Diocletian and the Decline of the Roman Municipalities

1938 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. E. van Sickle
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Municipal Government ◽  
Sharp Decline ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Military ◽  
New Evidence

It has for a long time been recognized that a sharp decline in the prosperity and strength of municipal life in the Roman Empire took place during and shortly after the reign of Diocletian, and this has been attributed largely to his bureaucratic administrative system and heavy increases in taxation, with their consequent pressure upon the urban middle class—the curiales. Of the essential correctness of this view there can be no doubt; and apart from possible new evidence there is little more to be said on that phase of the subject. But there are other aspects of this important problem which seem to have received less attention than they deserve. Bureaucracies and crushing taxes have not always destroyed the middle classes of the countries in which they have existed, as the case of France under the Old Régime clearly proves; so there must be other contributory factors which helped to produce this result in the case under consideration. Some of these have been dealt with ; but one at least—the continuance under the new system of a type of internal municipal government suited only to the most prosperous period of the system which it replaced—seems to have been largely, if not entirely, ignored by investigators. Diocletian not only tried to make the municipia of his empire efficient agents of the central government, but in addition attempted to render them once more the energetic and prosperous organisms which they had been before the Military Anarchy ; and, as his efforts in the end contributed powerfully to produce exactly the opposite result, this portion of his work is worthy of note, if for no other reason than to serve as a warning for would-be benevolent despots in other ages.

scholarly journals Mace in Bagratid Armenia according to written and figurative sources

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-51
Author(s):  
Dmytro Dymydyuk
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Military History ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Primary Research ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Research Objects ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Military

The military history of the Bagratid era (late 9th– mid-11th centuries) has not been the object of historical research for a long time. Therefore many questions concerning the form and functions of the weapons of that time remains unresolved. However, the studies of the armament of neighboring countries (Byzantium, Caliphate, Georgia, etc.) were researched much better. Previousely historiographers considered the military history of such «small nations» as Armenia from the perspectives of Eastern Roman Empire and Muslim world warfare which were considered as primary research objects. This paper aims to change this perspective and give the subject of the medieval Armenian military history the attention it deserves. The aim of the research is to pay attention to the war mace – one of the earliest weapons in almost all cultures. The task is to reconstruct the types of maces which were used in Bagratid Armenia; to analyse their physical and battle characteristics; methods of use; manufacturing process; terminological issue (լախտ (lakht) and գուրզ (gurz) etc. Taking into consideration the lack of archaeological finds of medieval maces from the territory of Armenia, the author pays attention to the written and figurative sources, comparing them with Byzantine and Muslim written accounts, archaeological finds and figurative sources respectively. Special attention was drawn to Armenian miniatures from the 11th century: «Kiss of Judas» (fig. 1–4), «Jesus before Pilate» (fig. 21) and to the relief on the door of Msho Arakelots monastery (1134) (fig. 6), where various types of maces are depicted. Due to the comparative analysis, further support was given to the idea that medieval figurative sources are more or less accurate material for studying medieval military history.

scholarly journals The structure and organization of mobile army of the Emperor Gallienus in 260 – 268

2021 ◽  
pp. 16-26
Author(s):  
Dmitrii Georgievich Volynkin
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Army Corps ◽  
Roman Army ◽  
The Third ◽  
Effective Instrument ◽  
The Military

In the middle of the III century, the Roman Empire marked the advent of a prolonged crisis. In order to confront the barbarian invasions and usurpers revolt, military transformations, the Roman Empire was in needed for military transformations and revision of the military machine that has formed in the previous periods. In the late 250s – early 260s, the Emperor Gallienus created a mobile army corps, which in the ancient sources received a name of the “Dalmatian horsemen”. The following questions arise on the structure and size of this mobile corps. Relying on numismatic, narrative, and epigraphic sources, this article examines the changes in organizational and staffing structure of the Roman army in the middle of the III century; assesses the size and composition, and tasks of the Gallienus’ mobile corps. The author analyzes the opinions that have accumulated in the Russian and foreign historiography throughout 200 years, and develops a relevant perspective on the problem of creating a field army during the third century crisis.  The conclusion is made that the Emperor Gallienus had formed a strong mobile army. It was not just a cavalry, but was based on the vexilationes of the border legions of infantry and horsemen. Gallienus did not seek to create a permanent mobile army, being guided by the prevailing military and political circumstances. He used the mobile corps for retaining the controlled territories, repelled the barbarian invasions and suppressed the usurpers. Gallienus’ mobile army has proven to be an effective instrument in hands of the central government. Aurelian reinforced the army with additional detachments, and later on successfully used it against Palmyrene and Gallic separatists, having restored the unity of the empire.

