Coin Iconography and Social Practice in the Roman Empire

2021 ◽  
pp. 338-357
Author(s):  
Fleur Kemmers
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
General Level ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Roman Coins

The aim of this chapter is not to give a comprehensive overview on the different images gracing Roman coins of the imperial period or to trace the developments therein. Rather, it focuses on how and if the users of coins interacted with the iconography presented on the coins. Therefore, this chapter primarily discusses the literary, archaeological, and numismatic evidence for the perception and appropriation of coin imagery. In this way, we might be able to bridge the gap between iconography commissioned by the Roman state and daily life in Rome’s enormous empire. Before addressing these topics, however, we will briefly explore some of the characteristics of the medium, sketch iconographic developments on a general level, and, importantly, analyze how much the Roman state designed and targeted coin iconography with certain audiences in mind.

Images and Interpretation of Africans in Roman Art and Social Practice

2021 ◽  
pp. 424-463
Author(s):  
Sinclair W. Bell
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Roman Art ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Physical Traits ◽  
Sub Saharan

The representation of foreign cultures with manifest ethnic or “racial” differences, such as unfamiliar physical traits or exotic dress, has been a long-standing and often visceral site for human artistic expression. The visual and material culture of the Roman Empire provides an abundant record of such encounters which render visible complex formulations of ethnicity, social hierarchies, and power. The present chapter focuses on how artists represented the peoples whom Romans referred to as Aethiopians or Nubians (i.e., sub-Saharan or “Black” Africans) in different visual media, and it explores issues related to the social functions, patronage, and viewership of these works. In particular, the chapter discusses the formalized conventions, object types, and display contexts of their representations; examines the two critical axioms of their study (the philological and social historical); and maps out recent approaches to and future directions in their interpretation.

Dining Women: Posture, Sex, and Status

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew B. Roller
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Seated Posture ◽  
And Control ◽  
Strict Protocol

This chapter examines the historical and ideological aspects of women's dining. The scholarship reveals that, during early periods, women sat to dine while men reclined; whereas “now,” women too recline to dine, just as men do—their posture must therefore have changed at some point. On the other hand, by linking the alleged shift in women's posture to overall moral decline, these studies reveal that the distinction between the two postures has ideological implications. That is, dining posture is a locus where practice, gender, and ethics intersect. The chapter suggests that the seated posture functioned pragmatically, placing women under male scrutiny and control. Moreover, whatever the vagaries of actual social practice, the seated posture for women remained at all times the “strict protocol,” even in the Imperial period.

The leges municipales as a Means of Legal and Social Romanization of the Provinces of the Roman Empire

2020 ◽  
pp. 315-331
Author(s):  
Werner Eck
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Southern Spain ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Legal Regulations ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
General Phenomenon ◽  
The West ◽  
The Law

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.

Pergamum as Paradigm

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernhard Weisser
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Solid Base ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Geographical Mobility ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Imperial Family ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

The Editors of this Book Requested a study of an individual city to contrast with the broader regional surveys. This contribution attempts to demonstrate the advantages of a fuller exploration of the specific context of a civic coinage by focusing on selected issues from the coinage of Pergamum— alongside Ephesus and Smyrna one of the three largest cities in the Western part of Asia Minor. In the Julio-Claudian period Pergamum’s coin designs were dominated by the imperial succession and the city’s first neocorate temple (17 BC–AD 59). In AD 59 Pergamum’s coinage stopped for more than two decades. When it resumed under Domitian (AD 83) new topics were continuously introduced until the reign of Caracalla (AD 211–17). These included gods, cults, heroes, personifications, architecture, sculpture, games, and civic titles. After Caracalla the city concentrated on a few key images, such as Asclepius or the emperor. At the same time, coin legends— especially civic titles—gained greater importance. This trend continued until the city’s coinage came to an end under Gallienus (AD 253–68). The overall range of Pergamum’s coin iconography was broadly similar to that of other cities in the East of the Roman empire. Coins of Pergamum from the imperial period fall into (at least) sixty-four issues, the most diverse of which employed twenty different coin types. In all, around 340 different types are currently known. They provide a solid base from which to explore various relationships. These include the relationship between coin obverses and reverses, as well as the place of an individual coin type within its own issue, and within the city’s coinage as a whole. Coin designs could allude to objects and events within Pergamum itself, or focus on the city’s connections with the outside world: with small neighbouring cities, with the other great cities within the province of Asia, or with Rome and the imperial family. Communication via the medium of civic coinage was in the first instance presumably directed towards the citizens of Pergamum. At the same time coinage also reflected developments outside the city. Social and geographical mobility was encouraged by an imperial system which allowed distinguished members of local elites access to the highest military and administrative posts.

