Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces

Author(s):  
Christopher Howgego

‘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.

2021 ◽  
pp. 126-128
Author(s):  
Ersin Hussein

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


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 189-201
Author(s):  
Tadeusz W. Lange

Tekst dotyczy mało znanego przedstawiciela rodu Raczyńskich z przełomu XVIII i XIX wieku, założyciela jego „kurlandzkiej” linii, komandora maltańskiego Wincentego Raczyńskiego. Przedmiotem artykułu jest napisany przez Komandora na prośbę jego kuzyna Atanazego Raczyńskiego (i później przez Atanazego opublikowany) obszerny list, stanowiący swoiste La Confession d’un enfant du siècle. Autor listu uczestniczył w pewnych historycznych wydarzeniach i otarł się o szereg historycznych postaci, dzięki czemu jego epistolarna autobiografia jest interesująca i niepozbawiona pewnego waloru poznawczego. List, w nieistniejącym już oryginale napisany po francusku, przełożony został na język polski i opatrzony komentarzem, a także licznymi przypisami, osadzającymi opisywane wydarzenia i osoby w historycznym kontekście. Epistolary biography of the commander of the Order of Malta, Wincenty Raczyński (1771–1857) The text describes Wincenty Raczyński, a little known member of the Raczyński family who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries, the founder of the “Courland line” of the family, and the commander of the Order of Malta. The subject of the article is a long letter, written by the Commander upon the request of his cousin, Atanazy Raczyński (and later published by him), which was a La Confession d’un enfant du siècle of sorts. The author of the letter participated in some historical events and met a number of historical characters owing to which his epistolary biography is both interesting and of cognitive value. The letter, which does not exist anymore in its original French form, was translated into Polish, with added commentary and a number of annotations putting the people and events described in a historical context.


2007 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 180-190
Author(s):  
Anne J. Duggan

Medieval canon law has generally had a bad press. Its professionalization in the period c. 1140 to 1234 can easily be caricatured as the emergence of a rigid, centralized, and authoritarian system which paid small heed to the needs of the people it was supposed to serve. This conclusion is readily sustained by perusal of theLiber Extra, the GregorianDecretalesof 1234, which enshrined the legal developments of the period, from about 1140, which followed the establishment of Gratian’sDecretumas the principal authority for the teaching and practice of canon law. The genesis of theLiber Extrais well known. Pope Gregory IX commissioned Raymond of Peñafort to compile an authoritative collection of papal decretals and conciliar legislation to supplement Gratian’sDecretum, and it drew, principally but not exclusively, on the so-calledQuinqe compilationes antiquewhich had been compiled for teaching purposes in Bologna between c. 1189–91 and 1226.’ And when the work was completed, it was authorized by the bullRex pacificus, which ordered that ‘everyone should useonlythis compilation in judgements and in the schools (ut hactantumcompilatione universi utantur in iudiciis et in scholis); and a copy was duly dispatched to the canon law school in Bologna. The image of centralized, authoritarian lawmaking could not be clearer; and that perception is reinforced by an examination of its structure, where the individual extracts are organized systematically under Titles, which define the subject matter. Such a compilation, like theQuinque compilationesthemselves, was the result of an analytical method, which totally obscured the processes of consultation which had preceded many of the decisions, as well as depriving them, in many cases, of their historical context in terms of the identity of the pope, the recipient, the litigants, and the local circumstances. What emerged was a disembodied code, shorn of the nuances and hesitations which had characterized the decisions which it enshrined.


1987 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert F. Stoops

Sometime during the second decade of the second century CE, Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, was conveyed under guard to Rome where he expected to leave this world through the mouths of the beasts in the arena. Along his journey he stopped at Philadelphia and Smyrna. At each stop he received visitors from a number of churches in the area. He, in turn, wrote letters to those churches and to the church at Rome. The letters of Ignatius have been the subject of scholarly investigation for over a century. The authenticity of the middle recension of those letters is almost universally acknowledged. These letters have been studied for the light they can shed on church structure in Asia Minor at the beginning of the second century, the theology of Ignatius within its historical context, and the distinctive personality of Ignatius. One aspect of these documents which has implications for all other interests has not been satisfactorily explained, namely, how Ignatius understood his own letter writing activity. What gave Ignatius the audacity to interfere in the life of churches outside of Syria, and what kind of authority did he expect the admonitions contained in his letters to carry?


1909 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford Herschel Moore

Whoever reads the meditations of Marcus Aurelius must be impressed with the constant self-examination which the writer practised. Far on the northern boundaries of his empire, among the Quadi, on the banks of the Gran, he composed his first book, analyzing his own nature, gratefully recounting his obligations to his kin, his teachers, and his friends. All the succeeding books grow out of a similar self-examination, accompanied by self-directed exhortations to fidelity, constancy, and patience. The title which the work bears is indeed the only possible one—To Himself—for self is alike the subject and the object of the author's meditations. The emperor's simple humility, his high desire to fulfil in every way his duty, his patient humanity, shut out effectively all priggishness and offensive egotism from his pages. Marcus Aurelius was not alone in his concern for self. If we look into other ranks of life in the second century, we find the same interest. With all its peace, calm, and nobility, the age of the Antonines was an age of egoism, of valetudinarianism both of body and of soul. Aristides the rhetorician has left us an account of his long and impassioned search for health, which for him was a religious quest. Apuleius, in his anxiety for his soul, had himself initiated into all possible sacred mysteries, until he at last found rest in the holy brotherhood of the servants of Isis. The emperor, the rhetorician, and the superstitious mystic furnish three striking illustrations of the tendency of the time.


