This essay examines accounts of child killings in Egyptian monastic culture through the lens of various textual and visual sources: the Greek Apophthegmata Patrum (Sayings of the Desert Fathers), paintings of the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter and the averted sacrifice of Isaac at the monasteries of Saint Antony on the Red Sea and Saint Catherine at Sinai, and exegesis of the same biblical narratives by the Egyptian monk Shenoute and other ascetic authors. The textual and visual representations of these killings or attempted killings are paradoxically theologically, politically, andsocially generative. They reaffirm priestly authority and theological orthodoxy in the monasteries at the same time as they invite male monks to identify with both male and female exemplars. Child sacrificerepresented not merely an ascetic injunction to abandon family, but, perhaps more radically, an ascetic reproduction of monastic community and genealogy.

The chapter traces the origins of Roman civil service and the office of the scriba in Etruscan models and tries to understand the workings of decurial organisation, i.e. the recruitment, assignment and organisation of the public scribal apparitores. It postulates a high susceptibility of the system to the Roman phenomenon of patronage and social relations.

This chapter examines the impact of the Severan transformation of Rome in Caelian noting its implications for Constatine's later choice of this site for his Lateran Basilica.Septimius Severus dramatically increased the presence of soldiers in Rome and his reign is associated with several major military building projects.The best documented of these is the construction of the Castra Nova for his horse guards (equites singulares), a project that fundamentally reshaped the Caelian. Extensive elements of the fort survive beneath the Basilica of St John Lateran.This chapter explores the evidence for the building and subsequent use of the fort, placing the site in its broader topographical context.Following Constantine's victory at the battle of the Milvian Bridge the equites singulares were destroyed/disbanded and the Castra Nova site was used for the construction of the Lateran Basilica.The paper raises questions about the degree to which the history of the site's use may have impacted on the location and appearence of Constantine's church.

This chapter examines the practical matter of resources in war-making, both human and material. The first half assesses recruitment practices across the course of Roman history, especially the role of conscription and compulsion, and then the changing size of military forces through time and its likely demographic impact. Consideration is also given to the logistical implications of the size of campaign armies. The second half focuses on the financial costs of maintaining the armed forces in the different periods of Roman history, before turning to the financial benefits of warfare, including booty, indemnities, territory and taxes – as well as the material costs of defeat. The quantitative dimension of all these subjects means that much of the discussion concerns the limitations of the extant evidence.

Metro Line C runs from the Pantano terminus through the south-eastern suburbs of Rome. This chapter reflects on the archaeological investigations carried out along via La Spezia and via Sannio, published as a series of preliminary reports.The evidence suggests that the banks of the ancient river course running through this area –tentatively identified with the aqua Crabra or one of its branches – were farmed from the third century BC. The river worked as a catalyst for local exploitation and imposing embankments to control its floods were built in the third century BC. These allow us to indirectly reconstruct the original riverbed. Things started to change in the second half of the first century BC; the land use became diversified and the complexity of the landscape increased. This process continued until the construction of the Aurelian Walls, which effectively created an intra-mural and an extra-mural area. From the last quarter of the third century AD, land-use took on a more homogenous form, mainly characterised by agricultural and funerary use. The construction of the Aurelian Walls modified and, in places, substantially reduced the width of the riverbed.

The chapter serves both as a summary of the classical model of scriba-ship established throughout the book and as an epilogue to the history of the scribae in the Later Roman Empire and beyond. It follows the sparse traces of scribae and revivals of the post in the institutions of the Late Roman state. It argues for the pervasive nature of the idea of the scriba using the example of a public scribe in the Ostrogothic Kingdom of the seventh century.

The transformation of St John Lateran, which started under pope Nicolas IV (1288–92) was the largest building project in high medieval Rome. What motives forced this pope to demolish the apses and to erect new apses, transepts and façades of the Lateran-church and of St Maria Maggiore, whose walls were sanctified by legends? This chapter focuses on the transept of St John Lateran. The form and function of the little transept aisle of Constantinian origin, excavated in the south part, is not very clear and nothing is left of a possible transept of the 12th century. This chapter explores the issue of the northern entrance towards Campus Lateranensis and the city in 1200.