The Salaries of Service Tatars in the 18th Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 112-126
Author(s):  
Zaytuna A. Tychinskikh
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
General Trend ◽  
Arable Land ◽  
State Support ◽  
Military Organization ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Military

State support was an important factor in the relations between the authorities and the serving population, including such a special category as the serving Tatars. This article discusses how the system of service Tatars came into life in the 18th century. Due to the poor knowledge of the subject, the question of salaries is one of the key elements in identifying the place and role of service Tatars in the system of military corporations in Siberia. The study has revealed that the changes in the salary system that took place during the 17th-18th centuries served as an indicator of the degree of incorporation of service Tatars into the structure of the military organization of the Russian state. Despite the general trend of the 18th century to the unification of the state support of irregular troops, the service Tatars retained their own hierarchy in the distribution of wages for a long time. The reason is to be found in the peculiarities of the management system and corporate isolation, determined by the confessional affiliation of the service Tatars. Another peculiarity was that the serving Tatars, unlike other categories of serving people, practically did not receive any bread allowance — it was replaced by “arable land”. In 1725 and 1737, staff schedules were introduced, which influenced both further unification of employees of various categories and the gradual equation in system of the allowance.

The Gnostic Sects and the Roman Empire

1954 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. H. C. Frend
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Relationship

Two generations of lawyers and historians of the early Church have worked over the scanty evidence bearing on the legal and political relations between the first Christian communities and the Roman Empire. It is not the intention of the present writer to add to the enormous volume of work on the subject. The results of their battles have been ably summarised by A. N. Sherwin-White, and with his conclusions the legal problem may be allowed to rest until new evidence is forthcoming. The object of this paper is to look at the question from another point of view, and to ask who were the sufferers, and in particular, who were martyred in the period before the first general persecution under Decius. Were Polycarp, Justin, Blandina and the rest chance victims of private denunciation and the fury of the mob, or did they represent a tradition of belief in which martyrdom became the climax of earthly life? And what of those who obeyed the precept to flee during persecution? Was their action due to cowardice, or was it the belief that martyrdom was not the will of God? Can we see in the controversy over martyrdom which engaged so much of Tertullian's energies, one more phase in the strife between the orthodox and gnostic concepts of Christianity, on the outcome of which so much in the future of the Church depended? What, in fact, was the relationship between the Gnostics and the Roman authorities?

Local Cultures in the Roman Empire: Libyan, Punic and Latin in Roman Africa

1968 ◽  
Vol 58 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 126-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fergus Millar
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Native Culture ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Local Cultures

No subject in the history of the Roman Empire has more significance or more pitfalls than that of the local cultures of the provinces. The evidence is in each case, with the exception of Judaea and Egypt, relatively slight, disparate and ambiguous. But, on the one hand, the subject has very real attractions, which may lead to the building of vast but fragile historical theories, attempting to bring the distinctive culture of an area into a schematic relationship with events such as political movements or the spread of Christianity. On the other, we can never escape the possibility that the denial of the survival of a significant local culture may be falsified by new evidence; even worse, a local culture may have existed in a form which left no written records or datable artefacts.Yet the problem must be faced, not only for the intrinsic interest which such cultures present, but for the light the enquiry sheds on Graeco-Roman civilization itself. We might conclude for one area that Graeco-Roman culture remained the merest façade, for another that it completely obliterated a native culture. More commonly, we will find a mixture or co-existence of cultures. In such a situation, again, the local element might have been culturally and socially insignificant, or, as it was in Egypt and in Judaea, embodied in a coherent traditional civilization with its own language, literature, customs, religion and (in Egypt) art-forms.

“Saving Lives”—Lü Kun’s Manual on City Defense

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-188
Author(s):  
Kai Filipiak
Keyword(s):  
Central Government ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Small Cities ◽  
Combat Experience ◽  
The People ◽  
Northern Border ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Military Law ◽  
Military Preparedness ◽  
The Military

AbstractThe subject of this article is theBook on Saving Lives(Jiuming shu) written by the late Ming scholar-official Lü Kun. The book enjoyed great popularity during the Ming and Qing dynasties and offers practical advice for those who were in charge of city defense. Lü wrote this text in anticipation of imminent social crises. His prime motivation was to save the lives of his fellow countrymen when “bandits” attacked the county seat. The book, which is a survival manual rather than a handbook for magistrates, was written for military non-professionals who would lead the civilian population to defend the county. On the other hand, the text is of a military nature and refers to the military function of Chinese towns.The majority of the book deals with military preparedness. Although the book also discusses various aspects of city defense such as weapons, tactics, fortification, training, and military law, Lü himself lacked combat experience. In this respect, the book illustrates a dilemma: The defense of small cities lay beyond the scope of the central government. This placed the responsible officials in a difficult and contradictory situation. The magistrate, for example, was not prepared for the job. He lacked military experience but had to lead the local population into war. Despite his power, he depended on the cooperation of the people, including the assistance of rich families and the support of armed villagers skilled in martial arts. In this way, Lü Kun’s treatise illustrates the consequences of earlier political decisions to concentrate the military on the northern border and around the capital.

scholarly journals The Relief on the Door of the Msho Arakelots Monastery (1134) as a Source for Studying Arms and Armour of Medieval Armenian Warriors

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 207-250
Author(s):  
Dmytro Dymydyuk
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Military History ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Military ◽  
Medieval Historiography

