The Uses of Literacy and the Cena Trimalchionis

2020 ◽  
pp. 230-257
Author(s):  
Nicholas Horsfall
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Functional Literacy ◽  
Narrative Technique ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Commercial Value ◽  
Popular Literacy

The mental, cultural, and educational world of rich freedmen in the Roman Empire can be realistically reconstructed from the evidence throughout Petronius’ Cena. Such a study, supported by other literary texts where possible, and by epigraphic and artistic evidence where appropriate, sheds further light on just those questions of realism, narrative technique, and characterization which are so much in fashion in Petronian studies. It is no surprise to find functional literacy widespread among freedmen, since slave-owners were so easily able to augment the utility and commercial value of their slaves by training them within or outside the household, in basic literacy and in other skills. The latest epigraphic discoveries go far to confirm the general realism of the Cena and to explain some of the problems which Petronius’ text presents in respect of the engrossing question of popular literacy in the Roman world.

scholarly journals Magic in the Graeco-Roman World

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Korshi Dosoo
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Actual Practice ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Social Conflicts ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Popular Images ◽  
Secret Knowledge

Magic in the Graeco-Roman world is a disputed concept among modern historians, whose interpretation has changed significantly over the last 200 years of study. In studying it we may either focus on terms from ancient languages translatable as “magic,” or examine materials and practices that may be classified as “magic” according to modern definitions. Ancient terminology centers around terms such as the Greek word mageia, and its Latin cognate magia, referring to superhuman practices that often involved the manipulation of the natural and divine worlds through secret knowledge and ritual. Objects identified by modern scholars as magical include curse tablets, written objects intended to injure, bind, or render harmless their victims, magical handbooks written on papyrus, providing instructions for rituals, and amulets, often in the form of semiprecious stones inscribed with images of deities and short texts. While some of these practices are reflected in ancient literary sources discussing magic, literary texts also show an exaggerated discourse, in which magic-users may be stereotyped according to their ethnicity (exotic magicians from Egypt, Syria, or Judaea) or gender (lurid images of witches), and practices are depicted as fantastical and extreme, involving acts such as human sacrifice. Popular images of magic and actual practice come together in laws and regulations against magic and its users, primarily from the period of the Roman Empire. These may be in the form of imperial law, or else Christian and non-Christian cultic rules, which prescribe social exclusion or even death, so that accusations of magic could be a potent tool in social conflicts.

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 Deictic Shifting in Greek Contractual Writing (I–IV AD)

Philologus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 164 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-106
Author(s):  
Klaas Bentein
Keyword(s):  
Literary Texts ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Narrative Technique ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Third Person

AbstractMuch attention has been paid to ‘deictic shifts’ in Ancient Greek literary texts. In this article I show that similar phenomena can be found in documentary texts. Contracts in particular display unexpected shifts from the first to the third person or vice versa. Rather than constituting a narrative technique, I argue that such shifts should be related to the existence of two major types of stylization, called the ‘objective’ and the ‘subjective’ style. In objectively styled contracts, subjective intrusions may occur as a result of the scribe temporarily assuming himself to be the deictic center, whereas in subjectively styled contracts objective intrusions may occur as a result of the contracting parties dictating to the scribe, and the scribe not modifying the personal references. There are also a couple of texts which display more extensive deictic alter­nations, which suggests that generic confusion between the two major types of stylization may have played a role.

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.

Greek Strategies of Adaptation to the Roman World: The Case of the Contests

Mnemosyne ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophia Aneziri
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Imperial Cult ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Past ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Imperial Power

This article examines strategies that made it possible for Greek contests and the professionals who were engaged in them to retain their identity in the Roman Empire while they adapted to the circumstances of the new era. In their efforts to preserve and to enhance existing prestige and privilege, the organizers and others who were involved in the contests attempted both to exploit the past and to establish links to the new Roman power. The consequent linking of the Imperial cult with festivals, artists, athletes, and their associations provided tools that assisted the promotion of Imperial power and ideology.

Lead pollution and the Roman economy

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 354-364
Author(s):  
Damian Pavlyshyn ◽  
Iain Johnstone ◽  
Richard Saller
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Roman Economy ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Institutional Frameworks ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Industrial Societies ◽  
Somatic Energy

More than a decade ago, the Oxford Roman Economy Project (OXREP)1 and the Cambridge economic history of the Greco-Roman world put the question of the performance of the Roman economy at the center of historical debate, prompting a flood of books and articles attempting to assess the degree of growth in the economy.2 The issue is of sufficient importance that it has figured in the narratives of economists analyzing the impact of institutional frameworks on the potential for growth.3 As the debate has continued, there has been some convergence: most historians would agree that there was some Smithian growth as evidenced by urbanization and trade, while acknowledging that production remained predominantly agricultural and based primarily on somatic energy (i.e., human and animal).4 This is, of course, a very broad framework that does not differentiate the Roman empire from other complex pre-industrial societies. The challenge is to refine the analysis in order to put content into the broad description of “modest though significant growth”5 and to offer a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the economy.

Commemoration and Élite Benefaction of Buildings and Spectacles in the Roman World

2015 ◽  
Vol 105 ◽  
pp. 101-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Ng
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Motivating Factor ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

AbstractCurrent scholarship on élite munificence in the Roman Empire often sees architectural benefactions as being at least partially driven by the élite desire for personal commemoration. I use juristic opinions from theDigestand other textual evidence related to building gifts to argue that there was an ancient understanding of the physical and symbolic ephemerality of architectural benefactions. In contrast, I present legal and epigraphic evidence to argue that there was an explicit expectation for gifts of spectacles and monetary distributions to be lasting memorials for their donors, and that the perpetuation of identity was also a motivating factor in the euergetic choice of a spectacle.

Le monde romain dans les lettres de Pline le Jeune: espace et valeurs

Mnemosyne ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-249
Author(s):  
Nicole Méthy
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Special Reference ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
Intellectual Work ◽  
Native Land ◽  
Political Career ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The City

AbstractIn this article the geographical allusions are considered which the reader can find in Pliny's letters, with special reference to those containing the writer's appreciation. They suggest a mental representation of the contemporary Roman world. The ancient ciceronian distinction between parua patria and magna patria still remains valid. But Pliny is conscious of belonging to a much larger territory that is neither his native land of northern Italy nor the city of Rome, in which he had his political career: the Roman empire. However, in Pliny's mind this empire is not a completely united one. It is divided into a Roman or occidental and a Greek or oriental half. This distinction is both geographical and moral. Each part is associated with ethical notions, which are for the former part positive ones, for the latter part negative ones. Even if he is periodically aspiring to reject even his Roman roots or links, in order to find an ideal place for intellectual work, Pliny only feels himself as belonging to the western part, which can no longer be only Rome, because of its moral decline, but also includes the most ancient provinces.

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