Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippa Adrych ◽  
Robert Bracey ◽  
Dominic Dalglish ◽  
Stefanie Lenk ◽  
Rachel Wood
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Ancient Religion ◽  
The Many ◽  
Material Record

This chapter focuses on two marble tauroctony statue groups that are now in the British Museum’s collection. Both are thought to be originally from Rome and date roughly to between the end of the first and the second century AD. In this opening chapter, we look at several of the many interpretations that have been offered for the tauroctony and discuss the image’s development in the Roman world. At the heart of all such interpretations lies the problem of how to reconstruct an ancient reality based on scant remains. These carefully constructed compositions, painstakingly restored in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, simultaneously present us with the characteristic representation of Mithras in the Roman Empire, yet also show the difficulties in reconstructing ancient religion from a fragmented material record.

Carthage

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara K. Gold
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
The Social ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Ancient Religion ◽  
The Many ◽  
Made In

This chapter first lays out how we understand Christianity, contemporary ways of exploring ancient religion, and how contemporary studies of religious movements can help us to understand ancient religion; it also explores the social, economic, historical, archaeological, or other cultural forces that intersect with and explain the many facets of religious experience. It further discusses the provenance of Christianity in Roman Carthage; how Christianity started as a very small sect and became a dominant religion in a short period of time; Stark’s thesis about methods of and reasons for conversion; how a Christian or Christian group would have been identified and where they would have met; and who policed religious groups in the Roman empire. Finally the chapter discusses what difference Christianity and Christianness would have made in everyday life in Carthage.

Building a Roman Funeral Pyre

Antichthon ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 30-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Noy
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Roman Art ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Roman Literature ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Cultural Homogenisation ◽  
Over Time

Until the second century A.D., the bodies of most people who died at Rome and in the western provinces of the Empire ended up on a funeral pyre, to be reduced to ashes which would be placed in a grave. The practical arrangements for this process have attracted some attention from archaeologists but virtually none from ancient historians. In this paper I shall try to combine literary and archaeological evidence to reconstruct how the pyre was prepared. I hope that this will provide a fuller background than currently exists for understanding the numerous brief references which can be found in Roman literature and the two surviving representations of a pyre (other than an emperor's) in Roman art. Cremation had different traditions in different areas, e.g. as an elite practice in parts of Gaul, even if ultimately it ‘may have been thought of as a sign of allegiance to Rome.’ There clearly were local differences, not just between provinces but between places quite close together, as well as changes over time, but many of the rites of cremation appear to have been similar throughout the Western Roman Empire, illustrating what Morris calls ‘a massive cultural homogenisation of the Roman world at a time when political and economic regionalism was increasing’.

XPDNC/Writing Caesar ("Bellum Ciuile")

1996 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Bellum Gallicum ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Many ◽  
Two Sides

Julius Caesar's "Bellum Ciuile" writes Caesar-articulates a particular construction of its subject: Caesar. The essay shows how writing in the civil war wins and loses the war, and how the writing of the Civil War exploits this throughout its course. The initial suppression of Caesar's letter to the senate in 49 BCE creates a lack which the rest of the text is to supply, and a structure of injustice inflicted on Caesar by villainous manipulation of communiqués. The narrative presents Caesar's withheld claims over and again, in an ever-lengthening set of dramatized formulations and vindications, both in the form of his own behaviour and in its contrast with his enemies'. The many and various roles of writing in the civil war are examined, from orders and despatches to the propagandist war of words, and it is shown how the conflict is moralized through polarity between the letters sent by the two sides. Caesar presents himself as the last proconsular conqueror of the republic, playing the patriotic general from Gaul to Alexandria, where the "Bellum Ciuile" gives out-in time for this the first writer and mythographer of the Roman Empire to hide his hero's overthrow of the political order. It is argued that Caesar runs Bellum Gallicum and "Bellum Ciuile" together to make a seamless continuum, as a vital strategy for occluding, denying, and displacing civil war from the triumphant procession across a welcoming Roman world he offers in the "Bellum Ciuile".

Oasis Forts of Legio III Augusta on the Routes to the Fezzan

1954 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 56-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. G. Goodchild
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Military Architecture ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Roman Military ◽  
Made In

The two well-preserved Roman fortresses to be described in this paper have been known for many years. They were first brought to European notice by the British-sponsored geographical expeditions of the nineteenth century, when Tripoli was the spring-board for repeated attempts to find a route into Central Africa. Although important discoveries have been made in one of these forts (Bu Ngem) in more recent years, no detailed ground-plans have previously been published.The following notes and illustrations are primarily intended to fill this lacuna in the documentation of the African limes; but it is hoped that they may also serve to increase our knowledge of early third-century trends in Roman military architecture. The European frontiers of the Roman Empire have yielded, and are still yielding, numerous examples of first- and second-century forts, and equally numerous examples of the forts erected during the later-third and early-fourth centuries, when barbarian invasion threatened the whole Roman world.

