Invention, Tinkering, or Transfer?

2020 ◽  
pp. 307-354
Author(s):  
Tamara Lewit
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Ease Of Use ◽  
First Century ◽  
Regional Patterns ◽  
Communications Networks ◽  
Roman Economy ◽  
Major Activity ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Military

The production of wine and olive oil was a major activity within the Roman economy, and therefore innovations to the press mechanisms used are of great importance. Historical discussions have focused on the introduction of a screw, and have assumed that presses throughout the Roman Empire were transformed, with the aim of increasing efficiency, by this single ‘invention’ in the first century BC to first century AD. However, recent archaeological evidence reveals a wider range of innovations, not always involving the use of a screw, and over a much broader period, and shows that press types evolved within regional patterns, rather than uniformly. These innovations can only be understood by considering who initiated and spread them, how, and why. Factors such as the physical weight and durability of press parts, access to skills for ongoing maintenance and repairs, the absence of printed treatises and drawn diagrams, the military and communications networks of the empire, and the social context of ownership and local settlement structures all influenced innovation and its diffusion. A drive to increase production cannot fully explain the patterns of change, and some innovations served other purposes, improving safety or ease of use. Innovations seem to have been developed not by an educated ‘inventor’, but at least partly through day-to-day ‘tinkering’ by local artisans and farmers.

Roman Military Units in Olbia

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. M. ZUBAR
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
First Century ◽  
Military Aid ◽  
Roman Military ◽  
The Military ◽  
Military Units ◽  
The City

Around the middle of the first century, Olbia was under siege from the Getae. It was either destroyed or abandoned shortly before its destruction. It was only inhabited at the turn of the first century AD. It is assumed that Roman interest over Olbia only started after the middle of the first century. This chapter discusses the existence of Roman military units in Olbia during the years AD 106–111. These military units were believed to be present in Olbia to protect the city from barbarian intrusion. This assumption is established by the existence of inscribed grave-monuments and epitaphs belonging to Athenocles, and the Bosporans: indications of the attempts of the Rome to maintain its political strength and to defend the city from barbarians. Accordingly, after the collapse of the Olbian-Samartian alliance, the Roman Empire provided occasional military aid to Olbian during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian. Other evidences that provide proof of the dependence of Olbia to the military aid given by the Roman military units are the presence of a Roman legionary garrison in Olbia including Thracian dedicatory reliefs.

Zooming In Rome, the Middle Euphrates, and Dura

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon James
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Its Region ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
The Military

Dura-Europos was a product and ultimately a victim of the interaction of Mediterranean- and Iranian-centred imperial powers in the Middle East which began with Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Achaemenid Persian empire in the later fourth century BC. Its nucleus was established as part of the military infrastructure and communications network of the Seleucid successor-state. It was expanding into a Greekstyle polis during the second century BC, as Seleucid control was being eroded from the east by expanding Arsacid Parthian power, and threatened from the west by the emergent imperial Roman republic. From the early first century BC, the Roman and Parthian empires formally established the Upper Euphrates as the boundary between their spheres of influence, and the last remnants of the Seleucid regime in Syria were soon eliminated. Crassus’ attempt to conquer Parthia ended in disaster at Carrhae in 53 BC, halting Roman ambitions to imitate Alexander for generations. The nominal boundary on the Upper Euphrates remained, although the political situation in the Middle East remained fluid. Rome long controlled the Levant largely indirectly, through client rulers of small states, only slowly establishing directly ruled provinces with Roman governors, a process mostly following establishment of the imperial regime around the turn of the millennia. However, some client states like Nabataea still existed in AD 100 (for overviews see Millar 1993; Ball 2000; Butcher 2003; Sartre 2005). The Middle Euphrates, in what is now eastern Syria, lay outside Roman control, although it is unclear to what extent Dura and its region—part of Mesopotamia, and Parapotamia on the west bank of the river—were effectively under Arsacid control before the later first century AD. For some decades, Armenia may have been the dominant regional power (Edwell 2013, 192–5; Kaizer 2017, 70). As the Roman empire increasingly crystallized into clearly defined, directly ruled provinces, the contrast with the very different Arsacid system became starker. The ‘Parthian empire’, the core of which comprised Iran and Mesopotamia with a western royal capital at Ctesiphon on the Tigris, was a much looser entity (Hauser 2012).

scholarly journals The rich, the poor, and the law

2004 ◽  
Vol 60 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dieter H. Reinstorf
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
First Century ◽  
Good Society ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Rich