2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
BART WAGEMAKERS

In the early Imperial Age, the steadily growing Christian movement was viewed with suspicion by both the authorities and the people of Rome; in the second century, the Roman rejection of Christian teachings, customs, and practices resulted in a most intriguing counter-movement. During this century, two types of negative response to the Christian faith had become established. The first encompasses the anti-Christian accusations circulating among the Roman population during most of the period, occasionally resulting in Christians being persecuted. At the end of the century, supplementary controversy arose from within the intellectual world. Those who engaged in this polemic were authors who had studied Christian customs, and who consequently targeted the substance of the Christian teachings.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-103
Author(s):  
Lina Aniqoh

This paper seeks to elaborate on the textual interpretation of Q.S Muhammad verse 4 and Q.S at Taubah verse 5. These two verses are often employed by the extremist Muslim groups to legitimize their destructive acts carried out on groups considered as being infidels and as such lawfully killed. The interpretation was conducted using the double movement hermeneutics methodology offered by Fazlur Rahman. After reinterpretation, the two verses contain moral values, namely the war ordered by God must be reactive, fulfill the ethics of "violence" and be the last solution. Broadly speaking, the warfare commanded in the Qur'an aims to establish a benefit for humanity on the face of the earth by eliminating every crime that exists. These two verses in the contemporary socio-historical context in Indonesia can be implemented as a basis for combating the issue of hoaxes and destructive acts of extremist Muslim groups. Because both are crimes and have negative implications for the people good and even able to threaten the unity of mankind.


Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 72-83
Author(s):  
Tushar Kadian

Actually, basic needs postulates securing of the elementary conditions of existence to every human being. Despite of the practical and theoretical importance of the subject the greatest irony is non- availability of any universal preliminary definition of the concept of basic needs. Moreover, this becomes the reason for unpredictability of various political programmes aiming at providing basic needs to the people. The shift is necessary for development of this or any other conception. No labour reforms could be made in history till labours were treated as objects. Its only after they were started being treating as subjects, labour unions were allowed to represent themselves in strategy formulations that labour reforms could become a reality. The present research paper highlights the basic needs of Human Rights in life.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Ubaidillah ◽  
Misbahul Khoir

The objectives of research include; first, to describe what local Islamic working ethos are as the basis for the resilience of songkok, whip and slap handicraft businesses in Serah Panceng Gresik Village. Second, to describe the resilience of the songkok, whip and slap handicraft business in the village of Serah Panceng Gresik. This study is a qualitative-descriptive study with the aim of understanding the phenomena experienced by the subject of research including behavior, perception, motivation, and action holistically by utilizing various scientific methods. Data collection methods include; Observation, In-depth Interview or Focus Group Discussion, Documentation. Data analysis techniques include: processing and preparing data for analysis, reading the entire data, analyzing in more detail by coding data, considering detailed instructions that can help the coding process, giving descriptions that will be presented in the report, interpreting and interpreting data. The results showed that in Serah Village local Islamic working ethos were preserved by the community, such as alms giving, reading dziba', reading tahlil, attending haul akbar, and reading sholawat together every Friday. Although in the tradition it does not involve songkok, whip, and slap directly, there is a good impact to support the resilience of songkok, but not whip, and slap production. Religious rituals by praying together asking Allah to facilitate and carry out business in production songkok, whip, and slap are an expression of gratitude for what God gave to the people of Serah Village. All economic activity done by Serah community is meant to get God’s willing. Keywords: Islamic Working Ethos, Handicraft Businesses


Author(s):  
Sailendra Bhuyan ◽  
Punita Borpuzari Deori

Achievement test is of very important assessment tool to evaluate the student’s current level of knowledge and skill acquired from classroom instruction. This test is designed to evaluate the student’s level of achievement in a particular subject for a particular class prescribed under the board or the university. In other words, to assess how much the pupils have achieved the educational objectives in teaching learning process at the end of the course and if achieved then to what extent, it has been achieved. Achievement tests are proved to be very helpful in various ways to the people who are involved in the field of education such as the teachers, the administrators, the planners, to the parents as well as for the students. The teacher very carefully develops and conduct achievement test in the class which enable the teacher to get an overall idea of the progress or the level of achievement of his students in the subject area. The teacher can determine the pupil’s strength and weakness in the subject area. So, based on this the teacher can take necessary remedial instructional strategies for the betterment of the pupil’s progress. In the same time, it also provides feedback for the teaching efficiency of the teacher.As with the time changes there have been many educational reforms taken place and in between syllabus had also been changed under different Boards of Studies. In order to maintain uniform standard of education the Government has formulated a policy to implement NCERT syllabus common to all School Boards throughout the country and accordingly the State Board of Secondary Education, Assam (SEBA) follow NCERT syllabus and to evaluate students’ achievement in terms of the policy formulated by the Board. Till now, no any standardized achievement test has been conducted for the secondary school students of Assam. Therefore, the investigators felt to construct and standardize an achievement test in the subject General Science which will definitely help in educational research.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document