The Mediterranean Jewish Diaspora of Late Antiquity

2021 ◽  
pp. 277-307
Author(s):  
Ross S. Kraemer
Keyword(s):  
Geographic Distribution ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Jewish Diaspora ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Elite Professions ◽  
Communal Organizations ◽  
Jewish Populations

No known literary sources survive from Jews living in the Mediterranean diaspora from the early fourth to the end of the sixth century. Mining the writings of non-Jews (primarily Christians), late Roman laws, the physical remains of a few synagogues, donor inscriptions, and numerous epitaphs, this chapter sketches aspects of their lives, including geographic distribution, economics, participation in ancient civic life, communal organizations, communication between Jewish populations, and their possible homogeneity or diversity. It also examines the pressures exerted on Jews to convert to Christianity, including the destruction of synagogues and exclusions from public offices and elite professions, and considers both the efficacy of such pressures and possible Jewish responses.

Economic Boundaries? Late Antiquity and Early Islam

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Morony
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Irrigated Agriculture ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islam ◽  
The Mediterranean

AbstractThe Mediterranean economy was retracting from the mid-sixth century while the Sasanian economy was expanding. Six trends are identified during Late Antiquity that extended into the Islamic period: (1) the development and spread of large estates with tenant labor, (2) the monetization of the economy, (3) the development and spread of irrigated agriculture, (4) the revival of mining, (5) the emergence of merchant diasporas, and (6) the domination of Indian Ocean commerce by Persian shipping. It is argued that these trends were strongest in Sasanian territory where the economic system identified as "Islamic" originated. À partir du milieu du sixième siècle l'économie méditerranéenne connaissait une régression alors que celle de l'Empire sasanide était en plein essor. Durant l'époque de l'Antiquité tardive et au cours de la période islamique, six tendances peuvent être relevées: 1) le développement et la diffusion des grands domaines avec fermiers à bail; (2) la monétarisation de l'économie; (3) l'extension de l'agriculture irriguée; (4) la revivi fication du secteur minier; (5) l'émergence des diasporas commerciales; et (6) la domination commerciale de la marine perse dans l'Océan indien. Selon notre analyse, ces tendances étaient plus fortement ressenties en territoire sasanide où le système économique dit "islamique" connut le jour.

The Origin of Icons

2021 ◽  
pp. 20-30
Author(s):  
Thomas F. Mathews
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Panel Painting ◽  
Hagia Sophia ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Panel Paintings

The origin of icons, and by extension of Christian painting, can now be traced to the panel painting tradition of pagan divinities in wide use in Late Antiquity throughout the Mediterranean. Both pagan and Christian panel paintings were employed as votive or thank offerings. According to an ancient phenomenon known as “syncretism,” emperors were identified with gods and Greek gods with Egyptian ones. Triptych paintings were a new way of exploring the implications of syncretism. In the sixth century, icons went from being single offerings to an assembly on the templon barrier. The earliest surviving evidence of church iconography, decoration and ritual cult, or liturgy, comes from Constantinople, at the churches of St. Polyeuktos and Hagia Sophia.

Crossing the Pomerium

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Koortbojian
Keyword(s):  
Social Practices ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Public Monuments ◽  
Religion And Law ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Military ◽  
The City

The ancient Romans famously distinguished between civic life in Rome and military matters outside the city—a division marked by the pomerium, an abstract religious and legal boundary that was central to the myth of the city's foundation. This book explores, by means of images and texts, how the Romans used social practices and public monuments to assert their capital's distinction from its growing empire, to delimit the proper realms of religion and law from those of war and conquest, and to establish and disseminate so many fundamental Roman institutions across three centuries of imperial rule. The book probes such topics as the appearance in the city of Romans in armor, whether in representation or in life, the role of religious rites on the battlefield, and the military image of Constantine on the arch built in his name. Throughout, the book reveals how, in these instances and others, the ancient ideology of crossing the pomerium reflects the efforts of Romans not only to live up to the ideals they had inherited, but also to reconceive their past and to validate contemporary practices during a time when Rome enjoyed growing dominance in the Mediterranean world. The book explores a problem faced by generations of Romans—how to leave and return to hallowed city ground in the course of building an empire.