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.

scholarly journals Embodied Identities in Roman Britain: A Bioarchaeological Approach

Britannia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 177-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Gowland
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
Biological Information ◽  
Human Skeletal Remains ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
The Social ◽  
Diversity Of Life ◽  
The Military ◽  
Integrated Study

ABSTRACTHuman skeletal remains from Roman Britain are abundant and provide a rich repository of social as well as biological information concerning health, migration, diet and body/society interactions. At present, skeletal remains tend to be marginalised in studies of Roman trade, the military, economy, urbanisation and the like, yet they have huge potential to contribute to current debates. This article aims to highlight the potential of bioarchaeological analysis for understanding aspects of social identity in Roman Britain through the use of a more integrated, theoretical approach towards embodied interactions. It encourages future collaborative scholarship between bioarchaeologists, archaeologists and historians. The social determinants of health and identity will vary greatly between regions and the only way of establishing the diversity of life across the Roman Empire is through the instigation of a more comprehensive, large-scale, integrated study of funerary and skeletal assemblages.

Batavians and Romans on the Lower Rhine

2002 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Slofstra
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Major Part ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
The Social ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
The Military ◽  
Lower Rhine

AbstractThis paper is a plea for the rehabilitation of the concept of Romanisation in the discussion about socio-cultural change resulting from the confrontation of (proto-)historical peoples with Roman power and an often dominant Roman culture. In the theoretical introduction, first of all an attempt is made to identify the social mechanisms of Romanisation; this is followed by a discussion on a model of dimensional analysis attuned to the dynamics of specific processes of Romanisation.The major part of the article is devoted to an outline of the Romanisation process in the northern frontier zone of the Roman Empire, the Lower Rhine region. It focuses on the political and cultural interaction between the Batavian tribe living here and the Romans in the period between the Gallic war and the 3rd century A.D. The paper attempts to explain the differences between the process of Romanisation in the central part of Gaul (‘Interior Gaul’ in Greg Woolf's terminology) which had already been ‘civilised’ early on and the military frontier, where tribal traditions still continued to play an important part, certainly until the Batavian revolt of 69/70 A.D.

scholarly journals The Destinies of German-Born People in Russia at the Turn of the Millennium

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunnar Thorvaldsen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
First Century ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The People ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Military

This article studies the stories of Russian citizens who were born in Germany but reside in Russia. Most of them had relocated to Russia as a result of the withdrawal of Russian troops from Germany after 1990. Analysing individual data from the 2002 and 2010 censuses, the author traces the lives of children born into the families of Soviet military men based in East Germany after World War II. Over 140,000 such migrants can be found in the 2002 census, far more than from any other country that was not part of the Soviet Union. Repatriation was accomplished from 1991 to 1994; and even though Germany financed part of the operation, it was necessary to solve the problems of accommodation and employment of the military men and their families locally. As a result of the study, the author manages to determine the territories inhabited by Russians born in Germany in the early twenty-first century. The number of people among them who speak foreign languages and have post-secondary education is higher than average, which testifies to the fact that the joint effort of the two countries was more beneficial for the future of the people born in Germany than might have been expected. The competence and education they acquired, together with the social networks between those repatriated, added significantly to their human capital and their contributions to Russian society.

The Post-Contemporaneity of War

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-263
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Applied Ethics ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
Applied Theory ◽  
The Third ◽  
New Wars ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Military

The article summarizes material from the thematic issue of Logos on the study of war. The author notes that, contrary to Hannah Arendt’s prediction, it is wars rather than revolutions that accompany human social activity in the twenty-first century. And because war is such a ubiquitous phenomenon, philosophers have tried to gain an understanding of it. Despite the great variety of arguments about war, we can distinguish three theoretical discourses each focused on its own separate topic. The first discourse is an attempt to rehabilitate the military thought of Carl von Clausewitz, the first theorist of “modern” war; the second is the just war theory, which concentrates on issues of applied ethics (whether it is legitimate to start war, how to conduct warfare, what to do after the conflict, etc.); the third is the discussion on “new wars.” The author maintains that the second discourse is too instrumental and that the just war theoretical apparatus often lags behind the empirical realities. The first approach can at best be an abstract and theoretical one, but it is not by any means useful as an applied theory. Hence, the most important of these discourses for practical philosophy is the third one, that is, the debate about “new wars.” That is why developing and elucidating the theory and ¾ most important of all — the practice of new wars demands attention. The conclusion is that the social theory of (post)modernity would enrich the new wars discourse, and further areas for study are therefore mapped out.

