Christianizing the Planetary Week and Globalizing the Seven-Day Cycle

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-191
Author(s):  
Mark Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
The Third ◽  
Slow Pace ◽  
The Mediterranean

Early Christians adopted a numeric week from Judaism, but wherever their communities spread they encountered the planetary week invented by Hellenistic astrologers. Greek Christians replaced that week with their own in the fourth century C.E., but Latin Christians were only partly successful in doing the same. A timeline for the Christianization of the planetary week between the third and seventh centuries is provided by a database of Greek and Latin documents dated by both an annual calendar and one of the two weeks. The documentary evidence is supplemented by analyses of literary and legal references to the two weeks from the same period. These show that Greek authors were accommodating toward the planetary week while Latin authors were often hostile. Latin hostility was engendered by the presence of non-Christian social practices tied to the planetary week that threatened Christian religious identity. These practices included worship of the planetary deities, rest on the Day of Jupiter rather than on the Lord's Day, and the reservation of activities like marriage, travel, and personal grooming to certain planetary weekdays. A brief survey of the spread of the two weeks throughout much of Afro-Eurasia contextualizes the changes occurring in the Mediterranean and shows that the Latin conflict was unique. That conflict was likely a product of the relatively slow pace of Christianization in some parts of Western Europe and the integration of the planetary week into the Roman calendar to produce a coherent cycle of pagan time which was difficult to replace.

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.

Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean, 1800-1850

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantina Zanou
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Political Space ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Italian Peninsula ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Multicultural Context ◽  
The Common ◽  
Ugo Foscolo ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Republic

Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean, 1800–1850: Stammering the Nation investigates the long process of transition from a world of empires to a world of nation-states by narrating the biographies of a group of people who were born within empires but came of age surrounded by the emerging vocabulary of nationalism, much of which they themselves created. It is the story of a generation of intellectuals and political thinkers from the Ionian Islands who experienced the collapse of the Republic of Venice and the dissolution of the common cultural and political space of the Adriatic, and who contributed to the creation of Italian and Greek nationalisms. By uncovering this forgotten intellectual universe, Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean retrieves a world characterized by multiple cultural, intellectual, and political affiliations that have since been buried by the conventional narrative of the formation of nation-states. The book rethinks the origins of Italian and Greek nationalisms and states, highlighting the intellectual connection between the Italian peninsula, Greece, and Russia, and re-establishing the lost link between the changing geopolitical contexts of western Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Balkans in the Age of Revolutions. It re-inscribes important intellectuals and political figures, considered ‘national fathers’ of Italy and Greece (such as Ugo Foscolo, Dionysios Solomos, Ioannis Kapodistrias, and Niccolò Tommaseo), into their regional and multicultural context, and shows how nations emerged from an intermingling, rather than a clash, of ideas concerning empire and liberalism, Enlightenment and religion, revolution and conservatism, and East and West.

THE DATING OF PHILIPPOS OF AMPHIPOLIS (BNJ 280 T2)

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Brent Arehart
Keyword(s):  
Short Note ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Third

Abstract On the basis of two neglected testimonia, this short note argues that the terminus ante quem for Philippos of Amphipolis (BNJ 280) should be moved forward to the third century or to the early fourth century c.e. if not earlier.

The Romano-British Shrines at Brigstock, Northants

1963 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Greenfield
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Polygonal Shape

SummaryTwo shrines of circular and polygonal shape, probably part of a larger group, were erected early in the second half of the third century A.D., and occupied until late in the fourth century. The shrines occur in an area of widespread settlement dating from the late Iron Age until the end of the fourth century. Many objects of bronze and iron of ritual significance, together with a large number of votive deposits and coins, were recovered from the circular shrine. Miss M. V. Taylor's discussion of the principal objects appears on pp. 264–8.

Problems of the Duration of the Eemian Interglacial in Europe North of the Alps

2002 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Turner
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean Region ◽  
Temperate Forest ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Laminated Sediment ◽  
Annually Laminated Sediment ◽  
The Alps ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Eemian Interglacial

AbstractSuggestions that the duration of the Eemian interglacial was about 11,000 yr, based on annually laminated sediment sequences in Germany, have been challenged in favor of a much longer interval. However, biostratigraphic evidence demonstrates why the Eemian sequences at Grande Pile and Ribains cannot be reliably used for alignment with the marine sequence, as applied by Kukla et al. (2002, this issue) to estimate the duration of this interglacial. The long chronology they propose would imply not just coniferous but, for up to 5000 yr, fully temperate forest in central France coexisting with treeless heath and steppe tundra conditions in northwestern Europe, an unlikely climatic and ecological scenario. The proposal that the Eemian Interglacial in western Europe lasted for 17,000 or even 23,000 yr is rejected. A duration of no more than 13,000 yr is preferred, at least for sites north of the Alps and Pyrenees. The duration of temperate conditions in the Mediterranean region is less certain.

