Roman Society from the Beginning of Expansion to the Second Punic War

2014 ◽  
pp. 34-55
Keyword(s):  
Roman Society ◽  
Second Punic War

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 Rejecting outdated notions about Romanization, the book focuses instead on the concept of identity to reveal a Roman society made up of far-flung populations whose experience of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.

Nuovi dati sul popolamento nella pianura di Tarquinia durante la romanizzazione. Il caso della località "Il Giglio"

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 123-135
Author(s):  
Maria Gabriella Scapaticci
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Hydraulic System ◽  
Drainage System ◽  
Natural Fertility ◽  
Second Punic War ◽  
System Part ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Hill ◽  
Military Enterprise ◽  
The Middle Ages

During works for a communal athletic-ground at Tarquinia in the district “Il Giglio”, which took place between 2000 and 2001, some slight remains of ancient structures of the Late-Republican and Early-Imperial Age were accidentally discovered. The Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dell’Etruria Meridionale then undertook extensive excavations, documenting a farm and an interesting hydraulic system, part of which had already been found not far from there, at Tarquinia in the district “Gabelletta”. The part of the plain of Tarquinia that is located at the foot of the hill, where Corneto was later established in the Middle Ages, was intensively cultivated with a drainage system and very extensive canalizations, because of the natural fertility of the soil and the richness of water-supplies in this region. It is thus likely that the flax for which Tarquinia was famous in antiquity was cultivated in these fields, and that, towards the end of the second Punic War, this farmland supplied Rome with the flax to make the sails destined for the military enterprise.

Epicurean Ethics in Horace

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Yona
Keyword(s):  
Roman Society ◽  
Moral Tradition

Over the centuries leading up to their composition many genres and authors have emerged as influences on Horace’s Satires, which in turn has led to a wide variety of scholarly interpretations. This study aims to expand the existing dialogue by exploring further the intersection of ancient satire and ethics, focusing on the moral tradition of Epicureanism through the lens of one source in particular: Philodemus of Gadara. An Epicurean philosopher who wrote for a Roman audience and was one of Horace’s contemporaries and neighbors in Italy, offers a range of ethical treatises on subjects including patronage, friendship, flattery, frankness, poverty, and wealth. This book offers a serious consideration of the role of Philodemus’ Epicurean teachings in Horace’s Satires and argues that the central concerns of the philosopher’s work not only lie at the heart of the poet’s criticisms of Roman society and its shortcomings, but also lend to the collection a certain coherence and overall unity in its underlying convictions. It provides an examination of the deep and pervasive influence of this moral tradition on Horace’s satiric poetry which also manages to reveal something of the poet behind the literary mask or persona through its elucidation of the philosophically consistent nature of Horace’s self-representation in these poems.

Receptions of Rome in Debates on Slavery in the U.S.A.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Malamud
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
American Slavery ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Chattel Slavery ◽  
Black Struggle ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Intense Debate

American abolitionists not only invoked the Roman allusions and comparisons employed by the revolutionary generation’s fight for liberty from the British crown, but also adapted or subverted them in service of the black struggle for freedom. Rather than rejecting Roman society outright because it was a slaveholding society—the primal “Roman error” from their perspective—many abolitionists instead deployed figures and images from Roman antiquity in their own struggles against the despotism of chattel slavery. Supporters of emancipation and black civil rights, this chapter shows, thus engaged in an intense debate over the correct reception of ancient Rome with proslavery Southerners, who argued that slavery in both Rome and America enabled liberty and civilization. Bringing the discussion into the present day, this chapter offers a contemporary example of arguments over the correct reception of ancient Rome in relation to American slavery and the American Civil War.

