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23990 results in Ancient history

Page 937 of 1200

  • 8 - Frontiers

  • from PART III - THE EMPIRE
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 293-319

  • Summary

    The quest for natural or moral frontiers was nothing more than a political motive for imperialism. It is in this historiographic tradition that the author begins to examine Roman frontiers, also. Greek frontiers were more cultural than physical, the divisions between measured and unmeasurable space. With the emperor Augustus, Roman concepts of space and geographic measurement took on a new dimension. After Augustus it is often argued that, apart from Roman Britain, there was no substantial territorial addition to the Roman empire in the West until Trajan's annexation of Dacia in the early second century. Although, the Romans never abandoned the ideology of expansion, yet de facto it is evident that they did stop, even if sometimes it is not easy to see exactly where. Analogies of more modern frontiers suggest that while geographic 'natural' features, such as mountains and rivers, may have political and juridical convenience, they are rarely suitable as military lines.

  • 11 - Rebels and outsiders

  • from PART III - THE EMPIRE
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 361-404

  • Summary

    Formal status, more precisely the degrees of generosity in the dispensation of citizenship to the various peoples of the empire, offers only one measurement of membership in that larger city, the patria communis, that the empire pretended to be. The spread of citizenship, and of Roman-style urban communities with which citizenship was correlated, was an uneven process. The extension of citizenship and urban developments of Roman-type in the western Mediterranean was marked by considerable successes in the plains regions of the general geographic area. As with all historical portraits of the 'barbarian', the negative side of the Roman image of the foreigner was rooted in the proven inferiority of the external society. Surrounded by the twin worlds of ethnicity and rusticity were the urban centres that constituted the core of Roman society. Each town and village, depending on the wider regional and ethnic context in which it was embedded, had its own spectrum of unacceptable persons, of social outcasts.

  • 12 - Rome and Italy

  • from PART IV - ROME, ITALY AND THE PROVINCES
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 405-443

  • Summary

    Augustus had started the process of making Rome, as a matter of policy, a worthy capital of the world. Travelling to Rome, city of wonders in a land of wonders, was a special experience. In the world of thinking, speaking and writing, Rome was the centre too, the norm and exemplar of Antonine cities. The architecture of Rome was the greatest of its wonders. The cities of Italy in the Augustan period had functioned as channels of horizontal and vertical social mobility. In the Antonine period, moreover, there was more to economic life than landowning. The nature of production in Italy in this period constitutes one of the most problematic sets of questions in ancient economic history. In the Flavian and Trajanic period, the evidence suggests a burgeoning of the cash-crop based, villa-centred, agrarian economy which had characterized the rural landscape of large parts of Italy since the middle Republic.

  • 10 - Local and provincial institutions and government

  • from PART III - THE EMPIRE
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 344-360

  • Summary

    Government and administration today are somewhat different concepts, the one meaning more or less policy-making, the other the implementation of government decisions. There is no such difference in Roman political thinking and vocabulary, but in the world of facts there is something not exactly similar but going in the same direction. Administration was made easier for those responsible because its aims were fairly restricted: economy and transport, culture, education and science, social relations and welfare were not targets of state intervention. Day-to-day administration was probably not very different between the various types of province. The governor's main job was always to keep the peace of the province against the ubiquitous robbers: curare, ut pacata atque quieta provincia sit quam regit. Another important job of the governor, to ensure that taxes were paid, involved deciding beforehand how many people there were and how much they had to pay.

  • 20 - Greece and Asia Minor

  • from PART IV - ROME, ITALY AND THE PROVINCES
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 604-634

  • Summary

    Greece, Asia Minor and the islands came off lightly in the civil wars of 68-70. The Flavians were ready to promote urbanization and restoration. Vespasian's unification of eastern Asia Minor into the northern section of a great command imposed strains. When Trajan himself began campaigning in the East he brought it to an end. Hadrian on his travels did not neglect military matters but in Greece and even in Asia Minor, in spite of the very large number of milestones bearing his name, they were not his primary interest. The literary sources for Hadrian's tours are inadequate and honours were showered on him whether he acted in person or at some distance. But the dates of his visits to Athens as emperor are virtually certain, with the first becoming the beginning of a new era for the city: 124-5, 128-9 and 131-2. The Panhellenion is the most significant benefaction of Hadrian to Athens and the most difficult to interpret.

