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23990 results in Ancient history

Page 954 of 1200

  • 1 - Philia

  • Lynette G. Mitchell
  • Book:
    Greeks Bearing Gifts
    Published online:
    06 July 2010
    Print publication:
    08 January 1998, pp 1-21

  • Summary

    ‘You acted very naturally,’ said he. He seemed thoughtful, and after a few moments added: ‘All the same, I don't think much harm would have come of accepting.’

    ‘No harm, of course. But we could not be put under an obligation.’

    ‘He is rather a peculiar man.’ Again he hesitated, and then said gently: ‘I think he would not take advantage of your acceptance, nor expect you to show gratitude … He has rooms he does not value, and he thinks you would value them. He no more thought of putting you under an obligation than he thought of being polite …’

    E. M. Forster, A Room with a View

    People relate to each other in a variety of ways: father and daughter, consumer and producer, lovers, king and subjects, professional colleagues, fellow-employees, doctor and patient, bully and victim, just to give a few examples. All of these relationships are different from each other, and all are expressed differently. Furthermore, the differences in the kinds of relationships are both socially and culturally determined, and can even vary enormously within the same culture over relatively short periods of time.

    In every society there are a number of relationships (although not all) between individuals which operate on the basis of exchange of one kind or another, and just as there are many kinds of relationship, there are also many kinds of exchange.

  • 9 - Rural life in the later Roman empire

  • from PART III - THE EMPIRE: ECONOMY AND SOCIETY
  • Edited by Averil Cameron, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 277-311

  • Summary

    There was in the later Roman world a veritable 'explosion' of documentation and pictorial representation of rural life that paved the way to the medieval world by illustrating the ruralization of the lives of even urban inhabitants. The first thing, which must be studied in any discussion of the countryside in late antiquity, is whether production on the land had declined. There are some reasons why it might have done so: war damage, particularly in frontier regions; loss of land to barbarian settlements; over-taxation in certain parts; shortage of manpower; bad management, particularly as a result of absentee landlords or imperial ownership. But it is necessary to look at the positive evidence also: whether there was better management and technological improvement; and whether new land was being brought into production and new labour resources made available. Assessment of the productivity of the land must include some discussion about the forces of production and the ownership of land.

  • 10 - Trade, industry and the urban economy

  • from PART III - THE EMPIRE: ECONOMY AND SOCIETY
  • Edited by Averil Cameron, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 312-337

  • Summary

    This chapter revolves around urban demand for commodities, both staples and luxury goods. This is because it was in the cities that the mass of non-producing consumers and most of the wealthy were concentrated. Goods changed hands in other settings, but the city remained the central place where rural production converged and exchange took place. Demand was continuous and remained high, for two main reasons. First, though traditional civic institutions did decline, the cities on the whole survived as economic units. Second, their economic life was still dominated by a landed elite. The movement of goods over medium or long distances did not dry up in the late empire, as the finds of pottery amply demonstrate. It was above all the participation of the propertied classes in the urban economy which guaranteed a certain level of independent economic activity, a certain volume of market exchange.

  • 19 - Orthodoxy and heresy from the death of Constantine to the eve of the first council of Ephesus

  • from PART V - Religion
  • Edited by Averil Cameron, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 561-600

  • Summary

    By Constantine's time in both east and west, the baptismal creed had been shaped to give affirmations which were simultaneously denials of gnostic heresy. The controversy about Origen's orthodoxy became acute again in the time of Justinian who, by decree, condemned Origen, Evagrius and Didymus. An accusation of heresy was brought before Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, at which, despite his eloquent protests that he was not denying the need for infants to be baptized, Celestius was declared excommunicate. He left for Ephesus. Augustine was moved to write by the sympathy which Celestius' theses evoked in Africa. The council of Ephesus inaugurated a series of ecumenical councils, and numerous colloquia and lesser councils, to try to reach agreement between the two main groups. The party of 'one nature', called by their opponents 'Monophysites', regarded the party of 'two natures' as holding Jesus to be no more than an inspired man.

  • 17 - The barbarian invasions and first settlements

  • from PART IV - FOREIGN RELATIONS AND THE BARBARIAN WORLD
  • Edited by Averil Cameron, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 516-537

  • Summary

    The majority of the Tervingi decided to abandon dieir homelands, and under the leadership of Alavivus and Fritigern petitioned to cross die Danube and enter the Roman empire. With this crossing, and die officially approved settlement of die Tervingian Goths in the Balkans in 376, the narrative of the barbarian invasions and settlements can be said to have begun. This period of invasion can usefully be distinguished within die larger history of barbarian migration and assimilation into the Roman world. An edict appended to the Liber Constitutionum reveals a subsequent set of allocations, probably made in the 520s, in which land was divided equally between Romans and barbarians. Early information on the first settlements, therefore, is very slight. Since the empire of Valentinian III was shored up by die barbarians, it was possible to drink that little had changed since the days of Theodosius I.

  • 24 - Art and architecture

  • from PART VI - ART AND CULTURE
  • Edited by Averil Cameron, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 736-761

  • Summary

    The fourth and fifth centuries saw the continuation of the great traditions of classical art and architecture as they had been practised for several centuries throughout the Roman empire. The changes and the continuities in the art and architecture of the upper levels of society, in the public and private spheres, indicate the wealth and artistic vitality of the empire after the death of Constantine. The art of the fourth century has been studied principally in two ways. One has its roots in the Renaissance and Enlightenment diatribes against the 'decline' and 'degeneracy' supposedly visible in the Arch of Constantine, which juxtaposes fourth-century with second-century imperial relief sculpture. The second method of interpretation has seen the art of the fourth century as the cradle for that of the Middle Ages, and in particular for Christian art. This approach focuses more on the continuities between many of the developments in fourth-century art and the medieval Christian future.

