Stories in the Ground: Settlement Remains and Archaeology as Narrative in the Fourth- to Sixth-century Eastern Mediterranean

2017 ◽  
pp. 475-480
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Ground Settlement

Dichin (Bulgaria): Interpreting the Ceramic Evidence in its Wider Context

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
VIVIEN G. SWAN
Keyword(s):  
Black Sea ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
North Central ◽  
Trading Patterns ◽  
Roman Military ◽  
Eating Practices ◽  
The Impact

In the Dichin (north central Bulgaria) store-buildings destroyed in about the 480s, the large quantities of imported Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea amphorae typify late Roman military supply (annona) to the forts of the lower Danube limes. A dearth of amphorae at Dichin for most of the sixth century is linked ultimately to alterations in trading patterns in the Mediterranean as a whole. A slight increase in amphorae shortly before the final destruction of c.580 reflects a significant recasting of supply sources. The few imported red-slipped wares are mostly late fifth century and of Pontic origin. During the sixth century, modifications in the local coarse pottery reflect cultural changes in the region — the decline of Romanized eating practices and the impact of the barbarian social traditions. The wider significance of ‘foederati ware’ for the Germanic settlement of the region and its influence on the technology of indigenous ceramics production are also explored.

scholarly journals Doing It in Greek

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-345
Author(s):  
Brent D. Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Social Power ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Specific Group ◽  
Greek Translation ◽  
Technical Problems ◽  
Similarities And Differences

While a considerable amount of scholarly energy has been devoted to the Latin versions of the Passion and Acts of the African martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas, by comparison rather little serious attention has been devoted to the Greek translation of the narrative of their martyrdom. Such an investigation requires a focus not just on technical problems of the similarities and differences between the Greek translation and a putative Latin original, but also attention to the more strategic problem of its place in the context of translations of Latin Christian texts. Although a Greek translation could have been made soon after the first appearance of the Latin narrative, this essay argues that a more likely context for the translation and for a heightened interest in the cult of Perpetua in Italy and in the East is a much later fifth- and sixth-century one. When we consider the cultural as much as the literary “translation” of Perpetua's martyrdom, we see that the drive to exploit the images and social power of a specific group of African martyrs explains the emphasis placed on them not only in Africa (specifically at Carthage) but also in a cluster of sites at the head of the Adriatic. These particular connections logically suggest concomitant ones with the eastern Mediterranean of the Byzantine state of the fifth and sixth centuries C.E.

The cypriote surrender to Persia

1987 ◽  
Vol 107 ◽  
pp. 154-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Jay Watkin
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
History Of

At present there appears to be general agreement that Cyprus entered the Persian Empire some time between c. 545 and 539. It will be argued here that this event did not occur until 526 or 525. The point involves other, much broader issues. Any power wishing to control Cyprus must possess a substantial navy. When, then, did Persia acquire sufficient naval strength to control the eastern Mediterranean? This last problem in turn raises the question of when the Persians annexed the countries of the Levant and Asia Minor from which they drew the whole of their fleet. Finally, because elaborate theories concerning the development of sixth century Cypriote sculpture have been built upon the conclusion that Cyprus submitted to Persia c. 545, a revision of that date will have important repercussions upon the history of Cypriote art.

Thalassocracies, 550 BC–400 BC

The Great Sea ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Abulafia
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Aegean Islands ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
The Future ◽  
Common Identity ◽  
The Mediterranean

