The first section of the chapter sets out the methodology for understanding two key dimensions of the spatial patterns of Etruria: hierarchy and boundaries. These are addressed by rank size and XTENT respectively. The second section of the chapter brings Etruria into the analysis by tackling issues of chronology, post-depostional distortions, sampling, site definition, prior use of rank size and causal mechanisms.

At the end of the sets of seven visions in the Book of Revelation – the seven seals, seven trumpets and seven bowls – John sees a further vision in which a figure identified as ‘Babylon’ is destroyed. In this article we will show that this figure represents Rome, then discuss why Rome is destroyed and how this happens. In doing this, we will draw a contrast with the conclusions of Erich Gruen’s contribution to this volume (Chapter 10). He argues that the Jewish Sibylline Oracles draw predominantly from non-Jewish Sibylline representations of Rome’s downfall. We will argue that, in contrast, Revelation 17.1–19.10 is primarily a complex interweaving of motifs from scriptural prophetic texts about various wicked cities and their fates. We will begin by outlining Revelation 17.1–19.10 then consider each of the issues.

The chapter covers the geography and resources that enabled state formation in Etruria. The first section of the chapter covers the physiography of landscape, relative to the sea, rivers, geology and mountains. The landscape is broken down into four regions: the coast, the Tuscan uplands, the volcanic South and the inland tectonic valleys. These are then matched with the potential of agriculture and minerals, and followed by the application of technology to these resources. This section traces the development of agriculture and metallurgy.

The fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE left a nation shattered, its memories bitter and agonizing. The trauma afflicted the Jews for many generations thereafter. In some ways the shadow of that event still hovers now. Military confrontation with Roman power proved altogether fruitless, as would be demonstrated once again by the failed Bar-Kochba revolt in the 130s, with its painful consequences. Physical resistance was no longer realistic. Could there be a different kind of resistance? Did the people of the book in Palestine or the diaspora engage in a form of textual resistance? Could apocalyptic literature serve as “hidden transcript” to convey disguised and indirect critique of overweening power, a subtle undermining of authority that could restore a sense of self-esteem or an internal recompense for loss?1 Could oracular pronouncements about the fiery end of Rome provide a means to steel Jewish resolve in the face of otherwise intolerable tragedy?2

A historical theory of uncertain origin is directly relevant to how Roman historians, particularly those who wrote in Greek, understood the future of Rome: four empires have dominated the world, Rome is the fifth, signifiying either the continuation of a natural process or the end of the historical cycle. This 4+1 model of world empires occurs also in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic, deriving ultimately from the Book of Daniel, where it may be a reworking of a Zoroastrian tradition.1 So compelling was the idea for the Jews and Christians living in the Roman Empire, nursing messianic dreams, that its absence in a major Jewish thinker of the first century requires explanation.2 Among historians of Rome the model first appears as a tool of explanation and prediction in Polybius’ Greek history of Rome, then in Latin Aemilius Sura3 and Pompeius Trogus – in each of these first cases, indirectly, or in quoted fragments – then certainly in Dionysius of Halicarnassus and later Greek writers. Thus, the 4+1 scheme appears in Greek prose literature from as early as the second century BCE, around the time that the Book of Daniel was being redacted.

In the manuscript tradition, the four books of Eusebius’s Life of Constantine are followed by an appendix containing a speech known by its Latin title, Oratio ad sanctorum coetum.1 Moreover, in some manuscripts, the Speech of Emperor Constantine written for the Assembly of Saints (Βασιλέως Κωνσταντίνου λόγος ὃν ἔγραψε τῷ τῶν ἁγίων συλλόγῳ) figures as the fifth book of the Vita. In spite of its traditional attribution to Constantine the Great,2 this curious text has not received much scholarly attention.3 Yet the speech, which includes a lecture-style commentary on Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue accompanied by an almost complete translation of the poem into Greek, is an important landmark in the history of the Christian reception of Roman literature.

This chapter defines and interprets the imposition of power on the landscape as implemented by the centralised forces outlined in the previous chapter. The is expressed dynamically by deploying the XTENT technique as a heuristic technique. The technique is presented critically to show to what extent the imposition of power works on the Etruscan landscape.

This chapter combines all the settlement evidence to present five regions of contrast: South Etruria (Veii, Nepi, Cerveteri, Tarquinia, Tuscania, Bisenzio, Acquarossa, Orvieto, Vulci); the Albegna valley; Maremma (Populonia, Vetulonia, Roselle, Murlo, Volterra, Pisa,Val d’Arno, Fiesole); Chiusi; Perugia and Gubbio. The result is a tapestry of variation, showing that Etruscans cities operated differently in the different political and geogaphical contexts.

A Jewish priest, Roman citizen and Greek historian, Flavius Josephus (born Yosef ben Matityahu) is an author whose works are strongly marked by the confluence of traditions. Both the Jewish tradition in which he had been raised and the Graeco-Roman tradition in which he chose to write had long and varied histories of thinking about the future and Josephus, a “prophet” learned in both cultures, could draw on a variety of literary models when forecasting what was to come. Polybius, for instance, one of Josephus’ most important sources, articulates a belief in the Greek idea of cyclical history, but is able to accommodate this schema to the realities of his times by arguing that the Roman constitution had found a way to arrest the inevitable degeneration of anakyklosis. The composite Roman state had been able to postpone its decline and win extraordinary success, but nevertheless its decline would surely come some day.

After witnessing her son’s shipwreck in Aeneid 1, the goddess Venus begs Jupiter to explain the apparent discrepancy between the Trojans’ current plight and Jupiter’s previous promises of their eventual, Roman dominion. Her most important words lie at the exact center of her speech, twelve lines from its beginning and end: quem das finem, rex magne, laborum? (“What end do you give to their toils, great king?” 1.241). Besides the meta-poetic reversal of epic convention – beginning in the middle – the centrality of ending is more than a matter of formalism and aesthetics: finis is the trigger that activates both Jupiter’s response and the future to be realized by Aeneas and Rome.

The chapter addresses and reviews the role of connectivity in Etruria and its relationship to settlement distributionsby examining various classes of material culture ranging from metalwork to ceramics to inscriptions. The aim is to show how the rich studies of Etruscan material culture overlay the political organisation of the landscape.