  • 25 - Industry and technology

  • from PART Va - ECONOMY AND SOCIETY
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 741-768

  • Summary

    Archaeology has had a growing influence upon the study of Roman industry and technology in recent decades. Specialist studies of industrial products have helped to form an overall picture of industry in the early empire. Three (pottery, metal and textiles) are considered in order to provide a basis for generalizations about the nature, scale and organization of Roman industry. The processing of Roman agricultural products into wine, oil, textiles, or leather bore many similarities to, and was just as complex as, the 'industrial' production of pottery, glass, stone or metal. Terra sigillata derives from a Greek ceramic tradition which included a mixture of plain and decorated forms. The application of technology in the Roman empire is assessed in two different contexts, transport and milling, where new evidence has brought a change in perception, and in some other important aspects of Roman life: water-lifting, agriculture and architecture.

  • 18 - Britain

  • from PART IV - ROME, ITALY AND THE PROVINCES
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 559-576

  • Summary

    Almost the entire period between the accessions of Vespasian and Septimius Severus was dominated by military affairs in Britain. At the beginning of the period of the survey the cities of Britain were recovering from the aftermath of the Boudican rebellion. The three certainly known to have been destroyed, Colchester, London and Verulamium, have each produced evidence of slow recovery with delays in their redevelopment of a decade or more. With one or two exceptions the area where one can identify early villa development is in the south-east. Elsewhere the aristocracy, whether native or immigrant and presumed to be associated with the urban developments of the Flavian period and the second century, is much less visible architecturally in the countryside. By the end of the second century the military and civilian structures of Roman Britain were firmly established. After the decision to abandon the Antonine Wall, the frontier arrangements in the north remained essentially unchanged.

  • 9 - The army

  • from PART III - THE EMPIRE
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 320-343

  • Summary

    The effectiveness of the Roman army of the later first and second centuries AD was as great as it had ever been and was never to be surpassed. The legions in the later first and second centuries were essentially large bodies of highly disciplined and well-equipped infantry, trained primarily to engage the enemy in formal 'set-piece' battles. The extraordinary success of the Roman army can be ascribed to a number of factors, not least of which will have been the military qualities of the emperor and his legates and the spirit that they instilled into the men under their command so that under an emperor like Hadrian, who shared the rigours of camp life with his men, military discipline became very much the order of the day. The significance of the army to the empire and particularly to those frontier provinces in which it was based was not, however, limited to its military role, whether offensive or defensive.

  • 16 - Africa

  • from PART IV - ROME, ITALY AND THE PROVINCES
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 514-546

  • Summary

    On the frontiers the work of the emperors in the second century continued that of the Flavians. The unimportance of Africa as a military theatre in this period is shown by the fact that the standing army for the whole of the Maghreb never contained more than one legion, the Third Augustan Legion, which moved its base from the older part of Proconsularis to that part called Numidia. The control and organization of the tribal territories was clearly a major concern, which began with the Flavians and continued under Trajan and Hadrian. In Trajan's rule and under his successors there was more than one occasion when the corn supply to Rome needed emergency measures, as, for instance, once when Egypt's contribution failed. Production of olive oil was the most important growth area in the Roman African economy, and recent studies have radically revised older minimalist views of this boom.

  • 1 - The Flavians

  • from PART I - NARRATIVE
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 1-83

  • Summary

    Tacitus with justice describes the rise of Titus Flavius Vespasianus to the position of princeps as the work of fortune. Vespasian might appear more fortunate than Augustus in that he did not have to devise a new political system. The main lines of Flavian ideology were, however, clear from the start. Vespasian already had a military reputation behind him when he became princeps. Coins issued under Titus showed Vespasian handing over to his son the government of the world, symbolized by a globe and rudder, with the appropriate legend 'PROVIDENTIA AUGUSTI'. Titus' coins had celebrated the consecration of his father and the vote of a carpentum to his mother: on coins of Domitian it is probably she who appears as Diva Domitilla with her deified husband on the reverse. Domitian, in fact, had conferred on himself the title that most accurately conveyed the character of his rule: he was Censor Perpetuus.

