Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Browse subjects
  3. Classical Studies
  4. Ancient history
  5. Content listing

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

23990 results in Ancient history

Page 938 of 1200

  • 5 - Emperor, Senate and magistrates

  • 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 214-237

  • Summary

    The relationship between emperor and Senate was always the result of the tension between what the majority of senators thought the emperor should be, and what he really was, or could become: princeps or dominus. Vespasian, for instance, had been a senator for more than thirty years. In Britain the reason for the appointment of a iuridicus was probably the predominantly military duties of the consular legates, at least under Vespasian and Domitian. Only in Italy were things changed to any significant degree, first by Hadrian and later by Marcus Aurelius. Despite the establishment of the eleven regiones by Augustus, Italy had no real territorial subdivisions. Hence it also had no officials who could take on the duties of regional governors, and as a result all the inhabitants of the cities of Italy had recourse only to the magistrates of Rome when they sought judgement on matters outside the competence of the municipal magistrates.

  • 21 - Syria and Arabia

  • 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 635-663

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses the four main aspects of the history of Roman provinces: the process of provincialization; the organization of the indigenous societies; the spread of the civic model and the urbanization of the region; and the success of the artisan class. In the south, on the boundary between the provinces of Syria and Arabia, the Hauran was no less rich, though less completely explored. On a general level, the cities of Syria and Arabia, like those of Asia Minor, were eager for the adornment which characterized the Antonine era. Syria and Arabia held an advantageous position in commerce between the empire and the countries to the East, which classical authors occasionally call simply Indica, although this covers central Asia, China and the Arabian peninsula as much as the Indian subcontinent. Syria, which had ended up by incorporating all the client states west of the Euphrates, was counted among the richest provinces of the eastern Mediterranean.

  • 32 - Philosophy

  • from PART Vb - ART AND CULTURE
  • 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 922-942

  • Summary

    Presumably as a reaction against the dogmatism of Antiochus, one finds arising in the mid-first century BC the figure of Aenesidemus, originally an Academic, who turns his energies to reviving the scepticism of Pyrrho of Elis. All the four Hellenistic traditions, Platonist, Aristotelian, Stoic and Epicurean, continued vigorous throughout the period, though, interestingly, without any formal school structure to support them. Apart from the Epicureans, then, there is no clear evidence of a continuous, centralized structure for any of the major schools throughout the period. On the other hand, this lack of a central authority did not prevent the development of a considerable degree of systematization of doctrine. In this the Platonists and the Peripatetics were doubtless influenced by the scholastic tendencies of the Stoic school. It seems suitable, in a contribution to a general history, to close with some remarks as to the role or roles assumed by philosophers in society, as these were varied and important.

  • 35 - Religion

  • from PART Vb - ART AND CULTURE
  • 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 984-1008

  • Summary

    The Roman empire produced a lot of movement of people, and it was this that gave scope to the spread of so-called mystery religions, almost all cults derived from the ancient cultures of the Near East. The heart of Roman religion continued to be the traditional ceremonies of the ancestral religion as practised at Rome. Under the Flavians, the process by which each province acquired a provincial assembly and festivals of the imperial cult was completed in the western provinces. The importance of the so-called oriental or mystery cults is greater than the numerical strength of their followers, perhaps never more than a small fraction of the population. This is because these cults, despite the comparatively small numbers and relatively modest social level of their membership, did express, if in different ways and to different degrees, 'the new mood' which was to dominate the religion of the empire through to the triumph of Christianity.

  • 24 - Trade

  • 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 710-740

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses all forms of market exchange including everything from local trade in which very little transport of goods might be involved to trade over long distances, both inside and outside the Roman empire. It talks about what is now known about patterns of trade in various commodities, about the social and institutional mechanisms by which trade was conducted, and about the role of governments. The main geographical patterns of long-distance trade were determined by the location of these markets and of the centres of production or supply. Many merchants avoided specialization, and for this reason among others it is artificial to discuss Roman trade commodity by commodity. It remains true that reasons of technology and of social structure prevented the Romans from replacing their agrarian economy, in which the mass of the population lived not much above subsistence level, with a more dynamic system.

  • 34 - Art and architecture

  • from PART Vb - ART AND CULTURE
  • 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 966-983

  • Summary

    Greek artefacts, craftsmen and artists had penetrated Rome since regal days; from the second century BC this trickle had become a continuing and influential flood, contributing together with Italic and Etruscan architecture and art, and the developing central Italian and Roman concrete architecture, to the rich tapestry of the art of the capital. Vespasian (69-79), founder of the Flavian dynasty, showed an astute pragmatism in his handling of architecture and art. In the provinces the architectural and art forms characteristic of the Flavian era continued to flourish. Dynamism returned to imperial commissions with the Romano-Spanish Trajan. The age of Hadrian (117-38) proved to be extraordinary, largely because of the extent to which he was able to impress upon it his own many-sided personality: ruler, philhellene, architect, dilettante, poet, traveller and romantic. The rich artistic harvest of the Flavian to the Antonine ages was not just an imperial, but a corporate achievement, one which offered a worthy inheritance to following generations.