  • 23b - Coptic literature, 337–425

  • from PART VI - ART AND CULTURE
  • Edited by Averil Cameron, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 720-735

  • Summary

    Coptic literature of the period AD 337-425 was essentially a functional literature. It was composed for a definite purpose. This purpose was invariably religious in nature. Texts were written for use in liturgy and ritual, public worship and private devotion, or for instruction and edification. Another notable feature of Coptic literature during the period under consideration is that most of it was originally composed in other languages, chiefly Greek, and translated into Coptic subsequently. For purposes of discussion, this chapter is divided into six categories: magical texts, the Bible and Apocrypha, patristic and homiletic works, monastic texts and martyrologies, the Nag Hammadi library and related tractates, and Manichean writings. Virtually the earliest written evidence for the transmission of the Bible to the native population of Egypt is a Greek-Coptic glossary to Hosea and Amos. Patristic literature in Coptic, at least for the period AD 337-425, consisted chiefly if not entirely of works translated from Greek.

  • 7 - The army

  • from PART II - GOVERNMENT AND INSTITUTIONS
  • Edited by Averil Cameron, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 211-237

  • Summary

    The army was an institution of central importance throughout Roman imperial history. This chapter talks about two sources Notitia Dignitatum, which allows one to see something of the formal organization of the empire's military forces; and History of Ammianus Marcellinus, which enables to observe the army in action, in its military capacity and in its wider political and social context. The main theme in the organizational evolution of the field army after Constantine's death is regionalization. The army was a consumer of human resources, and emperors of the period do seem to have had difficulties finding sufficient recruits. From the advent of monarchy under Augustus, maintenance of a good relationship with the army was always one of the most important political priorities of emperors. The starting-point in assessing the effectiveness of the limitanei must be the question of whether they were in origin a peasant militia, given land to farm while they performed military service.

  • 5 - Emperors, government and bureaucracy

  • from PART II - GOVERNMENT AND INSTITUTIONS
    • By Christopher Kelly, Lecturer in Classics in the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Corpus Christi College
  • Edited by Averil Cameron, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 138-183

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the consequences for emperors and their supporters of the increasing centralization of power and the continued growth of a sophisticated and well-organized bureaucracy. The emperor in the later Roman world was undoubtedly a powerful figure. Later Roman emperors could not rule alone. As fourth-century commentators clearly saw, the effective governance of empire inevitably involved a close reliance on sometimes untrustworthy courtiers, relatives, officials and friends. The payment of money was integral to the workings of later Roman bureaucracy. In an uncertain world, only emperors, as they repeatedly insisted, stood a chance of resolving what for the majority caught up in later Roman government remained a shifting set of tactical possibilities to be played to best advantage. From that point of view it was clearly in the interests of all jockeying for power, position or preferment to cheer loudly as the glittering procession of a godlike emperor passed them by.

  • 21 - Christianization and religious conflict

  • from PART V - Religion
  • Edited by Averil Cameron, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 632-664

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses the process by which the hints of the infinitely diverse religious climate that prevailed in much of the Roman empire in the fourth and fifth centuries have remained what they are for any modern reader - tantalizing fragments of a complex religious world, glimpsed through the chinks in a body of evidence which claims to tell a very different story. One tends to forget how much of the conflict between Constantine and Theodosius II, was considered by late Roman Christians to have been fought out in heaven rather than on earth. The late antique period is characterized by the successful imposition of a rabbinic interpretation of Judaism among the Jewish communities in Palestine, Mesopotamia and elsewhere, and by the formalization and propagation of Zoroastrianism throughout the Sasanian empire. Both are remarkable events of which we know singularly little, compared with the process that we call the 'Christianization of the Roman empire'.

  • 1 - The successors of Constantine

  • from PART I - CHRONOLOGICAL OVERVIEW
  • Edited by Averil Cameron, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 1-43

  • Summary

    In dealing with the established institutions of Rome, where Constantine had already charted the pragmatic course which would be followed by his Christian successors through the century, the emperor faced constraints against the thoroughgoing eradication of paganism which the will of God ideally required - and of which Constans and his brother were eloquently reminded about this time in Firmicus Maternus' pamphlet On the Error of Profane Religions. A more definitive legacy of Constantine's was the transformation of ecclesiastical politics into affairs of state. Constans' destroyer, Fl. Magnus Magnentius, was representative of a new breed of capaces imperii springing up in the western provinces in the fourth century. In over twenty years of defending Roman territory in the east, Amida was the first place to fall to the Persians. At Constantinople he ordered an investigation into the disaster, which resulted in Ursicinus' being retired from his command.

  • 3 - From Jovian to Theodosius

  • from PART I - CHRONOLOGICAL OVERVIEW
  • Edited by Averil Cameron, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 78-110

  • Summary

    At Thilsaphata Jovian met the forces of Procopius and Sebastdanus, which Julian had stationed in the area for the defence of Mesopotamia. The army was divided into two parts: the larger force accompanied Procopius to Tarsus with the body of Julian, and Jovian took the smaller to Antioch, diplomatically visiting the largest city of the eastern empire, where he hoped to make a better impression than Julian had done. Valentinian was an orthodox Nicene Christian. His tolerance in religious matters impressed pagans, many of whom had expected a violent response to Julian's michievous religious policy. In the spring of 368, Theodosius embarked his vanguard at Bononia and crossed the Channel to Rutupiae. An engagement between Theodosius and the Goths ended in a serious defeat for the Romans. After his accession Theodosius took time to understand fully the complexity of Greek Christianity.

Page 954 of 1200