Dictators and Philosophers in the First Century A.D.

1944 ◽  
Vol 13 (38-39) ◽  
pp. 43-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jocelyn M. C Toynbee
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Economic History ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of

It was just over half a century ago, in 1892, that Gaston Boissier published a discussion of the Stoic ‘martyrs’ under Nero in the second chapter of his well-known work L'Opposition sous les Cèsars. Since then two especially noteworthy studies of the ‘philosophic opposition’ in the first century A.D. have appeared in English, that of M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (1926), pp. 108 ff., and, more recently, that of D. R. Dudley, A History of Cynicism (1937), pp. 125 ff. The story of men who maintained a critical or, at the least, independent attitude in the face of a totalitarian règime is obviously of great significance for us to-day. Theoretically, of course, the term ‘autocracy’, in its strict sense of ‘unaccountability’ of government, cannot be applied to the imperial system of the early Empire. On paper the ‘tyrants’, Tiberius, Gaius, Nero, and Domitian, no less than the ‘enlightened monarchs’, Augustus, Claudius, Vespasian, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, were delegates senatus populique Romani, chief magistrates and servants of the state. But in practice the ever-expanding range of the imperial provincia, coupled with the unceasing growth of the ‘mystical’ auctoritas bequeathed by the first Princeps to his successors, had produced an effective absolutism comparable, in many respects, to that of the autocrats or ‘dictators’ of modern authoritarian states. How did political thought and action in the Roman Empire respond to this de facto autocracy? How, above all, did they respond to its abuse? For us these are no merely academic questions. The parallelism, such as it is, between the ancient and the modern situations must serve as an excuse for presuming to rehandle a familiar theme.

scholarly journals A reading of the leper’s healing in Matthew 8:1–4 through ethnomedical anthropology

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fednand M. M’bwangi
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Setting ◽  
Anthropological Perspective ◽  
Anthropological Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health And Healing ◽  
Healing Narrative

Scholars offer several options for Matthew’s value of the leper’s story in his narrative that range from revealing Jesus’ attributes of compassion and sympathy, manifesting God’s empire, to portraying Jesus’ function as a temple. Although these suggestions aptly portray Matthew’s rhetorical use of the leper’s healing in his narrative to address societal concerns of his time, for lack of referring to the social setting of the narrative, they do not capture the holistic healthcare system embodied by Jesus in Matthew’s narrative that portrays Jesus as a superior healer to the rest of the other healers in the Roman Empire. The findings of the research for this article establish the argument that employing ethnomedical anthropology as a lens to read the leper’s healing narrative in Matthew 8:1–4 in the context of Matthew’s social setting reveals Matthew’s ideology for a transcendent and immanent Christology. The aim of the article is to demonstrate the effectiveness of medical anthropological theory in explaining the dynamics of health and healing reflected in biblical texts.Contributions: This article contributes to the interdisciplinary approach to the study of religion by employing a ethnomedical anthropological perspective to read the leper’s healing in Matthew 8.1–4 in reference to the first century CE health systems in the Roman Empire. This approach procured that Matthew’s immanent and transcendent perspectives of Christology is crucial in demonstrating the text’s function in constructing and sustaining the identity of Matthew’s community in antiquity.

Batavians and Romans on the Lower Rhine

2002 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Slofstra
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Major Part ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Mechanisms ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
The Social ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
The Military ◽  
Lower Rhine

AbstractThis paper is a plea for the rehabilitation of the concept of Romanisation in the discussion about socio-cultural change resulting from the confrontation of (proto-)historical peoples with Roman power and an often dominant Roman culture. In the theoretical introduction, first of all an attempt is made to identify the social mechanisms of Romanisation; this is followed by a discussion on a model of dimensional analysis attuned to the dynamics of specific processes of Romanisation.The major part of the article is devoted to an outline of the Romanisation process in the northern frontier zone of the Roman Empire, the Lower Rhine region. It focuses on the political and cultural interaction between the Batavian tribe living here and the Romans in the period between the Gallic war and the 3rd century A.D. The paper attempts to explain the differences between the process of Romanisation in the central part of Gaul (‘Interior Gaul’ in Greg Woolf's terminology) which had already been ‘civilised’ early on and the military frontier, where tribal traditions still continued to play an important part, certainly until the Batavian revolt of 69/70 A.D.

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