Rabbinic Authority, Medical Rhetoric, and Body Hermeneutics in Mishnah Nega‘im

AJS Review ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mira Balberg
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Body ◽  
Second Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Medical Rhetoric ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Roman World

The second century CE has long been recognized as a time of intense preoccupation with medicine and health in the Graeco-Roman world. Medicine had always been a part of the Greek paideia, and acquaintance with it was traditionally required of every aristocrat, but it was during the second Sophistic period that a new form of medical self-presentation emerged in which the knowledge of medicine was hailed not only as one of the apices of the intellectual habitus, but also as indispensable to everyday life. As Michel Foucault observed, the literature of this period placed an enormous emphasis on the body not just as a tool to be used but also as an end in itself, and the classic philosophical ideal of “caring for the Self” (epimeleia heautou) came to entail unrelenting attention to one's health and physical well-being. In this setting, the doctor—the bearer of medical knowledge and the ultimate caretaker of the Self—was seen as offering more than physical relief: The doctor was both a healer and a mentor, and functioned as a watchperson and a guide to right living. Indeed, it is in this period that we first come across the appellations iatrophilosophos (doctor-philosopher) and iatrosophistes (doctor-sophist). Medical knowledge had thus become a most esteemed form of knowledge during the Antonine period of the Roman Empire, and doctors, as its guardians, interpreters, and practitioners, were invested with substantial power and authority.

Christians Reading Philo

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Otto
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
Two Factors

It is widely assumed amongst scholars that Clement of Alexandria’s citations of Philo demonstrate continuity between Philo’s Jewish community and early Christians in ancient Alexandria. This chapter argues that the assumed continuity between Jewish synagogue and Christian church in Alexandria is problematical. This is due to two factors. The first is the Jewish uprisings against Rome under Trajan and Hadrian at the beginning of the second century and the second the mobility of people and texts in the Roman Empire. The frequent copying and easy circulation of texts among students of philosophy in the Roman world suggests that Clement may have encountered Philo’s writings in a philosophical school rather than via transmission in an institution such as a Jewish-Christian synagogue or catechetical school.

The Size of the Economy and the Distribution of Income in the Roman Empire

2009 ◽  
Vol 99 ◽  
pp. 61-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Scheidel ◽  
Steven J. Friesen
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Gross Domestic Product ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Domestic Product ◽  
Total Output ◽  
Total Income ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Distribution Of Income

Different methods of estimating the Gross Domestic Product of the Roman Empire in the second century C.E. produce convergent results that point to total output and consumption equivalent to 50 million tons of wheat or close to 20 billion sesterces per year. It is estimated that élites (around 1.5 per cent of the imperial population) controlled approximately one-fifth of total income, while middling households (perhaps 10 per cent of the population) consumed another fifth. These findings shed new light on the scale of economic inequality and the distribution of demand in the Roman world.

What Graeco-Roman Grammar Was About

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. H. Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Secure Place ◽  
Present Understanding

This book explains how the grammarians of the Graeco-Roman world perceived the nature and structure of the languages they taught. The volume focuses primarily on the early centuries AD, a time when the Roman Empire was at its peak; in this period, a grammarian not only had a secure place in the ancient system of education, but could take for granted an established technical understanding of language. By delineating what that ancient model of grammar was, the book highlights both those aspects that have persisted to this day and seem reassuringly familiar, such as ‘parts of speech’, as well as those aspects that are wholly dissimilar to our present understanding of grammar and language.

scholarly journals The Provincial Contexts of Paul’s Imprisonments: Law Enforcement and Criminal Procedure in the Roman East

2021 ◽  
pp. 0142064X2198965
Author(s):  
Cédric Brélaz
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Criminal Procedure ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Local Populations ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Legal Contexts ◽  
Roman East

This article explores the legal contexts which led to the multiple imprisonments experienced by the Paul of the letters (as attested in particular by Phil. 1.13) and depicted also in Acts, contrasting these with the numerous occasions where the apostle faced opposition or even violence from local populations and authorities without being jailed. By looking at the realities of law enforcement operations and criminal procedures in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, this article helps reassess two major issues with regard to the rise of Christ-groups from the middle of the first to the beginning of the second century, namely: For what reasons were Christians arrested and imprisoned by Roman authorities? What was the agenda of the author of Acts in paying so much attention to the legal context of Paul’s arrest and later transfer to the emperor’s court?

Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Imperial Rome ◽  
The Past ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
Close Relationship

This volume approaches three key concepts in Roman history — gender, memory and identity — and demonstrates the significance of their interaction in all social levels and during all periods of Imperial Rome. When societies, as well as individuals, form their identities, remembrance and references to the past play a significant role. The aim of Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World is to cast light on the constructing and the maintaining of both public and private identities in the Roman Empire through memory, and to highlight, in particular, the role of gender in that process. While approaching this subject, the contributors to this volume scrutinise both the literature and material sources, pointing out how widespread the close relationship between gender, memory and identity was. A major aim of Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World as a whole is to point out the significance of the interaction between these three concepts in both the upper and lower levels of Roman society, and how it remained an important question through the period from Augustus right into Late Antiquity.

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