The Corrupting Sea

Author(s):  
Sarah E. Bond

The chapter focuses on a period that has often been described in terms of a moral and institutional decline. It interrogates both legal and literary sources pertaining to imperial Roman administration, and asks to what extent do they offer evidence of increasing corruption or merely greater awareness of its debilitating effects. In addition, it also explores the extent to which the rhetoric of corruption itself can be seen as an anticorruption tactic on the part of some elites, with the power to shape norms outside the formal remit of the law. Ultimately, what it shows is that, though corruption may not have been a problem unique to the later Roman Empire, the array and severity of anticorruption tactics introduced during this period do distinguish it from previous eras of Roman history.

Author(s):  
David S. Potter

This chapter offers an analysis of how inscriptions can complement the narratives of Roman history from the third century BCE to the third century CE provided in literary sources. They reveal certain historical events or details that would otherwise be unknown, and they supplement the information offered by the surviving Roman historians .


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (42) ◽  
pp. 14-18
Author(s):  
Gwynaeth McIntyre ◽  
Charlotte Dunn ◽  
William P. Richardson

It can be challenging to bring material culture to life in the classroom when the cultures that produced those materials are separated from the students by time and space. Students learning about Roman history and culture often find it difficult to work with and critically analyse non-literary sources as they rarely have the opportunity to engage with the material objects themselves. Depending on the size of the class, or materials available, it may be impossible to introduce such sources for the ancient world into classroom teaching.


2021 ◽  
pp. 150
Author(s):  
Ruslan G. Aslanyan

The article examines the historical aspects of the formation and development of a Special part of the Russian Criminal Law. The analysis is based on legal monuments of the X - beginning of the XX century and literary sources. The research is developing in three main directions: a) the ratio of the law and other forms of expression of criminal law prescriptions (here the process of transition from customs to the law as the only means of expressing criminal law norms is revealed); 2) types and system of criminal laws (here the transition from intersectoral laws to the formation of a specialized Criminal Code is shown); 3) systematization of criminal law regulations (here the issues of classification of crimes and structuring of criminal law institutions are revealed). As the main result, it is summarized that by the beginning of the XX century, the idea of creating an independent criminal law was not only implemented in the country, but also, firstly, the principle of its pandect structure was put into practice, suggesting the isolation of its Special part in the structure of the Code and, secondly, the principle of building the most Special part, based on the institutional structure of the industry and the content of goods protected by law.


2019 ◽  

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.


Author(s):  
Amra Šačić Beća

Medicinal sulfuric springs at present-day Ilidža helped to create Roman thermae that gave the Roman municipium the name Aquae. Systematic archaeological examinations conducted by Carl Patch and Esad Pašalić suggest that this Roman  settlement in Ilidža had existed without interruptions from the 1st  to the 4th  century. Based on the comparison of literary sources and the results of archaeologic research and epigraphic inscriptions, this paper will determine the genesis of administrative development of this Roman administrative unit whose administration included the upper course of the Bosna river and the Sarajevo area. This is an attempt at answering the following question: «Can we speak of Aquae in the context of Roman  citizens at all?” Another important question is what methodology should we use to  treat the expression res publica Aquae S(...?) that was carved on the base of Diocletian’s statue discovered in Ilidža. BiH scholarship has so far based its understanding  of this term on Mócsy’s definition of the noun phrase res publica in the context  of “pseudo-municipal” status. The results of analysis of inscriptions found on epigraphic monuments that will be presented in this paper suggest that one should  step away from understanding the phrase res publica as an administrative category. Finally, we should point out that the objective of this paper is to present the territorial and administrative development of Aquae, as it is an exact example of the  Roman municipalization model in the provincial interior. This interior was usually geographically very distant from the most important economic and urban centers  of the Roman Empire that has also left an impact on its cultural and historical development. Systematic archaeological research on the right bank of the Željeznica river  in 2016 and 2017 has revealed several stratigraphic layers which include, among others, the ancient period. These new findings have been discovered more to the  east compared to the previous findings, indicating that the urban complex of Aquae  had been expanding toward the Sarajevo area.


Author(s):  
Ram Ben-Shalom

This chapter examines the presence of Rome in medieval Jewish life. Both the Jews and the Christians at the time were familiar with—if not deeply interested in—the Roman empire. In fact, there is evidence of Jews' everyday contact with ancient Rome. Considerable segments of Roman history were included in books about the Second Temple period. There were also books dedicated to Rome, as well as additional historical information found in chronicles. Rome was also mentioned in works outside the genres of historiography and travel literature—in ethical books and biblical commentaries, for instance. Before discussing the images of Rome in these books, the chapter first considers Rome's image in the talmudic and midrashic literature. Here, the images, symbolism, and vocabulary of the Talmud determined the content of the collective memory of medieval Jews.


2020 ◽  
pp. 315-331
Author(s):  
Werner Eck

Sections of the leges municipales from at least forty different cities in Southern Spain have survived to us. These laws, understood as a powerful instrument by which Roman legal regulations were introduced into the provinces, are usually connected with Baetica. As a result it is too easy to overlook the fact that corresponding leges were issued wherever Roman or Latin cities were founded, and continued to be issued long after the Flavian era, the time to which most of the surviving fragments date. Documentary evidence has now made clear that leges municipales are a general phenomenon which continued to play a role in the second and third centuries CE. Fragments of city laws are known not only in the province of Alpes Maritimae, but also in Noricum (Lauriacum), Moesia superior (Ratiaria), and in Troesmis (Moesia inferior). The law for Troesmis is especially important because, in contrast to the laws from Baetica, it was issued for a Roman and not a Latin municipium. This demonstrates that specific Roman legal regulations, which were issued in Augustan times exclusively for Roman citizens, were still of relevance in the second century and also must have been used in the province of Moesia inferior. This material indicates that people had to obey Roman legal regulations more or less everywhere in nearly all provinces of the West. The leges municipales were thus one of the decisive means by which Roman law spread in the provinces—more so than has previously been realized—and could even be the basis for daily life.


Author(s):  
Rangar H. Cline

Although “magical” amulets are often overlooked in studies of early Christian material culture, they provide unique insight into the lives of early Christians. The high number of amulets that survive from antiquity, their presence in domestic and mortuary archaeological contexts, and frequent discussions of amulets in Late Antique literary sources indicate that they constituted an integral part of the fabric of religious life for early Christians. The appearance of Christian symbols on amulets, beginning in the second century and occurring with increasing frequency in the fourth century and afterward, reveals the increasing perception of Christian symbols as ritually potent among Christians and others in the Roman Empire. The forms, texts, and images on amulets reveal the fears and hopes that occupied the daily lives of early Christians, when amulets designed for ritual efficacy if not orthodoxy were believed to provide a defense against forces that would harm body and soul.


2004 ◽  
Vol 60 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dieter H. Reinstorf

This article explores the social and religious dynamics of parables of Jesus in which “rich” and “poor” are juxtaposed. It focuses on Luke 16:19-31 (the parable of the rich man and the poor beggar Lazarus) and on Luke 18:9-14 (the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector). The core of the exploration relates to questions concerning “wealth” and “poverty” in a limited-good society such as first-century Palestine. The article aims to expose the legitimisation provided by the Israelite elite to ensure the collection of taxes placed on the peasant population by the Roman Empire.


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