The Palmyrene banqueting tesserae, clay entrance tickets to religious banquets, have been revisited over and over again since the publication of the RTP in 1955. These small but often elaborate objects have been used as lenses into Palmyra’s religious life and the general organization of social, cultural and religious life in the city. However, only in recent years have they become the object of new detailed studies, which aim to systematically examine this unique group of objects within their local context. In this contribution, the focus is on disentangling the tesserae as physical objects to be used, touched and looked at; in particular it seeks to understand a facet of their rich iconographic repertoire, which in so many ways stands in contrast to the otherwise allegedly streamlined visual art repertoire found at Palmyra, namely that of the signet seal impressions. These signet seal impressions were impressed on many of the tesserae, most likely by the sponsor of the banquet, who left his personal mark on the tickets. The seal impressions give us insight into the images circulating in Palmyra in the Roman period in a material group, which today is almost lost to us, namely the glyptic art.

This chapter focuses on Palmyra’s choices in weaving a wider network of social ties to both the Mediterranean and eastern world in order to enjoy the recognizable success that lasted several centuries. It gleans evidence of the presence of Palmyrenes in the Mediterranean, Egypt, the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, before discussing the observable strategies in terms of strengthening commercial ties or choices in items of trade based on their high commercial value and lightness in terms of transport, such as silk or pearls.

This chapter explores the sacral aspects of Achaemenid Persian kingship. It attempts to precisely illuminate the ruler’s relationship with the divine and to demonstrate that the assumption of priestly prerogatives was an important aspect of his office. To better appreciate the political function of religion, this study provides cultural and historical contexts for the royal appropriation of sacral attributes. It further contributes to the recent field of study regarding a possible soteriological dimension to Achaemenid ideology by assessing and synthesising new and previously cited evidence for the existence of such an element, as well as its possible applications.

Little is known about the Jewish presence Roman time Palmyra: the remains of a synagogue and other archaeological and epigraphic data indicate that Jews lived in Palmyra. Their presence is confirmed by onomastics. About twenty biblical names are preserved in inscriptions from Palmyra. Others are found in epitaphs from Beth She‘arim catacombs. However, Palmyrene Jews also bore Palmyrene names, and therefore it is not always easy to reconstruct identity and religious affiliation. Therefore the epigraphic data indicate only a small portion of what must have been the Jewish population of Palmyra. Examples of the mobility of Palmyrene Jews are illustrated by their presence in the Roman army, by first century BC–first century AD ossuaries from Palestine with Palmyrene epitaphs and by Palmyrene onomastics in Aramaic and Greek epitaphs. Westward mobility of Palmyrenes is displayed in an Aramaic Bar Kokhba letter mentioning an individual of Palmyrene origin. Finally, fourth to seventh centuries AD documents from Israel and Jordan written in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek show the persistence and fortune, within Jewish and proto-Christian communities, of the name Zenobios and Zenobia, an onomastic choice inspired by the foremost protagonist of the last phase of Palmyrene history.

This essay explores the evolution of the discourse of leadership in pre-imperial (pre-221 bc) China. I show how the formation of the ideology of monarchism during the formative age of traditional Chinese culture was accompanied by subtle bifurcation between the concept of the ruler and that of the leader. Chinese intellectuals of what is often dubbed the age of the Hundred Schools of Thought agreed that the monarch should possess absolute power, but they had carefully shaped the monarch’s image in the way that allowed much leverage to the members of their own stratum. A subtle and yet well-pronounced bifurcation between political leadership of the monarch and the moral and intellectual leadership of an outstanding minister or an aspiring minister remained one of the major features of Chinese political thought and political culture for millennia to come.

For Cicero, effective Republican leadership entailed both morality and agency. Morality meant actions that supported the Republic, while agency was required for such actions to be carried out. It is difficult to subsume any theory of leadership under a single word, but I argue that Cicero’s leadership theory can be signified by consilium. This term encapsulates the best mental and moral aspects of leadership as well as the actions and results of acting on behalf of the Republic. It is inherently tied to the practice of Republican politics, a practice that was fundamentally transactional. Cicero used this idea of consilium to support his acceptance of Octavian as an ally against Antony. According to his theory of consilium, Cicero acted correctly against Antony, but Octavian ultimately exposed the flaws in Cicero’s theory when he refused to participate in traditional Republican transactional politics.