Byzantium’s arms and armours were researched by many historians. For that reason, the military history of the medieval Roman Empire enjoyed a dominant position in medieval historiography, with the consequence that very often the military history of small nations (under Roman influences) was written from the perspective of the Eastern Romans historians. The aim of the paper is to change this perspective and give the subject of the medieval Armenian military the attention it deserves. The idea is to perform an analysis of the relief on the Door of the Msho Arakelots monastery, where four equestrians and one infantryman are depicted, and to compare it with other Armenian, Byzantine and Muslim sources. In this relief, a spherical mace head and a sword with sleeve cross-guard are represented, suggesting many parallels with East-Roman archaeological and figurative sources. No less important is the depiction of the military trumpet because it is the first image of this object in Armenian art, which can be compared with pictures from the Madrid Skylitzes (13th c.). In addition, the only defensive weapon which is presented in this relief is a round shield with a floral ornament. There are many depictions of round shields in Armenian miniatures and reliefs from 10th–11th c. Moreover, this relief is one of the few where stirrups and the chape of a scabbard are shown. These elements represent an important piece of information because these pictures can be compared with actual archaeological East-Roman artefacts to reconstruct their real look. The conclusions are that the majority of Armenian weapons bear similarities to Byzantine ones but no less important are the Muslim influences, which have been found in some cases. Located between two civilizations (Byzantium and the Muslim Potentates), Armenians adopted the best solutions of their military technologies, creating their own culture. Moreover, thanks to this comparative analysis, further support will be given to the idea that medieval figurative sources are more or less accurate material for studying medieval military history.

scholarly journals XXII.—On the Castra of the Littus Saxonicum, and particularly the Castrum of Othona

Archaeologia ◽  
1868 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 421-452
Author(s):  
Thomas Lewin
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Last Stage ◽  
The Military

The castra of the Littus Saxonicum were nine in number, and are thus catalogued in the Notitia, the military survey made of the Roman empire in the last stage of its existence:1. Branodunum or Brancaster.2. Garianonum or Burgh Castle.3. Regulbium or Reculver.4. Rutupiæ or Richborough.5. Dubræ or Dover.6. Lemanse or Lymne.7. Anderida or Pevensey.8. Portus Adurni or Bramber Castle.9. Othona.In discussing the subject of the castra I propose to follow the course which my own mind took during the investigation.

Did Mani Travel to Armenia?

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Middle Persian ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
New Evidence

This paper will present new evidence to resolve a long-standing problem in the biography of Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, who lived in Sasanian Iran during the third-century A.D. There are a number of important early references to Armenia in Manichaean texts. These include a Sogdian account of how Mār Gabryab brought the religion to Armenia and contains the earliest known literary reference to the name of the capital city of Erevan; and various notices of Mani’s own Letter to Armenia in Arabic, Middle Persian and Sogdian. But the principal focus for this paper is to resolve the question as to whether Mani himself travelled to Armenia in the early/mid 270s A.D. The account of his final travels, before his imprisonment and death under King Bahrām I in Gondēšāpūr, has been the subject of sustained debate since late antiquity. The early Christian polemical tradition represented by the Acts of Archelaus (ca. 330 A.D., extant in Latin, with parallels and elaborated traditions in Greek, Syriac etc.) placed him in the mysterious Castellum Arabionis near the border of the Roman Empire, and in the 19th-century it was common to locate this in Armenia. However, discoveries of primary Manichaean texts in Coptic and Middle Iranian languages in the 20th century turned attention to sites in Mesopotamia. This paper aims to reconcile these accounts and will utilise a newly-edited Coptic source to demonstrate that Mani did, indeed, travel to Sasanian Armenia in the company of a local nobleman named Baat.

An Adaptive and Learning System for Feedback-Controlled Evoked Response Studies

1981 ◽  
Vol 20 (03) ◽  
pp. 169-173
Author(s):  
J. Wagner ◽  
G. Pfurtscheixer
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Evoked Response ◽  
Learning System ◽  
Time Interval ◽  
Electrical Brain Activity ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Eeg Power ◽  
Stimulation System ◽  
Background Eeg

The shape, latency and amplitude of changes in electrical brain activity related to a stimulus (Evoked Potential) depend both on the stimulus parameters and on the background EEG at the time of stimulation. An adaptive, learnable stimulation system is introduced, whereby the subject is stimulated (e.g. with light), whenever the EEG power is subthreshold and minimal. Additionally, the system is conceived in such a way that a certain number of stimuli could be given within a particular time interval. Related to this time criterion, the threshold specific for each subject is calculated at the beginning of the experiment (preprocessing) and adapted to the EEG power during the processing mode because of long-time fluctuations and trends in the EEG. The process of adaptation is directed by a table which contains the necessary correction numbers for the threshold. Experiences of the stimulation system are reflected in an automatic correction of this table. Because the corrected and improved table is stored after each experiment and is used as the starting table for the next experiment, the system >learns<. The system introduced here can be used both for evoked response studies and for alpha-feedback experiments.

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