locals and outsiders. More importantly, the identity of the island was fluid and situational, its people able to distinguish themselves but also demonstrate that the island was part of multiple cultural networks. Cyprus was not a mere imitator of the influences that passed through it, but distinct. The existence of plural and flexible identities is reflective of its status as an island poised between multiple landscapes

scholarly journals The Danube legions of the Late Roman Empire (I Italica and V Macedonica) during the second half and middle of the fourth c. a. d.: on the ways of interaction between the frontier and expeditionary armies

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 608-619
Author(s):  
Е.А. Mekhamadiev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Food Supply ◽  
Near East ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Roman Provinces ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
Military Units ◽  
Late Roman

Since 325 A. D., when the Emperor Constantine the Great established a self-sufficient and single expeditionary army of the Roman Empire (previously, before 353, it constantly had stood in Thrace, but then it was split in some smaller military groups), military units of this army have interacted to units of frontier armies during many military campaigns. But epigraphic data from the Lower Danube regions (the provinces of Lower Moesia and Dacia Ripensis (River)) give a chance to trace one another way of interaction, which was an absolutely disregarded before. The author means a food supply of frontier units from the provinces where the expeditionary troops (or imperial bodyguards) had their service. The inscriptions covered by this paper contain evidence about two important Danube frontier legions, that are I Italica (Lower Moesia) and V Macedonica (Dacia Ripensis (River)), which received a food from the Roman Near East provinces (the author means Hellespontus at the North-West of the Asia Minor and Syria Foenice and Syria Palestina just at the Persian frontier), but not from the Danube regions. As the author supposes, the reason of such a way of supply was that some military units (vexillations) detached from the staff of the Danube frontier legions served within the Near East Roman provinces, these vexillations moved at the Near East during the time of the Tetrarchy (293–324) or the sole reign of Constantine the Great (324–337). After their relocation to the Near East, vexillations of the Danube frontier legions have never returned in their home Danube provinces, in contrast, they were parts of the Near East expeditionary armies. But, as a matter of award for diminishing of their staff, the Danube frontier («maternal») legions received a food from the provinces, where their «child» vexillations located and served.

Changing Materialities

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Roman Imperialism ◽  
General Terms ◽  
The Face ◽  
Messy Reality

The material signature of the Roman period in Britain is undeniably distinctive, marked as it is not only by a whole series of changes and additions to the formal repertoire of artefacts but also by a great proliferation of the sheer numbers of things. The traditional explanation for the changing contours of materiality in Roman Britain has been the over-simplistic narrative of ‘Romanization’. While it is certainly the case that there is a connection between Roman imperialism and material change, this traditional picture cannot be sustained in the face of new understandings of the material patterning in Roman Britain, and of the ways in which people interact with material culture in more general terms. In this chapter, I will review this recent empirical and theoretical work to demonstrate how this is gradually giving us a fuller picture of the complicated and messy reality of life in the Roman empire.

Introduction

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parker Robert
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Historical Changes ◽  
The Subject

This essay indicates the interest of the subject, and the themes that run through the volume: the predominant place of Anatolia within the evidence for Greek naming in the Roman period; the great virtues of Louis Robert’s Noms indigènes dans l’Asie Mineure gréco-romaine, and its limitations; the huge potential of names as a historical source in a multi-ethnic environment, and the complications created by interaction between different naming traditions; the psychology of naming, as revealed by the exceptionally rich Anatolian material; historical changes within specific regions and, during the Roman empire, throughout Anatolia, but also certain continuities from the now observable naming patterns of the second millennium; the need for an approach which rigorously respects regional and chronological differences and is also sociologically alert.

A menorah plaque from the center of Sardis

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 431-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Rautman
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Important Addition ◽  
Regional Centers ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Written Sources

Roman Sardis, like other cities of W Asia Minor, reflects the distinctive cultures of different peoples who had long lived in its vicinity. Of these varied populations, the Jewish community seems to have been especially notable. Written sources cited by Josephus establish the presence of diaspora Jews in Lydia and Phrygia by the end of the 3rd c. B.C., when Antiochus III relocated 2000 families here from Babylon and Mesopotamia. By the Late Republic, their descendants at Sardis and other regional centers are known to have acquired civic privileges and rights. The local prominence of the Jewish community at Sardis was dramatically confirmed in the 1960s by the discovery in the city’s NW region of a large assembly hall, along with inscriptions, menorahs and other artifacts that clearly establish its use as a synagogue in the 4th-6th c. Further evidence of Jewish life has been noted during excavation of nearby houses, shops and streets in this peripheral quarter. The recent discovery of a marble relief plaque depicting a menorah and other symbols near the center is an important addition to the material culture of ancient Judaism in Asia Minor.

