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23990 results in Ancient history

Page 783 of 1200

  • CHAPTER VI - THE TRANSFORMATION OF GRAVE-GOODS

  • Corinna Riva, University College London
  • Book:
    The Urbanisation of Etruria
    Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    28 December 2009, pp 141-176

  • Summary

    As intimated in the previous chapter, the use and deposition of grave-goods actively contributed to changes in the constructed space of Orientalising elite burials. In this chapter, I intend to examine specific sets of grave-goods, namely, metal vessels and bucchero ware vessels, in order to bring into focus banqueting and drinking activities which institutionalised elite political authority. I consider changing consumption practices by looking at the grave-goods of elite burials in detail and examine the ways in which these and other practices such as gift-exchange were incorporated in elite burial ritual and its related activities such as sacrifice and ritualised drinking. Ultimately, not only were banqueting and drinking public mnemonic practices generating collective memory outside the elite group, as I argue in the previous chapter, but also the very objects used in these practices, particularly inscribed bucchero pottery, were an important memno-technical medium for establishing the history and genealogy of the elite group.

    Attempts at reconstructing ritual activities at Orientalising burials through grave-goods are fraught with difficulties: often little or nothing is known of the original composition of a tomb's grave-goods, and even less of the position of the objects inside the tomb due to ancient and modern looting activities, and the nonscientific nature of nineteenth-century excavations of many Orientalising tombs. Bronze vessels are particularly subject to looting due to their high intrinsic value. The corpus of intact tombs is spectacularly small as a result, and relying on incomplete data is inevitable. Even so, where possible, contextual analysis, which integrates the study of grave-goods with the funerary space to which they belong, is a vital method of analysis. Comparing grave-goods sets from different cemeteries and taking into consideration long-term ritual activities from the Early Iron Age can furthermore help circumvent these difficulties. A number of previous studies of Orientalising grave-goods, however, have focused on single classes of material: Greek imported vessels, bronze cauldrons, and other Eastern imports have often been studied in isolation, which has proved to be an obstacle to the reconstruction of ritual activities.

Hellenism in Byzantium
  • The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition
  • Anthony Kaldellis
  • Published online:
    24 December 2009
    Print publication:
    31 January 2008
  • This text was the first systematic study of what it meant to be 'Greek' in late antiquity and Byzantium, an identity that could alternatively become national, religious, philosophical, or cultural. Through close readings of the sources, Professor Kaldellis surveys the space that Hellenism occupied in each period; the broader debates in which it was caught up; and the historical causes of its successive transformations. The first section (100–400) shows how Romanisation and Christianisation led to the abandonment of Hellenism as a national label and its restriction to a negative religious sense and a positive, albeit rarefied, cultural one. The second (1000–1300) shows how Hellenism was revived in Byzantium and contributed to the evolution of its culture. The discussion looks closely at the reception of the classical tradition, which was the reason why Hellenism was always desirable and dangerous in Christian society, and presents a new model for understanding Byzantine civilisation.

Public Order in Ancient Rome
  • Wilfried Nippel
  • Published online:
    24 December 2009
    Print publication:
    21 September 1995
  • The absence of a professional police force in the city of Rome in classical times is often identified as a major cause of the collapse of the Republic. But this alleged 'structural weakness' was not removed by the Emperor Augustus and his successors, and was in fact shared with other pre-modern states: a specialised police force is a modern invention. In this critical study of the system of law and order in ancient Rome in both Republican and Imperial periods, Wilfried Nippel identifies the mechanisms of self-regulation which operated as a stabilising force within Roman society. This case-study of ancient Rome has a comparative dimension and will interest legal historians of other pre-modern societies as well as ancient historians, anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists.

Trade in Classical Antiquity
  • Neville Morley
  • Published online:
    23 December 2009
    Print publication:
    19 April 2007
  • Historians have long argued about the place of trade in classical antiquity: was it the life-blood of a complex, Mediterranean-wide economic system, or a thin veneer on the surface of an underdeveloped agrarian society? Trade underpinned the growth of Athenian and Roman power, helping to supply armies and cities. It furnished the goods that ancient elites needed to maintain their dominance - and yet, those same elites generally regarded trade and traders as a threat to social order. Trade, like the patterns of consumption that determined its development, was implicated in wider debates about politics, morality and the state of society, just as the expansion of trade in the modern world is presented both as the answer to global poverty and as an instrument of exploitation and cultural imperialism. This 2007 book explores the nature and importance of ancient trade, considering its ecological and cultural significance as well as its economic aspects.