The Roman Martyrs

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lapidge
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The Church

The Roman Martyrs contains translations of forty Latin passiones of saints who were martyred in Rome or its near environs, during the period before the ‘peace of the Church’ (c. 312). Some of these Roman martyrs are universally known — SS. Agnes, Sebastian or Laurence, for example — but others are scarcely known outside the ecclesiastical landscape of Rome itself. Each of the translated passiones, which vary in length from a few paragraphs to over ninety, is accompanied by an individual introduction and commentary; the translations are preceded by an Introduction which describes the principal features of this little-known genre of Christian literature. The Roman passiones martyrum have never previously been collected together, and have never been translated into a modern language. They were mostly composed during the period 425 x 675, by anonymous authors who who were presumably clerics of the Roman churches or cemeteries which housed the martyrs’ remains. It is clear that they were composed in response to the huge explosion of pilgrim traffic to martyrial shrines from the late fourth century onwards, at a time when authentic records (protocols) of their trials and executions had long since vanished, and the authors of the passiones were obliged to imagine the circumstances in which martyrs were tried and executed. The passiones are works of pure fiction; and because they abound in ludicrous errors of chronology, they have been largely ignored by historians of the early Church. But although they cannot be used as evidence for the original martyrdoms, they nevertheless allow a fascinating glimpse of the concerns which animated Christians during the period in question: for example, the preservation of virginity, or the ever-present threat posed by pagan practices. And because certain aspects of Roman life will have changed little between (say) the second century and the fifth, the passiones throw valuable light on many aspects of Roman society, not least the nature of a trial before an urban prefect, and the horrendous tortures which were a central feature of such trials. Above all, perhaps, the passiones are an indispensable resource for understanding the topography of late antique Rome and its environs, since they characteristically contain detailed reference to the places where the martyrs were tried, executed, and buried. The book contains five Appendices containing translations of texts relevant to the study of Roman martyrs: the Depositio martyrum of A.D. 354 (Appendix I); the epigrammata of Pope Damasus d. 384) which pertain to Roman martyrs treated in the passiones (II); entries pertaining to Roman martyrs in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum (III); entries in seventh-century pilgrim itineraries pertaining to shrines of Roman martyrs in suburban cemeteries (IV); and entries commemorating these martyrs in early Roman liturgical books (V).

Ibiza

2019 ◽  
pp. 568-583
Author(s):  
Benjamí Costa
Keyword(s):  
Roman Republic ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Balearic Islands ◽  
Demographic Development ◽  
Second Punic War

The formation of a Semitic society based on the island of Ibiza was the result of the superimposition, during the Archaic period, of two distinct elements: eastern Phoenicians and Punics. During the fifth and fourth centuries bce, Punic Ibiza reached its maximum economic and demographic development, possibly because of its role as a crucial agent of Carthaginian policy toward Iberian communities in the mainland and the Balearic Islands. After the Second Punic War, all defeated Punic states that sided with Carthage were left under the dominion of the Roman Republic. In the case of Punic Ibiza, the author proposes a process with three main steps: first, a deditio after the Second Punic War; second, a federation agreement, which could have taken place possibly after the Sertorian episode, in the year 81 bce; and third, the municipalization after the decree promulgated by Vespasianus in 74 ce, which converted Hispanic towns that were still peregrinae, like Ibiza, into municipalities ruled by the Latin Law.

scholarly journals The Reception of Petrarch’s Africa in Fascist Italy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Asad Abijuwa Agbamu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Critical Edition ◽  
Classical Scholar ◽  
Italian Fascism ◽  
Second Punic War ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Literature

AbstractIn his 1877 Storia della letteratura (History of Literature), Luigi Settembrini wrote that Petrarch’s fourteenth-century poem, the Africa, ‘is forgotten …; very few have read it, and it was judged—I don’t know when and by whom—a paltry thing’. Yet, just four decades later, the early Renaissance poet’s epic of the Second Punic War, written in Latin hexameters, was being promoted as the national poem of Italy by eminent classical scholar, Nicola Festa, who published the only critical edition of the epic in 1926. This article uncovers the hitherto untold story of the revival of Petrarch’s poetic retelling of Scipio’s defeat of Hannibal in Fascist Italy, and its role in promoting ideas of nation and empire during the Fascist period in Italy. After briefly outlining the Africa’s increasing popularity in the nineteenth century, I consider some key publications that contributed to the revival of the poem under Fascism. I proceed chronologically to show how the Africa was shaped into a poem of the Italian nation, and later, after Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, of Italy’s new Roman Empire. I suggest that the contestations over the significance of the Africa during the Fascist period, over whether it was a national poem of Roman revival or a poem of the universal ideal of empire, demonstrate more profound tensions in how Italian Fascism saw itself.

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