  • 14 - Gaul

  • from PART IV - ROME, ITALY AND THE PROVINCES
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 462-495

  • Summary

    The spread of Latin played an important part in changing Roman attitudes to the Gauls. The Gallic provinces were romanized by the end of the second century AD To begin with, romanization took various forms. In Narbonensis, colonization had an immediate impact, in particular by compelling dispossessed local populations to bring new areas under cultivation. The study of terra sigillata was for a long time the main means through which the economic life of Roman Gaul was studied. For a hundred years, histories of Gaul and studies of the area have concentrated on institutional and administrative developments, seeking to establish the exact boundaries of provinces and civitates, to work out precisely how they operated, and to piece together their prosopographies. Gallo-Roman sculpture ought to have been the object of great works of synthesis, or so one might think on the basis of the great number of pieces of sculpted stone which are gathered for the most part in Esperandieu's Recueil.

  • 27 - Demography

  • from PART Va - ECONOMY AND SOCIETY
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 787-816

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses Roman demography that can be approached in two ways. First, the population of the empire and of its regions can be examined for level, increase or decrease, age and sex structure, and so on. Second, population can be broken down into its three major demographic components: mortality; fertility; and migration. The pattern of Roman fertility was chiefly determined by two factors: marriage customs; and the methods by which fertility was controlled within the ancient world. The Roman demographic structure, though undeniably harsh by modern standards, posed no obstacle to modest population growth. Most of human history has been lived under conditions of mortality not unlike Rome's. Where peace, prosperity and freedom from general epidemic have obtained, populations of the past have normally experienced a modest measure of sustained growth; there is no reason to believe that the Roman empire's population did not grow similarly. The chapter hypothetically reconstructs the pattern of such growth in the early empire.

  • 7 - Provincial administration and finance

  • from PART II - GOVERNMENT AND CIVIL ADMINISTRATION
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 266-292

  • Summary

    The basic system of provincial administration had been established by Augustus, and was only slightly modified by his successors. The emperors after Vespasian also made no changes to the Augustan system. Besides the provinces which were under the direct control of the emperor and governed by senatorial legates or equestrian praesidial procurators, there remained the provinces of the Roman people. The transformation of provinces, which had initially been governed by equestrians, represents the most notable change in provincial administration, though this was not a fundamental change. At the end of the reign of Nero, there were twelve such equestrian governorships, although by the time of Marcus Aurelius this figure had gradually been halved. From the Flavian period onwards and with increasing regularity from the beginning of the second century, it seems that it was necessary to consult the governor before proceeding with large building projects, particularly when they were to be financed using the city's funds.

  • 4 - The emperor and his advisers

  • from PART II - GOVERNMENT AND CIVIL ADMINISTRATION
  • Edited by Alan K. Bowman, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge, Dominic Rathbone, King's College London
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000, pp 195-213

  • Summary

    The bulk of our sources, whether historiographic, juristic or epigraphic, give the impression that the Roman emperor was all-powerful and always busy. There are only a few contemporary sources from the first and second centuries which give any real insight into the composition of the emperor's circle of advisers. Juvenal's fourth Satire contains the only depiction, however distorted, by a literary source of a specific meeting of the consilium and its individual members, in this instance a meeting early in Domitian's reign. According to Juvenal, Domitian was staying at his estate in the Alban hills south-east of Rome, when a fisherman presented him with an extraordinary present: the largest barbel ever to have been caught. Juvenal has not invented the bringing together of senators and equestrians in an advisory body for appearances' sake. It is clear that during the second century, the membership of the emperor's consilium began to become regularized.

Page 937 of 1200