Jesus and Gospel
  • Graham N. Stanton
  • Published online:
    21 December 2009
    Print publication:
    08 July 2004
  • 'Gospel' initially referred to oral proclamation concerning Jesus Christ, but was later used to refer to four written accounts of the life of Jesus. How did this happen? Here, distinguished scholar Graham Stanton uses new evidence and fresh perspectives to tackle this controversial question. He insists that in the early post-Easter period, the Gospel of Jesus Christ was heard against the backdrop of a rival set of 'gospels' concerning the Roman emperors. In later chapters Stanton examines the earliest criticisms of Jesus and of claims concerning his resurrection. Finally, he discusses the early Christian addiction to the codex (book) format as opposed to the ubiquitous roll, and undermines the view that early copies of the Gospels were viewed as downmarket handbooks of an inward looking sect. With half the material previously unpublished and the rest carefully gathered from sources difficult to access, this is a timely study with broad appeal.

Rome's Religious History
  • Livy, Tacitus and Ammianus on their Gods
  • Jason P. Davies
  • Published online:
    21 December 2009
    Print publication:
    10 January 2005
  • This book explores the way in which three ancient historians, writing in Latin, embedded the gods into their accounts of the past. Although previous scholarship has generally portrayed these writers as somewhat dismissive of traditional Roman religion, it is argued here that Livy, Tacitus and Ammianus saw themselves as being very close to the centre of those traditions. The gods are presented as a potent historical force, and a close reading of the historians' texts easily bears out this conclusion. Their treatment of the gods is not limited to portraying the role and power of the divine in the unfolding of the past: equally prominent is the negotiation with the reader concerning what constituted a 'proper' religious system. Priests and other religious experts function as an index of the decline (or restoration) of Rome and each writer formulates a sophisticated position on the practical and social aspects of Roman religion.

Social Mobility in Late Antique Gaul
  • Strategies and Opportunities for the Non-Elite
  • Allen E. Jones
  • Published online:
    18 December 2009
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
  • In Social Mobility in Late Antique Gaul, Allen Jones explores the situation of the non-elite living in Gaul during the late fifth and sixth centuries. Drawing especially on evidence from Gregory of Tours' writings, he formulates a social model based on people of all ranks who were acting in ways that were socially advantageous to them, such as combining resources, serving at court, and participating in ostentatious religious pursuits, such as building churches. Viewing the society as a whole, and taking into account specific social groups, such as impoverished prisoners, paupers active at churches, physicians, and wonder-working enchanters, Jones creates an image of Barbarian Gaul as an honor-driven, brutal, and flexible society defined by social mobility. His work also addresses topics such as social engineering and competition, magic and religion, and the cult of saints.

Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion
  • The Power of the Hysterical Woman
  • Margaret Y. MacDonald
  • Published online:
    15 December 2009
    Print publication:
    03 October 1996
  • This is a study of how women figured in public reaction to the church from New Testament times to Christianity's encounter with the pagan critics of the second century CE. The reference to a hysterical woman was made by the most prolific critic of Christianity, Celsus. He was referring to a follower of Jesus - probably Mary Magdalene - who was at the centre of efforts to create and promote belief in the resurrection. MacDonald draws attention to the conviction, emerging from the works of several pagan authors, that female initiative was central to Christianity's development; she sets out to explore the relationship between this and the common Greco-Roman belief that women were inclined towards excesses in religion. The findings of cultural anthropologists of Mediterranean societies are examined in an effort to probe the societal values that shaped public opinion and early church teaching. Concerns expressed in New Testament and early Christian texts about the respectability of women, and even generally about their behaviour, are seen in a new light when one appreciates that outsiders focused on early church women and understood their activities as a reflection of the group as a whole.

Luke's Portrait of Paul
  • John Clayton Lentz, Jr
  • Published online:
    10 December 2009
    Print publication:
    04 March 1993
  • The purpose of this book is to seek a fuller understanding of how the characterisation of Paul in Acts would have been perceived by those who first read or heard the Lucan narrative. As the author makes clear, the careful reader of Acts should be amazed at the way St Paul is portrayed therein. Dr Lentz demonstrates, through a careful examination of particular texts, the great improbability that a Jew of strict Pharisaic background would have held, let alone been proud of, Roman citizenship and citizenship of the city of Tarsus. By investigating the social and legal expectations of the first century, the author shows that Paul is seen to be deferred to in matters of legal minutiae by those in positions of authority. He is given high social status and abundant moral virtue in order to attract to Christianity the high-ranking citizen who would recognise in Paul the classical cardinal virtues.

Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire
  • Edited by Iain Gardner, Samuel N. C. Lieu
  • Published online:
    10 December 2009
    Print publication:
    03 June 2004
  • Founded by Mani (c. AD 216–276), a Syrian visionary of Judaeo-Christian background who lived in Persian Mesopotamia, Manichaeism spread rapidly into the Roman Empire in the third and fourth centuries AD and became one of the most persecuted heresies under Christian Roman emperors. The religion established missionary cells in Syria, Egypt, North Africa and Rome and has in Augustine of Hippo the most famous of its converts. The study of the religion in the Roman Empire has benefited from discoveries of genuine Manichaean texts from Medinet Madi and from the Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt, as well as successful decipherment of the Cologne Mani-Codex which gives an autobiography of the founder in Greek. This 2004 book is a single-volume collection of sources for this religion, and draws from material mostly unknown to English-speaking scholars and students, offers in translation genuine Manichaean texts from Greek, Latin and Coptic.

Geography in Early Judaism and Christianity
  • The Book of Jubilees
  • James M. Scott
  • Published online:
    10 December 2009
    Print publication:
    18 July 2002
  • In this 2002 book, James M. Scott focuses on a particular Old Testament pseudepigraphon - the Book of Jubilees, the revelation of an angel to Moses announcing the expectation of a messiah from Judah. He traces the appropriation of the Book of Jubilees in early Christian sources from the New Testament to Hippolytus and beyond, and more specifically focuses on the reception of Jubilees 8–9, an expansion of the so-called Table of Nations in Genesis 10 (1 Chronicles 1). The book takes an interdisciplinary approach based on detailed analysis of primary sources, much of which is seldom considered by New Testament scholars, and explores the neglected topic of ancient geographical conceptions. By studying geographical aspects of the work, Dr Scott is able to relate Jubilees to both Old and New Testament traditions, bringing important new insights into Christian concepts of annunciation.

Becoming Roman
  • The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul
  • Greg Woolf
  • Published online:
    09 December 2009
    Print publication:
    08 October 1998
  • This book is a study of the process conventionally termed 'Romanization' through an investigation of the experience of Rome's Gallic provinces in the late Republic and early empire. Beginning with a rejection of the concept of 'Romanization' it describes the nature of Roman power in Gaul and the Romans' own understanding of these changes. Successive chapters then map the chronology and geography of change and offer new interpretations of urbanism, rural civilization, consumption and cult, before concluding with a synoptic view of Gallo-Roman civilization and of the origins of provincial cultures in general. The work draws on literary and archaeological material to make a contribution to the cultural history of the empire which will be of interest to ancient historians, classical archaeologists and all interested in cultural change.

The Written Gospel
  • Edited by Markus Bockmuehl, Donald A. Hagner
  • Published online:
    07 December 2009
    Print publication:
    28 July 2005
  • This book comprehensively surveys the origin, production and reception of the canonical gospels in the early church. The discussion unfolds in three steps. Part One traces the origin of the 'gospel' of Jesus, its significance in Jewish and Hellenistic contexts of the first century, and its development from eyewitness memory to oral tradition and written text. Part Two then more specifically examines the composition, design and intentions of each of the four canonical gospels. Widening the focus, Part Three first asks about gospel-writing as viewed from the perspective of ancient Jews and pagans before turning to the question of reception history in the proliferation of 'apocryphal' gospels, in the formation of the canon, and in the beginnings of a gospel commentary tradition.

Personal Patronage under the Early Empire
  • Richard P. Saller
  • Published online:
    03 December 2009
    Print publication:
    03 June 1982
  • Personal patronage was an accepted element in the functioning of Roman society. It is usually considered to be a particularly Republican phenomenon, which declined as other mechanisms developed with the growth of the imperial bureaucracy. Dr Saller's book, the first major study of patronage in the early Empire, shows that the patron-client relationship continued on much the same basis into the third century AD. Drawing on literary and epigraphic sources, he examines the language and ideology of the patron-client exchange, and then investigates how the exchange functioned in the political, economic and social life of the Roman world from the imperial court to the subjects in the provinces. A case study of North Africa illustrates the importance of patronage relationships in a province which produced many members of the new bureaucracy and also eventually an emperor, with consequences for the range of patronage bonds.

Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination
  • William Fitzgerald
  • Published online:
    03 December 2009
    Print publication:
    09 March 2000
  • This book explores the presence of slaves and slavery in Roman literature and asks particularly what the free imagination made of the experience of living with slaves, beings who both were and were not fellow humans. As a shadow humanity, slaves furnished the free with other selves and imaginative alibis as well as mediators between and substitutes for their peers. As presences that witnessed their owners' most unguarded moments they possessed a knowledge that was the object of both curiosity and anxiety. The book discusses not only the ideological relations of Roman literature to the institution of slavery, but also the ways in which slavery provided a metaphor for a range of other relationships and experiences, and in particular for literature itself. It is arranged thematically and covers a broad chronological and generic field.

Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens
  • Rosalind Thomas
  • Published online:
    03 December 2009
    Print publication:
    09 March 1989
  • Despite its written literature, ancient Greece was in many ways an oral society. This is the first serious attempt to study the implications of this view. Dr Thomas stresses the coexistence of literacy and oral tradition in Greece and examines their character and interaction. Concentrating on the plentiful evidence from Classical Athens, she shows how the use of writing developed only gradually and under the influence of the previous oral communication. Drawing on anthropological discussion, the author isolates different types of Athenian oral tradition, building up a picture of Athens' traditions about its past and examining why they changed and disappeared. This study provides crucial insights into the methods and achievements of the Greek historians. It also has major implications for the interpretation of ancient literacy.

Cities, Peasants and Food in Classical Antiquity
  • Essays in Social and Economic History
  • Peter Garnsey
  • Edited by Walter Scheidel
  • Published online:
    02 December 2009
    Print publication:
    28 May 1998
  • Sixteen essays in the social and economic history of the ancient world, by a leading historian of classical antiquity, are here brought conveniently together. Three overlapping parts deal with the urban economy and society, peasants and the rural economy, and food-supply and food-crisis. While focusing on eleven centuries of antiquity from archaic Greece to late imperial Rome, the essays include theoretical and comparative analyses of food-crisis and pastoralism, and an interdisciplinary study of the health status of the people of Rome using physical anthropology and nutritional science. A variety of subjects are treated, from the misconduct of a builders' association in late antique Sardis, to a survey of the cultural associations and physiological effects of the broad bean.

New Creation in Paul's Letters and Thought
  • Moyer V. Hubbard
  • Published online:
    02 December 2009
    Print publication:
    11 July 2002
  • As a biblical motif, 'new creation' resonates throughout the pages of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and occupies a central place in the apostle Paul's vision of the Christian life. Yet the biblical and extra-biblical occurrences of this theme vary widely in meaning, referring to either a new cosmos, a new community, or a new individual. Beginning with the Old Testament and working through the important texts of Second Temple Judaism, Moyer V. Hubbard focuses on how the motif functions in the argument, strategy, and literary structure of these documents, highlighting its role as the solution to the perceived plight. He then explores in detail which senses of the term Paul intends in Galatians 6.15 and 2 Corinthians 5.17, concluding that 'new creation' in Paul's letters describes the Spirit-wrought newness of the person in Christ, and is fundamentally anthropological in orientation.

Death-Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity
  • Ian Morris
  • Published online:
    02 December 2009
    Print publication:
    22 October 1992
  • In this innovative book Dr Morris seeks to show the many ways in which the excavated remains of burials can and should be a major source of evidence for social historians of the ancient Graeco-Roman world. Burials have a far wider geographical and social range than the surviving literary texts, which were mainly written for a small elite. They provide us with unique insights into how Greeks and Romans constituted and interpreted their own communities. In particular, burials enable the historian to study social change. Ian Morris illustrates the great potential of the material in these respects with examples drawn from societies as diverse in time, space and political context as archaic Rhodes, classical Athens, early imperial Rome and the last days of the western Roman empire.

Empire and Memory
  • The Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture
  • Alain M. Gowing
  • Published online:
    02 December 2009
    Print publication:
    11 August 2005
  • The memory of the Roman Republic exercised a powerful influence on several generations of Romans who lived under its political and cultural successor, the Principate or Empire. Empire and Memory explores how (and why) that memory manifested itself over the course of the early Principate. Making use of the close relationship between memoria and historia in Roman thought and drawing on modern studies of historical memory, this book offers case-studies of major imperial authors from the reign of Tiberius to that of Trajan (AD 14–117). The memory evident in literature is linked to that imprinted on Rome's urban landscape, with special attention paid to the Forum of Augustus and the Forum of Trajan, both which are particularly suggestive reminders of the transition from a time when the memory of the Republic was highly valued and celebrated to one when its grip had begun to loosen.

Page 783 of 1200