This chapter demonstrates the enduring vitality and importance of the trope of the captive city (urbs capta) for late antique authors. Narratives of captured ancient cities follow a set pattern often modeled on the destruction of Troy but also, in Jewish and Christian contexts, on the sieges of Jerusalem. While these highly formulaic narratives are of little use to modern scholars interested in reconstructing specific acts of siege warfare, they provide historians with invaluable evidence for ways in which late Romans reckoned with the impact of war on civilian populations, which assumed a new urgency in the later empire when the sacked cities were increasingly Roman, and when both victim and aggressor were Christians. By tracing the use of the captive city trope from the late fourth to the sixth century, the chapter explains how Christian authors reframed the urbs capta motif by shifting the focus from the city to the church as the locus of suffering.

The essays in this collection are remarkable for the wealth of the evidence and the power of the arguments presented, about Roman republican women, by twenty-first century women–and men–from around the globe. The capacious reach of the research shared, notwithstanding the ostensibly narrow scope of the topic, demands a similarly capacious perspective in framing a response to these, puissant, riches. Hence I would urge all of us who benefit from this research to be as elastic, and as generous, as possible in thinking, for the future, about how we might most capaciously and productively define all three terms that have framed this volume–women, wealth, and power–in the context of their time, place and socio-cultural ambiance. I consequently pose the question: in our subsequent investigations on this topic, what and whom might we include in each of these three analytical categories, women, wealth, and power, that have yet to be accorded as much scrutiny as they might?

Sophocles belongs to that small group of authors whose works – or some fraction of them – have always been classics.1 Even Euripides, who was ultimately more influential – more widely performed after his death, more often quoted and studied – than Sophocles, was not as popular for a start, whereas Sophocles, like Homer as represented by the Iliad and Odyssey, or Virgil, or Horace, did not have to wait to achieve canonical status. A high proportion of his plays were outstandingly successful when first put on in the drama competitions of his lifetime; some of the most admired of these became part of the theatrical repertoire after his death and stayed there as long as plays were performed; at least a handful were intensively studied by the students and scholars of later antiquity, survived as classics in the Christian educational system of the Byzantine period and safely reached print in Venice in 1502.

Anachronism-hunting has been out of fashion with scholars in recent times, for the good reason that it can easily seem like a rather trivial sort of parlour game. But given that Greek tragedy draws so heavily on the past, a close look at some examples may perhaps throw light on a far from trivial subject, the dramatists’ perception of the heroic world.

So long as anachronism was treated as an artistic failing the debate was bound to be unproductive; one can sympathise with Jebb’s view (on Soph. El. 48ff.) that Attic tragedy was ‘wholly indifferent’ to it. And one can see why later scholars have objected to the very idea of anachronism as irrelevant and misleading. Ehrenberg, for example, wrote in 1954.

A notable intellectual development of the past decade or two has been the ever-growing interest in human consciousness and the workings of the mind. Sometimes grouped under the umbrella term ‘cognitive sciences’, diverse disciplines such as neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, computer science, and linguistics have all made major contributions to our understanding of the human mind and brain; and the large number of popular science books published in this area show that this can be an engrossing topic for the layperson as much as for experts.1 In this article we want to explore, at a rather general and non-technical level, how this focus on matters of cognition can help us think about an aspect of Greek tragedy.

My topic is the reception of Agamemnon in Greek in the long period of continuous theatrical tradition from the time of its first showing at Athens in 458 BC to the end of pagan antiquity. Familiar enough territory, one might think – at least to the extent that everyone recognises the play (along with Libation Bearers and Eumenides) as seminal for the development of Attic drama; but mysterious in many respects, largely because our evidence is so patchy. For a start, we have no actual record of a specific revival of the play during that long period (c. 800 years?).1 But it is inconceivable that revivals never happened in some form or another, and this mismatch may be a good starting point for thinking about methodology.

Luckily there has been an encouraging shift in recent years towards a fairly catholic view of reception history, and this has made the task less daunting.

This chapter explores the written and material evidence for civilian quartering of Roman troops in late antiquity. The civic duties to extend hospitium or hospitalitas are reconstructed from the Republic until the late Roman Empire, focusing on the period between the fourth century ce and mid-sixth century ce. By looking at the literary evidence for housing troops in civilian homes penned in the Republic and early Principate, the convention of using moralizing rhetoric to describe soldiers quartered in cities is established. This classicizing rhetoric is then used to reframe later allegations concerning the effects of Constantine’s alleged movement of frontier troops into cities. This reconsideration of the extant evidence for Roman troop quartering questions and amends how we should write the lived experiences of civilians living in late Roman cities.

