The Transition from Death to Life

1992 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 240-249
Author(s):  
Rowan A. Greer
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The West ◽  
Complicated Conditions

Responding to the complicated conditions produced by both the Constantinian Revolution and the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, Augustine concerned himself not so much with “earthly transitions” as with the only transition that he believed had final significance: the transition of Christ from death to life.

The cradle of Western medicine

Nowa Medycyna ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Lluch
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Western Medicine ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Medical Terms ◽  
Andreas Vesalius ◽  
Medical Tradition ◽  
Roman Medicine ◽  
Greek Civilization

The origins of Western Medicine can be found through the Greeks and the Romans, originally with Mythological figures represented by the god Asclepius, and later by Greek doctors such as Hippocrates and Galen. Roman medicine was highly influenced by the Greek medical tradition, relying more on naturalistic observations rather than on spiritual rituals. The writings of Galen survived more than other medical scriptures in antiquity. His theories dominated and influenced Western medical science for more than 1,300 years. This acceptance led to the spread of Greek medical theories throughout the Roman Empire, and thus a large portion of the West. Most of the actual medical terms are of Greek origin, as they were the founders of rational medicine in the golden age of Greek civilization. The Hippocrates were the first to describe diseases based on observation, and the names given by them to many conditions are still used today. On the other hand, most anatomical terms are in Latin (Nomina Anatomica), explained by the printed descriptions and illustrations of human dissections published in 1543 in the seminal work “De humani corporis fabrica” (“The Fabric of the Human Body”) by Andreas Vesalius.

"...Went to Rome, and when all had assembled there...": Galla Placidia and the Theodosian retaking of the west in 425

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 21-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey D. Dunn
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
The West

Galla Placidia, daughter of Theodosius I, half-sister of Arcadius and Honorius, wife of Constantius III, and mother of Valentinian III, spent much of her life on the move, living across the Roman empire of late antiquity from Barcelona to Istanbul. In nearly every instance her moves were the results of political circumstances she did not instigate but which she soon had under control. In the climax of Olympiodorus of Thebes' history we are told that Theodosius II, her nephew, sent Galla Placidia and the child Valentinian back to the West, from which they had been exiled, together with an army to defeat the usurper John, who had taken control of the western empire. While Olympiodorus attributes the initiative for this action to Theodosius, this paper argues that Galla Placidia's agency in taking advantage of John's usurpation to orchestrate her return to Italy should not be underestimated.

Khusro’s War of Revenge

2021 ◽  
pp. 8-36
Author(s):  
James Howard-Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Current Line ◽  
The West ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Made In

The circumstances leading to war are enumerated—(1) gathering crises in the Balkans, Italy, and Armenia, and (2) Persian dissatisfaction with the current line of the frontier in the west. The November 602 coup of Phocas and execution of the Emperor Maurice, who had restored Khusro II to the Sasanian throne in 591, provided Khusro with a perfect pretext for going to war. The focus is then on Persian strategy. The main offensive thrusts alternated between the Mesopotamian and Armenian theatres of war in a first phase (603–5) which saw the outer defences of the Roman Empire breached. After a year’s pause, the offensive was renewed on a larger scale, simultaneous pushes being made in both theatres of war from 607, which brought Persian armies to the inner line of Roman defence on the Euphrates in 610.

Zooming In Rome, the Middle Euphrates, and Dura

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon James
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Its Region ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
The Military

Dura-Europos was a product and ultimately a victim of the interaction of Mediterranean- and Iranian-centred imperial powers in the Middle East which began with Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Achaemenid Persian empire in the later fourth century BC. Its nucleus was established as part of the military infrastructure and communications network of the Seleucid successor-state. It was expanding into a Greekstyle polis during the second century BC, as Seleucid control was being eroded from the east by expanding Arsacid Parthian power, and threatened from the west by the emergent imperial Roman republic. From the early first century BC, the Roman and Parthian empires formally established the Upper Euphrates as the boundary between their spheres of influence, and the last remnants of the Seleucid regime in Syria were soon eliminated. Crassus’ attempt to conquer Parthia ended in disaster at Carrhae in 53 BC, halting Roman ambitions to imitate Alexander for generations. The nominal boundary on the Upper Euphrates remained, although the political situation in the Middle East remained fluid. Rome long controlled the Levant largely indirectly, through client rulers of small states, only slowly establishing directly ruled provinces with Roman governors, a process mostly following establishment of the imperial regime around the turn of the millennia. However, some client states like Nabataea still existed in AD 100 (for overviews see Millar 1993; Ball 2000; Butcher 2003; Sartre 2005). The Middle Euphrates, in what is now eastern Syria, lay outside Roman control, although it is unclear to what extent Dura and its region—part of Mesopotamia, and Parapotamia on the west bank of the river—were effectively under Arsacid control before the later first century AD. For some decades, Armenia may have been the dominant regional power (Edwell 2013, 192–5; Kaizer 2017, 70). As the Roman empire increasingly crystallized into clearly defined, directly ruled provinces, the contrast with the very different Arsacid system became starker. The ‘Parthian empire’, the core of which comprised Iran and Mesopotamia with a western royal capital at Ctesiphon on the Tigris, was a much looser entity (Hauser 2012).

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.

The Cities and their Money

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weiss Peter
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
The West ◽  
Authority Control ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Provincia Asia ◽  
Narrow Space ◽  
Clear Conception

In their Kind Invitation to Contribute to this book the editors assigned me the topic of ‘Authority/control’. The authors of RPC devoted an intensive discussion to the subject, with many facets and displaying an extraordinary knowledge of the material. This is in many respects a difficult field, and it is obvious how wide and heterogeneous is the material, how different the presuppositions were in the various parts of the Roman empire, and with what a broad timespan one has to deal: some three centuries, in which there were many developments and several changes. Despite its gigantic bulk, the coinage affords far fewer unambiguous indications permitting a clear conception of how minting came about and was controlled than one would wish. Epigraphy, which in other cases provides an enormous fund of information, here by contrast leaves us almost entirely in the lurch. It follows that many differences of opinion exist, and in many matters, even on points of central importance, our vision is still clouded. The topic is too complex to permit a thorough discussion of all the questions before us in this narrow space. For that reason I have undertaken a limited evaluation. In what follows, I am concerned only with coins pertaining to the cities. Attention is therefore not paid, for example, to the cistophori in Asia, the coins of Alexandria in Egypt, or of Caesarea in Cappadocia, or to the provincial coinage of Syria. I shall first consider the question of Roman control, but only in the form of some basic observations and reflections. Much must here remain unresolved. My central concern will therefore be the following set of questions: How did the cities organize their monetary production? How were responsibilities apportioned, and who was directly involved? What range of possibilities was there? How in this context are we to interpret the numerous names and functional titles on the coins of many Roman cities, especially in the west, down to Julio-Claudian times, and above all, in continuity with Hellenistic practice, on very many coins from the Greek poleis in Provincia Asia?

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