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23990 results in Ancient history

Page 379 of 1200

Freed Slaves and Roman Imperial Culture
  • Social Integration and the Transformation of Values
  • Rose MacLean
  • Published online:
    09 May 2018
    Print publication:
    17 May 2018
  • During the transition from Republic to Empire, the Roman aristocracy adapted traditional values to accommodate the advent of monarchy. Freed Slaves and Roman Imperial Culture examines the ways in which members of the elite appropriated strategies from freed slaves to negotiate their relationship to the princeps and to redefine measures of individual progress. Primarily through the medium of inscribed burial monuments, Roman freedmen entered a broader conversation about power, honor, virtue, memory, and the nature of the human life course. Through this process, former slaves exerted a profound influence on the transformation of aristocratic values at a critical moment in Roman history.

Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome
  • Speech, Audience and Decision
  • Edited by Henriette van der Blom, Christa Gray, Catherine Steel
  • Published online:
    08 May 2018
    Print publication:
    17 May 2018
  • This volume brings together a distinguished international group of researchers to explore public speech in Republican Rome in its institutional and ideological contexts. The focus throughout is on the interaction between argument, speaker, delivery and action. The chapters consider how speeches acted alongside other factors - such as the identity of the speaker, his alliances, the deployment of invective against opponents, physical location and appearance of other members of the audience, and non-rhetorical threats or incentives - to affect the beliefs and behaviour of the audience. Together they offer a range of approaches to these issues and bring attention back to the content of public speech in Republican Rome as well as its form and occurrence. The book will be of interest not only to ancient historians, but also to those working on ancient oratory and to historians and political theorists working on public speech.

The Journey of Christianity to India in Late Antiquity
  • Networks and the Movement of Culture
  • Nathanael J. Andrade
  • Published online:
    03 May 2018
    Print publication:
    19 April 2018
  • How did Christianity make its remarkable voyage from the Roman Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent? By examining the social networks that connected the ancient and late antique Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, central Asia, and Iran, this book contemplates the social relations that made such movement possible. It also analyzes how the narrative tradition regarding the apostle Judas Thomas, which originated in Upper Mesopotamia and accredited him with evangelizing India, traveled among the social networks of an interconnected late antique world. In this way, the book probes how the Thomas narrative shaped Mediterranean Christian beliefs regarding co-religionists in central Asia and India, impacted local Christian cultures, took shape in a variety of languages, and experienced transformation as it traveled from the Mediterranean to India, and back again.

  • 2 - Early China

  • Craig Benjamin, Grand Valley State University, Michigan
  • Book:
    Empires of Ancient Eurasia
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    03 May 2018, pp 42-67

  • Summary

    Chapter Two traces the history of early China from the emergence of the earliest agrarian communities through to the appearance of the first complex cultures of the Yangshao and Longshan. The second part of the chapter outlines the history of the first dynasties of China, from the semi-legendary Xia, through the Shang and Zhou to the first Chinese imperial states of the Qin and Han Dynasties. The chapter also considers the emergence of many of the foundational philosophies of ancient China, including Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism and the Mandate of Heaven, and the way these ideas were used to legitimize government and organize society, through to the so-called triumph of Confucianism in the Early Han Dynasty.

  • 8 - Maritime Routes of the First Silk Roads Era

  • Craig Benjamin, Grand Valley State University, Michigan
  • Book:
    Empires of Ancient Eurasia
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    03 May 2018, pp 204-237

  • Summary

    After considering in earlier chapters the development and operation of major Silk Roads land routes, Chapter Eight examines the other great conduit of trade during the Era, the maritime routes that connected Roman Egypt, the East Coast of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf with South Asian ports and Central Asian land routes. The chapter also looks at developing maritime connections between Han China and Southeast Asia, routes that would expand enormously half a millennium later when the Tang Dynasty came to power in China. Political tensions between the Roman and the Parthian Empires might have contributed to the development of the western Indian Ocean maritime connections between ports on the coast of Indian and those in the Red Sea. However, trade by sea always an attractive option for ancient merchants. Not only was it cheaper and faster, but it could also be conducted by commercial guilds that were often largely unaffected by the geopolitical situation within and between states.

  • 6 - The Parthian Empire and the Silk Roads

  • Craig Benjamin, Grand Valley State University, Michigan
  • Book:
    Empires of Ancient Eurasia
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    03 May 2018, pp 148-175

  • Summary

    Chapter Six begins by discussing the early history of Persia, including the construction of the Achaemenid Empire and its defeat by Alexander of Macedon. It next explores the available literary, numismatic and archaeological evidence for the Parthian Empire, which demonstrates that from 247 BCE when Arsaces came to power to the overthrow of the last Parthian king by their regional successors the Sasanians in 224 CE, the Parthians maintained one of the great imperial states in ancient world history for some four hundred and seventy years. Despite periods of sporadic conflict with militarized nomadic Saka (Scythians) and with the Romans, as well as numerous bloody internal succession crises, the Parthian Empire, along with that of the Kushans, functioned as an effective bridge between western and eastern Eurasia, and flourished because of the strength of its military, the organization of its empire, and the political recognition by Parthian elites of the crucial importance of a steady flow of commercial profit generated by Silk Roads exchanges.