  • 19 - The Danube provinces

  • 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 577-603

  • Summary

    The Danube provinces of the Roman empire were dominated by the presence of the army. Three generations after the reign of Hadrian saw the Illyriciani of the Danube lands a dominant group in the power struggles of the empire. By setting a limit to the Roman empire in that quarter Hadrian had begun a frontier policy that resulted in the massively fortified perimeters of the later empire. At the end of the Antonine period the government of the Danube provinces required the services of ten Roman senators, all but the proconsul in Macedonia serving in peacetime a term of around three years. By the middle decades of the second century there had developed in the Danube provinces a Latin-speaking Roman provincial culture to which local native traditions appear to have contributed little. This was based on the growing settlements along the river and was bound up with the influence of locally recruited legions and auxilia.

  • 23 - The land

  • 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 679-709

  • Summary

    In the Graeco-Roman world land was the source of subsistence and of wealth. Land was looked to primarily for food. This chapter begins with an assessment of the food-producing capacities of the territories making up the Roman empire and the manner in which they were tapped, against the background of the opportunities offered and constraints imposed by the physical environment. Consideration is given to developments in the agrarian economy in our period; expansion of the area under cultivation and the issue of technological progress; patterns of land-holding and methods of managing and working the land; and, finally, agricultural productivity. The period of the Principate witnessed the expansion of agriculture, especially in the provinces of the West. Crop performance and productivity levels, were governed by a number of variables. For convenience two groups of four are divided: on the one hand, weather, seed quality, soil and technology: on the other, the supply of land, labour and seed-corn, and proprietorial attitudes.

  • 2 - Nerva to Hadrian

  • 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 84-131

  • Summary

    M. Cocceius Nerva's celebration of Divus Augustus on coins was to show his desire for continuity with the Julio-Claudians, and he was eventually buried in the Mausoleum of Augustus with those emperors. Nerva's regime promised stability through continuity of the acceptable aspects of Domitian's rule. The reign of Trajan, rather than the brief episode of Nerva, must be held the effective beginning of that period 'during which', said Gibbon, 'the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous'. The growing 'paternalism' demonstrated by the Flavians continued under Trajan. Short of adoption, Trajan could have indicated his wishes clearly by advancing Hadrian's career rapidly. Trajan made even the shrewd and sceptical Tacitus feel that Rome was again fulfilling her destiny under an emperor who advanced her boundaries to the Indian Ocean. Under the Flavians, Nerva and Trajan, the Principate had finally produced what the empire needed: the tenacious Agricola, the diligent Frontinus, the conscientious Pliny.

  • 22 - Judaea

  • 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 664-678

  • Summary

    Nearly all the main pillars of the structure of Judaean society were destroyed in AD 70. Jerusalem, the Temple and the priesthood were in ruins. Pagan writers wrote little about Judaea except when the province appeared a military threat to the empire; when at peace the region was neither strategically nor economically significant. This chapter discusses the nature of Jewish society in Palestine in the fifty years between AD 70 and the outbreak of the Bar Kochba War. It is likely that all Jews hoped, in vain, for the rapid rebuilding of the sanctuary in Jerusalem. Evidence for Jewish settlement in the countryside of Egypt and Cyrene comes to an abrupt halt, although a few Jews were attested again in Egypt from the late third century. In place of the great heterogeneity of the era before AD 70, rabbinic Jews began a process of religious self-definition parallel to the contemporary development within Christianity.

  • 29 - Family and household

  • 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 855-874

  • Summary

    In language and law the Roman family appears very different from the contemporary family: no word for the nuclear family unit, the nearly complete lifelong dependence of children on their pater, and the nearly complete independence of wife from husband. Domus was the word commonly used in classical discussions of family and household, but it, too, does not correspond with the contemporary primary meaning of 'family'. Roman law offered a means to allow fathers to entrust their wives with effective management of the patrimony by bequeathing the estate to their children but lifetime usufruct to their wives. For every kind of support offered by kin beyond the household, examples can be found of both agnatic and non-agnatic relatives providing it. Clearly, the Roman, propertied family differed from the family of the industrial age because of the drastically lower life expectancy, the importance of inherited property and the pervasive presence of slaves in the household.