Greek Philosophy

Classics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Preus
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
Hellenistic Philosophy ◽  
Greek World

The title “Ancient Greek Philosophy” may be applied to philosophical texts written in Greek over a period of somewhat more than one thousand years, from the Milesian Anaximander before 500 bce to the Alexandrian John Philoponus, who died in 570 ce. The bibliography of the available texts, and translations, is significantly large, and the bibliography of secondary literature written about those texts in subsequent centuries is vast. This article is necessarily highly selective, designed primarily to give access to some of the basic works in each area of investigation. Separate bibliographies on individual philosophers, periods, and schools will follow. This article begins with a section on philosophy before Plato, including the Presocratics and Socrates, with some references to philosophers who were contemporaries of Plato and Aristotle. The second section focuses on Plato and early Platonists; the third section, on Aristotle and his immediate successors in the Peripatetic school. The fourth section focuses on philosophy after Aristotle, often called “Hellenistic” philosophy. This period notably includes Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics, as well as followers of Plato and Aristotle during the period from 322 bce until the Roman Empire engulfed the Greek world. The fifth section includes access to philosophy written in Greek during the Roman Imperial period, from the middle of the 1st century bce until the closing of the philosophical schools in the 5th and 6th centuries ce. It was during this time that many of the texts that provide our information about the earlier periods were written; many of the surviving texts are commentaries on works by Plato or Aristotle, for example, but significant original philosophical work was written, for instance, by Neoplatonists such as Plotinus and Porphyry, by Aristotelians such as Alexander of Aphrodisias, and by the medical philosopher Galen. This bibliography includes something of a combination of introductory texts suitable for someone beginning a study of a particular field, plus a significant number of texts and translations of the ancient authors, and a few more-specialized studies, where those may be of special interest.

scholarly journals Negotiating exercise as medicine: Narratives from people with type 2 diabetes

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-102
Author(s):  
Mirjam Stuij ◽  
Agnes Elling ◽  
Tineke Abma
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Type 2 Diabetes ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
General Level ◽  
Lifestyle Behaviour ◽  
Negative Experiences ◽  
Almost All

The dominant notion that exercise is medicine puts a strong normative emphasis on individual responsibility for participation in sport and physical activity. The aim of this article was to explore how people with type 2 diabetes, a condition strongly linked to lifestyle behaviour both in origin and in management, translate this notion into their daily life. Based on a critical narrative analysis of stories of 18 Dutch people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes collected between 2012 and 2016, we found a range of meanings given to sport and physical activity. In addition, almost all respondents seemed to subscribe to the notion of exercise as medicine on a general level, either quite explicitly or in more subtle ways, for example, elicited by the interview setting. However, they employed different strategies to negotiate with the translation of this notion into their daily life, ranging from (almost) total acceptance to resistance. In addition, nearly all stories revealed mostly negative experiences with care and professional support regarding the uptake or continuation of sport or physical activity participation after diagnosis.

Greek and Latin Rhetorical Culture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurent Pernot
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Public Speaking ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
System A ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
A Current

This chapter discusses the role of rhetorical culture in the Second Sophistic. In the Greco-Roman world of the imperial period, rhetoric was an educational system, a social practice, and a mental tool. Public speaking was omnipresent. The figure of the sophist combined literary activity and political influence: rhetoric was their secret link. Encomium—the principal rhetorical innovation of the Second Sophistic—was a refined, coded instrument, which not only served to express approval, but also aimed at communicating veiled messages. The phenomenon of the Second Sophistic did not disappear in the third century ce and some sophistic figures continued to flourish in the successive periods, a fact which motivates a current scholarly debate about “Third Sophistic.”

The Study of Arabic

1917 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-121
Author(s):  
T. W. Arnold
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Social Organisation ◽  
The World ◽  
Religious Considerations ◽  
Christian Society ◽  
Large Sections

The Lecturer first emphasised the importance of the study of Islam in view of the large number of Muhammadans in the British Empire, amounting (at the lowest estimate) to 90½ millions, and implying a problem of great importance to the statesman, the politician, the educationalist, and to all persons concerned with the larger problems of the globe. Whatever the total Muhammadan population of the world may be, and, in the absence of trustworthy religious statistics, or even of any form of census whatsoever in many of the countries concerned, it is impossible to say exactly what it amounts to,—(on the most careful reckoning, it is probably something between 200 and 230 millions)—the 90½ millions of Muhammadan British subjects form a large proportion of the whole, and have an importance beyond what mere numbers imply, because of the superior culture of large sections among them. He showed by illustrations how religious considerations enter more largely into the daily life of Muhammadan people than in Christian society; the religion of Islam claims to speak with authority in the domain of law, politics, and social organisation, as much as in the sphere of theology and ethics; the wisest and most carefully considered plans of statesmen and reformers run a risk of being wrecked upon the rock of fanaticism. In the world of Islam the foundations of society have been set in religion, in a manner that is hard to understand for the average European Christian who has entered on the inheritance of ancient Greece and Rome, and the institutions of the barbarian invaders who swept the Roman Empire away.

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