  • 3 - Zhang Qian and Han Expansion into Central Asia

  • Craig Benjamin, Grand Valley State University, Michigan
  • Book:
    Empires of Ancient Eurasia
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    03 May 2018, pp 68-90

  • Summary

    Chapter Three follows the epic journey of Han Envoy Zhang Qian from the Han capital of Chang’an deep into Central Asia and back. It also sketches the main campaigns in the long and bloody war between the Han and Xiongnu, which was the larger geopolitical context in which Zhang Qian’s expedition occurred. As a result of emperor Wudi’s decision to end the heqin policy of his predecessors and adopt a more aggressive military approach to the relationship with the Xiongnu, by the mid-first century BCE the Han military had pushed the Xiongnu back to the northern steppe. The Han government had also established a series of military garrisons along the northwestern borders of the state to safeguard its growing tributary empire in Central Asia.

  • Conclusion

  • Craig Benjamin, Grand Valley State University, Michigan
  • Book:
    Empires of Ancient Eurasia
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    03 May 2018, pp 276-283

  • Summary

    The Conclusion summarizes each of the preceding chapters, and reinforces the argument that, during a period of roughly three and a half centuries, between the late-second century BCE and the mid-third century CE, many of the human communities dwelling across the vast reaches of Eurasia found themselves linked together into an interconnected system of exchanges via a network of routes known today as the Silk Roads. This First Silk Roads Era led to the most significant transregional commercial and cultural interactions experienced by humans to that point in history. Silk was the most important material commodity that was moved along this network of land and maritime routes, and that fact justifies the continued use of the label coined in the nineteenth century by Ferdinand von Richthofen, the ‘Silk Roads’. But what ultimately makes this period of ancient history so important was the exchange of non-material ‘commodities’ that occurred in parallel with the commercial interactions. Because of the demand for silk and other luxury goods, a range of different crop species and agricultural technologies, religions and ideologies, languages, artistic styles and epidemic diseases, also spread across Eurasia, with profound consequences for subsequent human and environmental history.

  • 5 - The Roman Empire and the Western Silk Roads

  • Craig Benjamin, Grand Valley State University, Michigan
  • Book:
    Empires of Ancient Eurasia
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    03 May 2018, pp 119-147

  • Summary

    Chapter Five begins by outlining the often-chaotic history of the Roman Republic through to the advent of Augustus, and the Roman Peace he instituted, which made it possible for the Romans to engage in long-distance trade across Eurasia. It considers the evidence for land-based trade routes from the Mediterranean into Central Asia, using primary sources and the archaeological discoveries of Palmyra. Finally, the chapter discusses the various ways in which the import of silk and other luxury commodities influenced the culture and economy of Rome. Although poets appreciated the sexual allure of the wearing of silk garments by women, the practice was viewed by conservatives as a moral disgrace and a ‘national extravagance’, particularly after men also started wearing silk clothes, even the emperor himself. Several attempts were made to regulate and even prohibit the wearing of silk, using moral, economic and gender arguments. Yet the demand for silk and other luxury products proved unstoppable in Imperial Rome, and this was probably also of considerable financial benefit to the empire through the high customs duties the state imposed on these imports, which might even have partly funded the legions themselves.

  • Introduction

  • Craig Benjamin, Grand Valley State University, Michigan
  • Book:
    Empires of Ancient Eurasia
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    03 May 2018, pp 1-15

  • Summary

    This Introduction begins by considering the nineteenth-century origins of the term ‘Silk Roads’ (die Seidenstrassen), and whether the term is of continuing relevance for historians today. It also discusses various conceptual lenses that help make sense of the importance of the Silk Roads, including those of big history, world-systems theory, and globalization theory. It concludes by describing the intention of the nine chapters that follow, which is to explore the environmental, ecological, political, economic and cultural conditions that made Silk Roads exchanges possible.

