Jewish Voices on Rome and Roman Imperialism

2021 ◽  
pp. 379-390
Author(s):  
Erich S. Gruen
Keyword(s):  
Roman Imperialism

Imperialism, Power, and Identity

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Mattingly
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Human Resources ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Sexual Relations ◽  
Roman Imperialism ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Classical Studies ◽  
Archaeological Work ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

Despite what history has taught us about imperialism's destructive effects on colonial societies, many classicists continue to emphasize disproportionately the civilizing and assimilative nature of the Roman Empire and to hold a generally favorable view of Rome's impact on its subject peoples. This book boldly challenges this view using insights from postcolonial studies of modern empires to offer a more nuanced understanding of Roman imperialism. Rejecting outdated notions about Romanization, the book focuses instead on the concept of identity to reveal a Roman society made up of far-flung populations whose experience of empire varied enormously. It examines the nature of power in Rome and the means by which the Roman state exploited the natural, mercantile, and human resources within its frontiers. The book draws on the author's own archaeological work in Britain, Jordan, and North Africa and covers a broad range of topics, including sexual relations and violence; census-taking and taxation; mining and pollution; land and labor; and art and iconography. The book shows how the lives of those under Rome's dominion were challenged, enhanced, or destroyed by the empire's power, and in doing so he redefines the meaning and significance of Rome in today's debates about globalization, power, and empire. This book advances a new agenda for classical studies, one that views Roman rule from the perspective of the ruled and not just the rulers. A new preface reflects on some of the reactions prompted by the initial publication of the book.

Fortuna and the Republic

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniele Miano
Keyword(s):  
Focal Points ◽  
The Public ◽  
Republican Period ◽  
Roman Imperialism ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Greek East

This chapter studies all the public temples of Fortuna at Rome in the Republican period. The main focal points of the chapter are the precise historical circumstances for the vow, construction, and dedication of each temple, and the connection between these circumstances and the epithets attributed to the goddess. One of the main points made by this chapter is that there is a very solid connection between Republican temples of Fortuna and the plebeian aristocracy, which suggests that Fortuna was characterized as a deity closely associated with the plebs. Another point concerns Fortuna Publica, a deity that during the Roman conquest of the Greek East was associated with Roman imperialism through her translation as Tyche, following a debate on the merits of Roman conquest of which we can read traces in Polybius.

The Pax Augusta

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Cornwell
Keyword(s):  
Roman Imperialism ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Ara Pacis ◽  
Different Parts

The subjugation of the Western provinces was celebrated by the dedication of an altar to Augustan Peace (the ara Pacis Augustae) at Rome. This chapter examines in detail the dedication of that highly complex, senatorial monument at Rome. The altar is, as far as the surviving evidence and our literary sources indicate, the first monumental display directly associated with the personified form of Pax. In this commemoration pax was qualified as ‘Augustan’ (pax augusta), and this may be understood as the first step towards pax becoming an imperial virtue. The analysis is then followed by an examination of the adoption of the worship of this cult within Augustus’ lifetime in different parts of the empire, as a means of engaging with a truly Augustan ideal. This chapter demonstrates how pax became a vehicle for expressing messages about Roman imperialism.

Pax and the Politics of Peace

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Cornwell
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Roman Imperialism ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Pax Romana ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Insight Into

This book examines the two generations that spanned the collapse of the Republic and the Augustan period to understand how the concept of pax Romana, as a central ideology of Roman imperialism, evolved. The author argues for the integral nature of pax in understanding the changing dynamics of the Roman state through civil war to the creation of a new political system and world-rule. The period of the late Republic to the early Principate involved changes in the notion of imperialism. This is the story of how peace acquired a central role within imperial discourse over the course of the collapse of the Republican framework to become deployed in the legitimization of the Augustan regime. It is an examination of the movement from the debates over the content of the concept, in the dying Republic, to the creation of an authorized version controlled by the princeps, through an examination of a series of conceptions about peace, culminating with the pax augusta as the first crystallization of an imperial concept of peace. Just as there existed not one but a series of ideas concerning Roman imperialism, so too were there numerous different meanings, applications, and contexts within which Romans talked about ‘peace’. Examining these different nuances allows us insight into the ways they understood power dynamics, and how these were contingent on the political structures of the day. Roman discourses on peace were part of the wider discussion on the way in which Rome conceptualized her Empire and ideas of imperialism.

Inverted Hybridities: Reactions to Imperialism in Select Pseudepigraphic Ezra Materials

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-234
Author(s):  
Warren C. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
The Other ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Roman Imperialism ◽  
Jewish Heritage ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Imperial Ideology ◽  
Jewish Revolt ◽  
The One

This article examines both 4 and 5 Ezra as two textual reactions to Roman imperialism utilizing Homi Bhabha's notion of ‘hybridity’. The central argument offered here is that 4 and 5 Ezra both exemplify resistance to and affiliation with the discourse of dominance integral to imperial ideology. Such reactions are, however, inverted. On the one hand, 4 Ezra primarily offers a theodicean resistance to the destruction of the Second Temple during the First Jewish Revolt (66–70 CE), but relies upon essentialized binaries integral to a colonial discourse of domination. On the other hand, 5 Ezra advances a notion of religious replacement in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE); an expression of dominance that is simultaneously a strategy of communal preservation arising from a position of proximity to a Jewish heritage.

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