Relations between Rome and the German ‘Kings’ on the Middle Danube in the First to Fourth Centuries A.D.

1989 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 45-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn F. Pitts
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Administrative System ◽  
The West ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Subject ◽  
East And West ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

In recent years the ‘rex sociusque et amicus’ of the Roman Empire—frequently, if mistakenly, called a ‘client king’—has been the subject of much study, notably by D. Braund. Although ostensibly Braund and others are discussing the position and role of these kings on all the Roman frontiers, they concentrate in the main on those in the east. This is perhaps inevitable, since literary and epigraphic evidence abounds for the east, while it is scarce and often ambiguous for the west. Unfortunately direct comparison between east and west is meaningless: conditions which can be seen to apply to Rome's relations with her neighbours in the east cannot always be transferred to the west. Unfortunately direct comparison between east and west is meaningless: conditions which can be seen to apply to Rome's relations with her neighbours in the east cannot always be transferred to the west. In Greece and Asia Minor Rome was dealing with developed societies who could be integrated into a Roman administrative system; in the west, on the other hand, the peoples living beyond the frontiers, and indeed within them, were culturally less well-developed; here Rome had, on the whole, to negotiate with constantly changing tribal chiefs rather than with established monarchies.

Contributions to the History of Southern Aeolis

1881 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 271-308
Author(s):  
W. M. Ramsay
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Western Coast ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
The Arts ◽  
French School ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
School Of Athens

Asia Minor, interposed like a bridge between Europe and Asia, has been from time immemorial a battlefield between the Eastern and Western races. Across this bridge the arts, civilisation, and religion of the East had passed into Greece; and back over the same bridge they strove to pass beautified and elevated from Greece into Asia. The progress of the world has had its centre and motive power in the never-ceasing collision of Eastern and Western thought, which was thus produced in Asia Minor. One episode in the long conflict has been chosen by Herodotus as the subject of his prose epic: but the struggle did not stop at the point he thought. It has not yet ended, though it has long ceased to be of central importance in the world's history. For centuries after he wrote Greek influence continued to spread, unhindered, further and further into Asia: but as the Roman empire decayed, the East again became the stronger, and Asia Minor has continued under its undisputed influence almost up to the present day. Now the tide has again turned, and one can trace along the western coast the gradual extinction of the Oriental element. It does not retreat, it is not driven back by war: it simply dies out by a slow yet sure decay. It is the aim of this set of papers to throw some light on one stage in this contest, a stage probably the least known of all, the first attempts of the Greek element to establish itself in the country round the Hermus. Tradition has preserved to us little information about the first Greek settlements. The customary division into Aeolic, Ionic, and Doric colonists is not a sufficient one. Strabo clearly implies that there was a double Aeolic immigration when he says (p. 622) that Cyme founded thirty cities, and that it was not the first Aeolic settlement; in another passage (p. 582) he makes the northern colonists proceed by land through Thrace, the southern direct by sea to Cyme. I hope by an examination of the country and the situations, never as yet determined, of the minor towns, to add a little to the history of this Southern Aeolic immigration, in its first burst of prosperity, through the time when it was almost overwhelmed in the Lydian and Persian empires and was barely maintained by the strength of the Athenian confederacy, till it was finally merged in the stronger tide of Greek influence that set in with the victory of Alexander. More is known of Myrina, and still more of Cyme, than of any of the other towns: but both are omitted here, because it may be expected that considerable light will be thrown on the history of both by the excavations conducted on their sites by the French School of Athens. Till their results are published, it would be a waste of time to write of either city.

The Roman mosaics of the Knossos Valley

2003 ◽  
Vol 98 ◽  
pp. 517-547
Author(s):  
Rebecca Sweetman
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Mosaic Distribution ◽  
The City

Thirty Roman mosaics are now known from the Knossos Valley. The Villa Dionysos, with eight mosaics thus far uncovered, forms the largest coherent group. Recent work undertaken at the nearby bath house has revealed a small group of three mosaics. For the most part the remainder are isolated examples, commonly found during rescue excavation and often not well preserved. The mosaics range in date from the late first to the late third century AD and they display a variety of styles from black and white to polychrome and themes from simple geometric to complex figured designs. This paper presents a catalogue of the mosaics followed by a synthetic analysis, providing cultural evidence for the hitherto not well-understood Roman period of Knossos and adding to the corpus of mosaics in Greece.Despite the limitations of such a study, imposed by the nature of the recovery of the material culture, it is possible, through an understanding of mosaic distribution, context and type, to make suggestions regarding the function of different areas within the city. An analysis of chronology and evidence for workshop production provides data for economic and cultural fluctuations and, importantly, a study of the mosaics helps to place Knossos within the broader context of the Roman Empire.