Unfinished and Less Authored Texts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew D. C. Larsen
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Mediterranean Basin ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Mediterranean Basin ◽  
Jewish Writers

The concept of textual unfinishedness played a role in a wide variety of cultures and contexts across the Mediterranean basin in antiquity and late antiquity. Chapter 2 documents examples of Greek, Roman, and Jewish writers reflecting explicitly in their own words about unfinished texts. Many writers claimed to have written unfinished texts on purpose for specific cultural reasons, while others claimed to have written texts that slipped out of their hands somehow with their permission.

scholarly journals THE HISTORY OF BILINGUAL DICTIONARIES RECONSIDERED: AN ANCIENT FRAGMENT RELATED TO PS.-PHILOXENUS (P.VARS. 6) AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Eleanor Dickey
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Alphabetical Order ◽  
Bilingual Dictionaries ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic

Abstract This article identifies a papyrus in Warsaw, P.Vars. 6, as a fragment of the large Latin–Greek glossary known as Ps.-Philoxenus. That glossary, published in volume II of G. Goetz's Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum on the basis of a ninth-century manuscript, is by far the most important of the bilingual glossaries surviving from antiquity, being derived from lost works of Roman scholarship and preserving valuable information about rare and archaic Latin words. It has long been considered a product of the sixth century a.d., but the papyrus dates to c.200, and internal evidence indicates that the glossary itself must be substantially older than that copy. The Ps.-Philoxenus glossary is therefore not a creation of Late Antiquity but of the Early Empire or perhaps even the Republic. Large bilingual glossaries in alphabetical order must have existed far earlier than has hitherto been believed.

Audientia sacerdotalis?—Remarks on the Legal Nature of Dispute Resolution by Ecclesiastics in Late Antiquity

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-149
Author(s):  
Marzena Wojtczak
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Resolution ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Simultaneous Increase ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
The Past ◽  
Lower Rank ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
The Subject

Abstract The problem of audientia episcopalis in late antiquity has been the subject of extensive research in the past. Previous studies have usually focussed on the legal doctrine, as well as the picture of bishop courts in the light of the literary sources. In contrast, the question of how audientia episcopalis functioned in the legal practice as shown by papyri has caused scholars much difficulty, due to the limited material available as well as the obscure nature of the institution. One could therefore ask: how is it possible that such allegedly common practice of dispute resolution by the bishops—as literary sources make us believe—is so elusive in the papyri? How to explain the simultaneous increase for that period of the papyrological attestations regarding arbitration/mediation carried out by the clergy of lower rank? Could we be dealing with some sort of audientia sacerdotalis functioning in the legal practice? How widespread was in fact the audientia episcopalis, and was this institution homogeneous or rather heterogeneous in nature? The paper presents the attempt to answer these questions by confronting the imperial law with the evidence of legal practice.

scholarly journals New perspectives on Byzantine Spain: the Discriptio Hispaniae

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-308
Author(s):  
Oriol Olesti Vila ◽  
Ricard Andreu Expósito ◽  
Jamie Wood
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Southern Spain ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Territorial Division ◽  
Short Section

AbstractThe Discriptio Hispaniae is a passage from the Geometry of Gisemundus, also entitled Ars Gromatica Gisemundi (AGG), a medieval treatise of agrimensura written by an unknown author, probably a monk known as Gisemundus who had some agrimensorial experience. The work was compiled around AD 800 by collecting passages of a range of sizes, from just a few words to several pages, extracted from ancient and medieval sources. Although modern research into Roman agrimensorial texts has admitted the importance of the AGG, its corrupt condition has not invited sustained analysis. The passage now known as the Discriptio Hispaniae, a short section from chapter three of the second book of the AGG entitled III De segregatione provinciarum ab Augustalibus terminis, is particularly interesting for the information that it provides concerning the territorial division of Hispania in Late Antiquity. This article presents an edition and English translation of the Discriptio Hispaniae and argues that the most likely point of origin for the Discriptio Hispaniae is during the Byzantine occupation of parts of southern Spain during the second half of the sixth century and the first quarter of the seventh century. We suggest that the Discriptio Hispaniae was preserved because the Byzantine authorities were keen to keep on record information about the borders of the province of Carthaginensis, perhaps the main theme in the text.

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