The Celtic Warrior Fibula

1996 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. M. Stead ◽  
N. D. Meeks
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Art Exhibition ◽  
Front Cover ◽  
The Third ◽  
La Tène ◽  
La Tene

In 1960 and 1961 Ole Klindt-Jensen published two short notes about a golden statuette of a Celtic warrior, soldered to a fine brooch. He was convinced that the warrior did not belong to the brooch, and thought that they had been combined fairly recently. J. M. de Navarro added a comment to the 1961 note, concluding: ‘My impression (from photographs only) is that the brooch might date from the fourth century BC and the figure not before the latter half of the third or the second century BC, i.e. that it was added later.’ Klindt-Jensen's notes were accompanied by plates, and at the same time another photograph was published on the front cover ofCelticum, volume I. A decade later the brooch was shown at the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, and at the Hayward Gallery, London, as item no. 35 in the Early Celtic Art exhibition held in 1970. The catalogue entry was based on Klindt-Jensen's note, but no photograph was published. In the mid 1970s R. M. Rowlett prepared a paper on the authenticity of the brooch, including metal analyses and a comparison of its proportions with those of some La Tène II brooches: Rowlett considered that the figure of the warrior was contemporary with the rest of the brooch, which he accepted as an authentic antiquity. His paper was eventually published about twenty years later.

The Roman Cemetery at Lankhills: Pre-Roman and Roman Winchester. Part II

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giles Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Special Interest ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Third ◽  
The North ◽  
Late Roman

Outside the north gate of Venta Belgarum, Roman Winchester, a great cemetery stretched for 500 yards along the road to Cirencester. Excavations at Lankhills from 1967 to 1972 uncovered 451 graves, many elaborately furnished, at the northern limits of this cemetery, and dating from the fourth century A.D. This book, the second in a two-part study of Venta Belgarum, which forms the third volume of Winchester Studies, describes the excavations of these burials and analyses in detail both the graves and their contents. There are detailed studies and important re-assessments of many categories of object, but it is the information about late Roman burial, religion, and society which is of special interest.

The Medieval Sea

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Rose
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
North Sea ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
English Channel ◽  
Naval Warfare ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Late Fifteenth

This book provides an accessible study of how peoples bordering the Mediterranean, North Sea, English Channel and eastern Atlantic related to the sea in all its aspects. This book surveys how the peoples bordering the Mediterranean, North Sea, English Channel and eastern Atlantic related to the sea in all its aspects between approximately 1000-1500 A.D.How was the sea represented in poems and other writings? What kinds of boats were used and how were they built? How easy was it to navigate on short or long passages? Was seaborne trade crucial to the economy of this area? Did naval warfare loom large in the minds of medieval rulers? What can be said more generally about the lives of those who went to sea or who lived by its shores? These are the major questions which are addressed in this book, which is based on extensive research in both maritime archives and also in secondary literature. It concludes by pointing out how the relatively enclosed maritime world of Western Europe was radically changed by the voyages of the late fifteenth century across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and round Africa to India.

The Camenae in Cult, History, and Song*

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Hardie
Keyword(s):  
Southern Italy ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
Agent Of Change ◽  
Law Making

This essay aims to redefine the place of the Camenae within the evolution of Roman carmen. It analyses the documented association of the purifying fons Camenarum with the cult of Vesta and by extension with the salvific prayer-carmina of her virgines; and it takes the Camenae from the archaic origins of their cult, with reflections on Etruscan and other territorial interests, to their appearance in the epic laudes of men in the third and second centuries BC. The identification of Camenae and Muses, it is argued, pre-dates Livius Andronicus' “Camena,” and is best understood as a component of the Numa-legend as it emerged towards the end of the fourth century. Pythagorean Muse-cult, reflecting the Muses' traditional interest in civic homonoia (concord) and law-making kings, played a part; and an agent of change was the reformist Appius Claudius Caecus, author of the first attested Roman carmen. The wider context lies in the cultural interplay of Rome, Etruria, and Greek southern Italy in the early and middle Republic.

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