Palladas and the Nikai

1964 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
pp. 54-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Cameron

Palladas' attitude to Christianity has been much discussed in recent years. It is not of purely academic interest whether he was a pagan or Christian, for Christianity did not remain ‘the beggars' religion’, and it is the conversion of just such a figure as Palladas, a schoolmaster steeped in the classics but scornful alike of the traditional gods and the Platonism that had taken their place for the intellectual pagan of his day, that marks a vital stage in the christianisation of the Roman Empire. For nowhere did the traces of paganism linger longer than in the University circles of Alexandria. However the arguments adduced by P. Waltz to show that it is ‘infiniment probable que Palladas était chrétien’ carry but little conviction, and it seems much more likely that Palladas was and remained a pagan. The following poem, though overlooked or misinterpreted in most recent discussions, can perhaps be made to cast a little more light on the matter:φιλοχρίστῳ Planudes (Marcianus 481): φιλοχρήστῳ Lascaris (editio princeps, 1494), edd. plerique. ‘Here we are, Victories, the laughing maidens, bearing victories for the city that loves Christ (?). Men painted us who loved the city, carving the symbols that are proper for Victories.’

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nóra G. Etényi

The unexpected death of the young Duke Georg Friedrich of Wurttemberg (1657–1685) on 18 October 1685 at the siege of Košice came as tremendous shock to the public of the Holy Roman Empire. The ducal family of Wurttemberg emphasized the principality’s participation and terrible loss in the war against the Ottoman Empire with a spectacular funeral and some carefully composed propaganda of ultimate honor.The principality of Wurttemberg traditionally maintained a special relationship with the Hungarian Lutheran nobility and citizens. The death of the duke changed the attitudes of the Hungarian Lutheran elite since the principality, which provided them with significant support, had suffered such a great loss in the political, economic and spiritual center of Upper Hungary, Košice, while the young Lutheran prince of Wurttemberg, fighting among the imperial troops, could have helped with the negotiations about the surrender of the city. The funeral speeches in the collection of sermons highlighted various aspects of the royal image, and this was complemented by a volume of fine poems compiled by professors at the University of Tübingen. The decency of the fallen Prince Georg Friedrich of Wurttemberg, which included both traditional topos and a modern set of values, represented several interdependent political interests, representing the high standard, literacy, and effectiveness of the propaganda of the War of Reconquest.


This interdisciplinary volume presents nineteen chapters by Roman historians and archaeologists, discussing trade in the Roman Empire in the period c.100 BC to AD 350, and in particular the role of the Roman state, in shaping the institutional framework for trade within and outside the Empire, in taxing that trade, and in intervening in the markets to ensure the supply of particular commodities, especially for the city of Rome and for the army. The chapters in this volume address facets of the subject on the basis of widely different sources of evidence—historical, papyrological, and archaeological—and are grouped in three sections: institutional factors (taxation, legal structures, market regulation, financial institutions); evidence for long-distance trade within the Empire, in wood, stone, glass, and pottery; and trade beyond the frontiers, with the East (as far as China), India, Arabia, and the Red Sea, and the Sahara. Rome’s external trade with realms to the east emerges as being of particular significance to the fisc. But in the eastern part of the Empire at least, the state appears, in collaboration with the elite holders of wealth, to have adapted the mechanisms of taxation, both direct and indirect, to support its need for revenue. On the other hand, the price of that collaboration, which was in effect a fiscal partnership, in slightly different forms in East and West, in the longer term fundamentally changed the political character of the Empire.


Author(s):  
Howell A. Lloyd

Bodin arrived in Toulouse c.1550, a brief account of the economy, social composition, and governmental institutions of which opens the chapter. There follow comments on its cultural life and identification of its leading citizenry, with remarks on the treatment of alleged religious dissidents by the city itself, and especially on discordant intellectual influences at work in the University, most notably the Law Faculty and the modes of teaching there. The chapter’s second part reviews Bodin’s translation and edition of the Greek poem Cynegetica by Oppian ‘of Cilicia’, assessing the quality of his editorial work, the extent to which allegations of plagiarism levelled against him were valid, and the nature and merits of his translation. The third section recounts contemporary wrangling over educational provision in Toulouse and examines the Oratio in which Bodin argued the case for humanist-style educational provision by means of a reconstituted college there.


Author(s):  
Carlos Machado

This book analyses the physical, social, and cultural history of Rome in late antiquity. Between AD 270 and 535, the former capital of the Roman empire experienced a series of dramatic transformations in its size, appearance, political standing, and identity, as emperors moved to other cities and the Christian church slowly became its dominating institution. Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome provides a new picture of these developments, focusing on the extraordinary role played by members of the traditional elite, the senatorial aristocracy, in the redefinition of the city, its institutions, and spaces. During this period, Roman senators and their families became increasingly involved in the management of the city and its population, in building works, and in the performance of secular and religious ceremonies and rituals. As this study shows, for approximately three hundred years the houses of the Roman elite competed with imperial palaces and churches in shaping the political map and the social life of the city. Making use of modern theories of urban space, the book considers a vast array of archaeological, literary, and epigraphic documents to show how the former centre of the Mediterranean world was progressively redefined and controlled by its own elite.


2005 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 358-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvija Jestrovic

In this article, Silvija Jestrovic introduces the notion of spatial inter-performativity to discuss theatre's relationship to actual political and cultural spaces. Focusing on the Berlin of the 1920s in performances of Brecht and Piscator, then on a street procession of the Générik Vapeur troupe that took place in Belgrade in 1994, she examines how theatrical and political spaces refer to and transform one another. Silvija Jestrovic was a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at York University in Toronto, and has recently taken up an appointment in the School of Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick. She is currently working on a book-length project entitled Avant-Garde and the City.


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