“Classical” versus “Ancient” in the Near Eastern Canon

2020 ◽  
pp. 131-150
Author(s):  
Elise A. Friedland
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Art History ◽  
Near East ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Contributing Factors ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Art Historians

Despite art historians’ inclination to expand the narrative of the Near East into the Graeco-Roman period, there is no published survey of the art and archaeology of the classical Near East. Likewise, handbooks of classical and general art history underrepresent the Levant. This chapter explores that lacuna through three canonical examples from the Levant, which are typically represented in these handbooks, and one canon-worthy example that is not. It addresses contributing factors to this lacuna: the dynamic politics of the Graeco-Roman Levant, disciplinary and historiographic biases, and the nature of the evidence. Finally, it exhorts specialists to publish a classical Near East survey representing the full range of sites, architecture, monuments, media, and styles from 330 BCE to 636 CE. Without such a handbook, material culture from the region is rarely interpreted within its historical, political, and artistic contexts and is more often (mis)represented in the broader narrative of world art history.

Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Howgego
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Public Official ◽  
Public Identity ◽  
The People ◽  
Roman Provinces ◽  
Explicit Representations ◽  
The Subject ◽  
A Current

‘Identity is Now Seen Not as an Eternal given, but as something actively constructed and contested in a particular historical context, based on subjective, not objective criteria.’ For all that it may be a contingent construct, identity is a powerful driver of action, as we know all too well from our own experience. Identity matters. Coins have been described, in the words of Fergus Millar, as ‘the most deliberate of all symbols of public identity’. Yet the Roman historian will look in vain for any good introduction to, or systematic treatment of, the subject. That, in a nutshell, is the need which this volume seeks to address. It is worth emphasizing the words deliberate and public. It is relevant to recall the late second-century BC inscription which states the reasons why the people of Sestus decided to use its own bronze coinage. The first reason given is so that the city’s coin type should be used as a current type. In this context at least, coins were seen as a deliberate advertisement of public identity. What coinage most obviously provides is an enormous range of self-defined and explicit representations of public/official/communal identities, principally civic in nature. The material thus largely allows us to avoid the thorny problems associated with externally defined, implicit, and private identities. A public medium like coinage is not the place to look for overt opposition to Roman rule. And it invites, rather than answers, the question of to what extent public identities might have been understood as covert ‘resistance’ to Rome, to what extent they represented a self-definition designed to accommodate or play up to Roman attitudes, and to what extent they may even have been inspired or promoted by Rome itself. Identity has been a major focus of research in recent decades, for the obvious reason that it is particularly an issue when under threat. That consideration applies as much to our own scholarly context as it does to our subject, the Roman empire. The advent of the Euro has inevitably drawn attention to money in this context. Naturally there are major differences between now and then.

Ancient and Modern World Views

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Ersin Hussein
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Ammianus Marcellinus ◽  
Research Context ◽  
Current State ◽  
Roman Provinces ◽  
Key Events

This chapter brings together the few geographical surveys of Cyprus written by outsiders (i.e. non-Cypriots) during the Roman Empire. The accounts of Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Claudius Ptolemy, Pausanias, Ammianus Marcellinus, and the anonymous Expositio totius mundi et gentium represent the culmination and transmission of ideas about the island based on key events, scenarios, and anecdotes. Situating the key passages within the motivations and themes of these authors’ works reveals how and why particular ideas about the island and its space came to fruition, what purpose these served, and what the perceived status and role of Cyprus in relation to Rome and to the wider Empire was. Discussion of the wider research-context study of the Roman provinces and the current ‘state of the field’ for the study of Roman Cyprus follows. In Cyprus no colonies were founded by the Romans, nor were any existing towns given colonial status; the island did not receive benefits, nor was it awarded any special status by Rome, despite being taxed. Furthermore, its inhabitants did not engage in aggressive military action to resist Roman control of the island, nor is its Roman period characterized by internal turmoil because of the Roman government, in contrast to some other provincial case studies. Therefore, this investigation draws upon a range of studies and models, utilizing vocabulary that acknowledges identity, culture, and experience as fluid, nuanced, and situational. It also emphasizes the importance of geography, geology, space, and place as active in the formation of local identity

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