Critics are always reminding us that character-drawing in Greek tragedy was a very different thing from what we meet in the modern theatre, different and (it is implied) perhaps more limited or rudimentary. But this contrast between ancient and modern is too vague to be illuminating: we need to define exactly what kind of difference it is before we can decide whether it is important. In drama meant for live performance it can hardly be a difference of technique, since every playwright is limited to two basic means of character-drawing, what his figures say and do and what other people say and do to them and about them. Nor can there be much significance in differences of convention.

This chapter explores the impact of warfare on North African communities and their built environment during Late Antiquity (fourth to sixth century). While the political upheavals, internal conflicts, and the invasions that shaped the region during this period have been extensively studied, the local effects and responses to these challenges remain underexplored. Drawing on selected case studies, this work combines archaeological and textual evidence to examine and compare the actions taken by local communities and their rulers – the Western Roman Empire, the Vandal Kingdom, and the Eastern Roman Empire – in response to ongoing conflict. From the centenaria of Tripolitania and the fortified estates of Byzacena and Proconsularis to the fortifications built under Justinian’s regime and its successors, this chapter highlights the role of warfare and its consequences in reshaping the provincial landscapes of North Africa, offering new insights into the region’s social and physical transformation during this period.

The image of the polis as a model for thinking about human society is pervasive, though not always explicit, in our surviving texts of Greek tragedy – and at the same time extraordinarily hard to pin down. There is nothing surprising, of course, about its pervasiveness, in a genre funded and organised by the Athenian polis for performance before a large proportion, at least,1 of the assembled politai, and we are in a better position nowadays to appreciate its importance.

This chapter explores the often-overlooked role of women in stasis and civil war, focusing on Fulvia’s involvement in the Perusine War and the funeral of Publius Clodius. Fulvia’s actions, particularly her display of Clodius’ unwashed wounds, set a precedent for Antonius’ later display of Caesar’s body, highlighting the antebellum politics and rhetoric of civil war. The chapter argues that Fulvia’s political role, enhanced during times of stasis and civil war, was crucial in inciting civil strife. Evidence from both sides of the civil war suggests that Fulvia’s actions were politically motivated rather than mere expressions of grief. By reappraising Fulvia’s role, this study aims to better understand Rome’s systemic breakdown before the civil war and the impact of her actions on the political landscape. The chapter concludes that Fulvia’s incitement to stasis was a significant factor in the unfolding of civil war dynamics.

This article advances four arguments about Constantine’s Roman Arch (315). First, it posits that its imagery and inscription endeavored to please a single viewer: the emperor Constantine. That argument narrows the interpretative possibilities regarding its meaning. From presumed anonymous observers of differing faiths, the field narrows to a single imperial viewer, a recent convert to Christianity and a victor in a civil war. Second, the lens of civil war illuminates previously unrecognized Augustan rhetorical and visual tropes that guided the Arch’s makers in legitimating the monument and Constantine’s victory against Maxentius. Third, the article uncovers Christian connotations in the arch’s inscription. Fourth, the neglected Christian subtext opens the possibility for identifying the Arch and the Colossus next to it as the first openly Christian imperial monuments in Rome. The article therefore demonstrates the syncretism of traditional imperial rhetoric and insignia with Christian ideas long before traditionally assumed.

In Rome, being taken as a prisoner of war had dramatic repercussions for the condition of the individual and their family. Captured citizens became a slave to the enemy, or servus hostium, and were excluded from the body politic. However, they could regain freedom and civil rights through redemption. Initially, that was the responsibility of their family, but over time laws regulated the ransoming of prisoners of war, and other actors became involved. This chapter first reviews the Republican Age and the High Empire before addressing the ransoming of captives in Late Antiquity. It discusses individuals and large groups, with ransom paid by families, the emperor, or by bishops. It shows that social status determined the fate of women. According to Justinian’s Digest, a woman freed by a victorious army was considered free or married, and not a slave. According to Ulpian, that principle also applied when a woman was redeemed (redempta) rather than freed.