  • 30 - Literacy

  • from PART Vb - ART AND CULTURE
  • 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 875-897

  • Summary

    Roman Britain illustrates the possible limits of literacy in the provinces. Most of the graffiti scratched on pottery derives either from military sites or from towns, just as most of the names written on tiles and bricks before they were fired are Roman names, most of them probably soldiers. Writing played a number of important roles in the life and working of the Roman army in Britain, yet it seems hardly to have penetrated the countryside, except in the form of milestones and at rural sanctuaries like Uley. Documentary evidence provides the surest guide to literacy levels in any society. A degree of uniformity in the way in which the Roman military used writing, whether on papyrus or wooden writing tablets, is perhaps the least surprising aspect of the unity. This chapter discusses the extent to which the empire itself was sustained by and generated texts. Non-military uses of writing are known primarily from Roman Egypt.

  • 31 - Literature and sophistic

  • from PART Vb - ART AND CULTURE
  • 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 898-921

  • Summary

    Before Latin literature had staggered its first imitative steps, Greek education and culture had been diffused by Alexander's conquests not simply across the eastern Mediterranean but as far as Afghanistan and India. This chapter discusses the Greek philosophy of the empire. It is important to note that many sophists and philosophers saw each other as rivals in the provision of tertiary education. Mannered style and Atticist language suggest that Achilles, Longus and Heliodorus of Emesa may have been practising sophists. Many of the subjects were popularized in didactic poetry, usually, following the Hesiodic tradition, in dactylic hexameters. The Latin literary world presents a fundamentally different picture from the Greek, and at least part of the explanation may be found in the different place in it of sophistic rhetoric. The absence of sophistic declamation by members of the élites of the Latin West becomes much less puzzling if that function is conceded to Greek sophistic.

  • 33 - Medicine

  • from PART Vb - ART AND CULTURE
    • By Vivian Nutton, The Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London
  • 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 943-965

  • Summary

    Voluminous writings of Galen are the major source of information on Roman medicine. This chapter redresses the traditional imbalance by looking first at the general background and broader medical developments before describing the achievements of four major medical men, Soranus, Aretaeus, Rufus and Galen. Far from displaying a monolithic and dull academicism, medicine in the first two centuries of the Roman empire was the focus of a lively debate and discussion, and the concern of a great variety of healers, not just of the devotees of Hippocrates. The topic of acute and chronic diseases was also treated at length by an author of a different theoretical standpoint, Aretaeus of Cappadocia. To think of medicine in the Roman empire solely in terms of the surviving medical texts, the productions of only a few authors, is to underestimate the possibilities of healing available, and to attribute an exaggerated importance to the mere chance of survival.

  • 6 - The growth of administrative posts

  • 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 238-265

  • Summary

    In the light of the problematic nature of the sources and of previous research, any portrayal of the development of administrative posts can only be tentative. In the period from Augustus to the end of Nero's reign, four principal areas developed within the part of the administration entrusted to equestrians, imperial freedmen and slaves: offices around the emperor; positions which were mainly connected with the city of Rome; offices whose responsibilities extended beyond the city of Rome itself; and numerous other administrative posts in Italy. At the start of the reign of Vespasian, one can distinguish with relative certainty about seventy areas of work, with widely differing importance and scope, which were concerned with the administration of the empire alongside the areas entrusted to members of the Senate. While the number of administrative departments in the provinces had increased considerably, from the time of Vespasian onwards, there were only a few new offices created at the heart of the empire.

  • 28 - Status and patronage

  • 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 817-854

  • Summary

    Rural patronage is likely to have been widespread in defining social relationships in the countryside, to judge by the evidence from the later empire and by modern Mediterranean studies. To the modern historian the élite Romans' perception of their social order seems incomplete, unsatisfactory and self-serving. The hierarchy and legitimacy of the ordines, and the privileges accorded them, were accepted as self-evident, with no thought given to how the Roman conception of the social order was projected and legitimated outside its centre. For members of the élite of the Roman empire, men like Aelius Aristides and Dio, the empire's social order was largely unproblematic. Elite imperial authors believed wealth to be a vital constituent of a Roman's standing. The economic and social structures in the towns were more conducive to upward mobility. By the end of the second century, however, men from the provinces came to dominate in the senatorial and equestrian ordines.

  • 26 - Commerce and finance

  • from PART Va - ECONOMY AND SOCIETY
    • By J. Andreau, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
  • 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 769-786

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses the financial activity of the senators, knights and other nobles, and that of the intermediaries, money-changers and professional bankers. Money-changers and professional bankers had existed for a long time alongside élite financiers. In Italy and the western areas of the empire, the major distinguishing feature of the money-changers/bankers, the argentarii and coactores argentarii, was their participation at auctions, so as to provide credit for the purchasers of the objects on sale. In the Roman world of the first and second centuries, no category of financiers limited themselves to loans for consumption. But this does not mean that the majority of loans were productive, nor that the banks were the privileged helpers of production and commerce. Throughout the Roman period, loans and orders of payment never circulated freely. References to the financial affairs of the upper classes are brief and fragmentary for all periods.

Page 938 of 1200