The Mediterranean coasts might be expected to serve as the natural limit to imperial expansion by the great powers of the Middle East – the Hittites, Assyria, even Pharaonic Egypt. The Assyrians did occasionally try to browbeat Cyprus into submission, as did the Egyptians, for its resources in timber and metal were too precious to ignore. But no attempt to gain mastery over the eastern Mediterranean matched the Persian conquests in Anatolia and the Levant during the sixth century BC, and the Persian attempt to invade Greece; the defeat of Persia would be celebrated as the greatest Greek victory since the fall of Troy. The achievement was not just military but political, since a great many cities in Greece proper and the Aegean islands collaborated in the struggle against the Persians, and even Syracuse was asked to help (though it fought off a threat from Carthage, possibly instigated by Persia). The Greeks commemorated their triumph by erecting victory monuments such as the bronze serpent from Delphi, now in the Hippodrome at Istanbul; there, they inscribed the names of thirty-one cities that had helped resist the Persians at the great battle of Plataia in 479 BC, and even that list was not complete. A ‘Congress of the Hellenes’ came into existence, and the name of Hellene, originally assigned by Homer to the followers of Achilles, was increasingly understood to refer to a common identity expressed through language, the cult of the gods and style of life. The story that emerged, most resoundingly in the spirited account of these events by Herodotos, was that of the defence of Greek liberty against Persian tyranny. In his play The Persians, performed in Athens in 472, Aeschylus assumed that the future of Hellas directly depended on the fate of his home city: . . . QUEEN ATOSSA : Say where, in all this peopled world, a city of men called Athens lies? LEADER : Far distant, where our Lord the sun sinks and his last effulgence dies. ATOSSA : And this far western land it is my son so craved to make his prey? LEADER : Aye, for if Athens once were his, all Hellas must his word obey. . . .

Dividing Relics

2018 ◽  
pp. 159-179
Author(s):  
Robert Wiśniewski
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Description

It is commonly believed that the practice of dividing corporeal relics had begun as early as the fourth century and that it was initiated in the eastern Mediterranean, to appear in the West at a much later date. This chapter challenges both these views. It demonstrates that there is no early description of dismembering a saint’s physical remains, and the evidence of the veneration of specific body parts is extremely scarce. Testimonies to the deposition of the same saint’s relics in several places can be better explained by transfers of relics, their independent discoveries, or the production of contact relics than by the actual division of relics. If this practice really existed in Late Antiquity, it was probably extremely rare in either part of the empire before the sixth century.

The Casuistic Priestly Law in Ancient Mediterranean Context: The History of the Genre and itsSitz im Leben

2018 ◽  
Vol 111 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-40
Author(s):  
Guy Darshan
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean Basin ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Social Law ◽  
Sitz Im Leben ◽  
History Of ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean Basin ◽  
Sacred Laws

AbstractWhile numerous scholars have compared the Priestly regulations in the Pentateuch to ancient Near Eastern “ritual texts,” the Priestly legal material more generally corresponds in form and style to ancient Near Eastern casuistic law collections than to descriptive or prescriptive “ritual texts.” At the same time, ancient Near Eastern law collections do not contain any ritual or religious ordinances, relating instead primarily to civil and financial affairs or social law and order. This paper examines the formal, substantive, and generic affinities between the Priestly laws and the casuistic Greek “Sacred Laws” inscribed on stone and other materials throughout the eastern Mediterranean basin from the sixth century BCE onwards. Analysis of related Northwest-Semitic and Punic texts, as well as potential precedents from the Hittite world, further contributes to our understanding of theSitz im Lebenof the casuistic Priestly law.

A “Roman” Wedding in Vandal Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-132
Author(s):  
Raphael Schwitter
Keyword(s):  
Sixth Century ◽  
Elite Culture ◽  
Hybrid Character

The Epithalamium Fridi is a sixth-century Virgilian cento that commemorates the marriage of the Vandal noble Fridus with his unnamed bride. Its author, the African poet Luxurius, engages in versatile poetic play fusing Virgil with multiple epithalamial models such as Statius, Claudian, and Ausonius. Through the dynamics of triangular intertextuality the centonist is able to strengthen the wedding poem's generic bonds and to connect himself and his work firmly to the classical Roman tradition. At the same time, echoes of distinctive African idiosyncrasies as prefigured by Dracontius highlight the hybrid character of sixth-century Romano-Vandal elite culture and its celebration of what appears to be a distinctive African Romanness.

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