  • 9 - Collapse of Empires and the Decline of the First Silk Roads Era

  • Craig Benjamin, Grand Valley State University, Michigan
  • Book:
    Empires of Ancient Eurasia
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    03 May 2018, pp 238-275

  • Summary

    Chapter Nine discusses the collapse of three of the key empires that had maintained the Silk Roads network, as well as a simultaneous political and economic crisis in the fourth key empire, that of the Romans. It also considers the role of the Silk Roads in facilitating the spread of religion, notably Buddhism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism. There is no doubt that the extraordinary levels of commercial and cultural exchange that occurred along the land and sea routes of the Silk Roads network had innumerable positive effects on ancient Eurasian societies. The diffusion of new foods, technologies, religions, and ideas about art, fashion, geography and so much else rapidly transformed human culture. Yet it was this same interconnectedness during the First Silk Roads Era that also facilitated the rapid diffusion of disease pathogens that had a devastating impact on at least two of the agrarian civilizations that had sustained the network, directly contributing to the collapse of one of those great imperial states, and to the demise of the entire Silk Roads Network, which is the final topic considered in the chapter.

  • 4 - The Early Han Dynasty and the Eastern Silk Roads

  • Craig Benjamin, Grand Valley State University, Michigan
  • Book:
    Empires of Ancient Eurasia
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    03 May 2018, pp 91-118

  • Summary

    Chapter Four describes the various ways by which large quantities of Han Chinese silk made their way into Central Asia. Most of it was dispatched initially as some form of tribute to various Central Asian nomadic and sedentary powers, but it appears to have been quickly monetized by Chinese envoys and Central Asian elites and merchants. The chapter also traces the geography of the key routes from the Early Han capital of Chang’an into Central Asia via the Tarim Basin, and the role of the Bactrian camel in facilitating the movement of silk and other luxury goods. Finally, it considers the origins and rapid expansion of silk manufacturing in ancient China, made possible by the evolution of the Bombyx mori silk moth.

  • 1 - Pastoral Nomads and the Empires of the Steppe

  • Craig Benjamin, Grand Valley State University, Michigan
  • Book:
    Empires of Ancient Eurasia
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    03 May 2018, pp 16-41

  • Summary

    Chapter One introduces the environment and lifeway of pastoral nomadism, and evidence for the migration of early pastoralists extensively across the Eurasian steppe during the Bronze Ages. It also considers the establishment of large and powerful confederations made up of militarized pastoral nomads, skilled horseback-riding archer warriors under the control of elite military strategists. The last part of the chapter is focused on the histories of two such militarized confederations, those of the Xiongnu and Yuezhi. The defeat of the Yuezhi by the Xiongnu in c. 166 BCE set the Yuezhi off on a thirty-year migration, until they settled finally in southern regions of the modern nation of Uzbekistan, from where they would eventually go on to found the mighty Kushan Empire.

  • 7 - The Kushan Empire

  • Craig Benjamin, Grand Valley State University, Michigan
  • Book:
    Empires of Ancient Eurasia
    Published online:
    20 April 2018
    Print publication:
    03 May 2018, pp 176-203

  • Summary

    Chapter Seven demonstrates that, despite being descended from pastoral nomads, the Kushans created a powerful sedentary empire that controlled vast regions of Inner Eurasia for the first two centuries of the Common Era. This corresponds precisely with the high point of the First Silk Roads Era, and it is no exaggeration to suggest that it was the stability created by the Kushans, through their unbroken line of royal succession, their superb coinage, their apparent religious tolerance, their support of Gandharan and Mathuran art, and the cordial relations they maintained with their neighbors once they had constructed their empire, that helped facilitate the extraordinary material and cultural exchanges that epitomize this key period in ancient world history. Despite the fact that the Kushans constructed an essentially land-based Empire, at least two of the major trade routes that passed through their territory headed towards ports along the west coast of South Asia, some of which probably came under their direct control during the Great Kushans period. These ports were crucial in maritime Silk Roads trade between Asia and Roman Egypt.

What Is a Slave Society?
  • The Practice of Slavery in Global Perspective
  • Edited by Noel Lenski, Catherine M. Cameron
  • Published online:
    26 April 2018
    Print publication:
    10 May 2018
  • The practice of slavery has been common across a variety of cultures around the globe and throughout history. Despite the multiplicity of slavery's manifestations, many scholars have used a simple binary to categorize slave-holding groups as either 'genuine slave societies' or 'societies with slaves'. This dichotomy, as originally proposed by ancient historian Moses Finley, assumes that there were just five 'genuine slave societies' in all of human history: ancient Greece and Rome, and the colonial Caribbean, Brazil, and the American South. This book interrogates this bedrock of comparative slave studies and tests its worth. Assembling contributions from top specialists, it demonstrates that the catalogue of five must be expanded and that the model may need to be replaced with a more flexible system that emphasizes the notion of intensification. The issue is approached as a question, allowing for debate between the seventeen contributors about how best to conceptualize the comparative study of human bondage.

Page 379 of 1200