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42566 results in Collections

Page 1538 of 2129

  • 12 - Coinage, society and economy

  • from PART IV - THE ECONOMY OF THE EMPIRE
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 393-439

  • Summary

    From the last decades of the second century to the first decades of the fourth, the economy of the Roman world without doubt suffered the aftershocks of the violent tremors that shook the empire, most of them of a military and political nature. The Roman economy has left behind a large body of material evidence which it has become possible to study more systematically in recent decades thanks to advances in archaeology and epigraphy. This evidence consists of artefacts that have resisted the passage of time: coins; pottery and what can be deduced from it, such as the products transported and sometimes stored in the amphorae-wine, oil and garum. The prosperity of the towns often also has a sumptuary dimension, and bears witness to the structural imbalances in the Roman economy and society. For an economy in which building has always been one of the most prosperous activities, investments in cities are always considered to be a positive sign.

  • 16 - The Arabs and the desert peoples

  • from PART V - THE NON-ROMAN WORLD
    • By Maurice Sartre, Professeur d’Histoire Ancienne à l’Université François-Rabelais
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 498-520

  • Summary

    At the end of the second century the majority of the groups inhabiting the desert between the Antitaurus and the Red Sea were in fact Arabs in the modern sense. South of the Euphrates they were almost the only inhabitants, though some of the population of the oases may have been Aramaic, at Palmyra. On the other hand, north of the Euphrates at Edessa, Hatra or Assur, the Arabs were in a minority. The Arab principality of Edessa was one of the most ancient of those on the far side of the Euphrates, originating when an Arab dynasty took control of the Greek city of Edessa and the surrounding area. The disappearance of the sedentary Arab states and dynasties which had controlled the nomadic Arabs of the Syro-Mesopotamian desert forced Rome to find new means to guarantee the safety of Roman Empire along the frontiers.

  • 1 - The Severan dynasty

  • from PART I - NARRATIVE
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 1-27

  • Summary

    Septimius Severus was born in Lepcis Magna in Africa in 145. The character of Severus' regime was inevitably influenced by the bloodshed, confiscations and terror associated with civil war, and by his dependence on the army. In the Severan era, of the equestrian procurators known to have military experience, about 57 per cent still had held one or more posts in the traditional equestrian militia. The proportion of ex-centurions and tribunes of the guard promoted to procuratorial posts remained roughly similar to that in the second century. The Severan army fought two civil wars, two difficult campaigns in the east, and a costly war in Britain while remaining a powerful effective force, loyal to the dynasty at the accession of Caracalla and Geta, and even after the murder of Geta. Severus himself became a worthy commander-in-chief. He recruited three new legions in Italy, perhaps for the war against Albinus.

  • 8 - Provinces and frontiers

  • from PART III - THE PROVINCES
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 212-268

  • Summary

    Under the Severan emperors there was a significant advance of the limits of territory under direct Roman occupation, in Mesopotamia to the river Tigris and in Africa to the northern fringes of the Sahara desert. Only in the later years of Severus Alexander, last of the Severan dynasty, were there indications of new threats to stability along the northern and eastern frontiers. The half-century between the death of Severus Alexander and the accession of Diocletian appears to have been dominated by inroads of peoples from the north and Persian aggression from the east. The years of stable relations with Germans and Sarmatians across the middle Danube came to an end around the middle of the third century. The general character of Roman frontier deployment in the European provinces has long been known but only recently have there emerged detailed accounts of the eastern frontier between the Black Sea and the Red Sea.

  • 7b - Epiclassical law

  • from PART II - GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 200-211

  • Summary

    The classical period of Roman law is conventionally taken to end in 235 with the death of Alexander Severus. The third-century rescripts which survive cluster into groups. The vast bulk of surviving rescripts is from the reign of Diocletian. The reign of Diocletian saw the compilation of two codifications of imperial rescripts, the Codices Gregorianus and Hermogenianus. The first evidently collected rescripts from the reign of Hadrian up to 291, while the second covered 293-4. The Codex Gregorianus was evidently divided into fifteen or sixteen books up to forty in a book. The five books of sententiae attributed to Paul were the most successful and widespread of epiclassical juristic works. They were used already by the compiler of the Fragmenta Vaticana in about 320 and they were given a boost by being officially approved by Constantine. Some odd surviving works may be best attributed to activity in the schools in the epiclassical period.

  • 2 - Maximinus to Diocletian and the ‘crisis’

  • from PART I - NARRATIVE
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 28-66

  • Summary

    The fifty years following the death of Severus Alexander were among the most disruptive ever experienced by the Roman Empire. Historians conventionally refer to them as a period of 'crisis', which began in 235, reached its peak around 260, and then gradually yielded to the ministrations of a series of reforming emperors, ending with Diocletian. The outstanding characteristic of this crisis was war, both civil and foreign. C. Iulius Verus Maximinus was a man of late middle age. Though of relatively humble stock, he had exploited the opportunities for promotion in the reformed army of Septimius Severus, winning high rank and equestrian status. Between 235 and 285 the Roman Empire experienced great dislocation and distress. The principal causes of these disturbances have now been generally agreed by historians and may indeed be inferred from what Diocletian eventually did to bring them to an end.

  • 5 - The army

  • from PART II - GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 110-130

  • Summary

    The disposition of the Roman army in 235 shows in general terms the main strategical pre-occupations of the empire. Twelve legions and over 100 auxiliary units were concentrated along the Danube from Raetia to Moesia Inferior, while a further eleven legions and over eighty auxiliary units guarded Rome's eastern territories from Cappadocia to Egypt. Aurelian strengthened the army by recruiting two thousand horsemen from Rome's erstwhile enemies the Vandals, and also received offers of troops from the Iuthungi and the Alamanni. This was very much in the Roman tradition of recruiting good fighting peoples from the periphery of the empire and channelling them into the Roman system. Diocletian inherited a long-established military structure, in which many key provinces contained two legions and auxilia. Constantine significantly altered the balance of Rome's military forces established by Diocletian. In the context of the early fourth century, Constantine's arrangements probably provided the best chance of preserving the territory and prestige of the Roman Empire.

  • 6c - The government and administration of the empire in the central decades of the third century

  • from 6 - The emperor and his administration
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 156-169

  • Summary

    The unified political control of the Roman Empire was the issue principally at stake, and the very foundations of the legitimation of imperial power seemed to change both markedly and rapidly. In this respect the accession of Maximinus and his refusal to come to Rome to endorse his designation at the centre of the empire are revealing, for they already show signs of a breakdown in that delicate equilibrium between the senate and the army which had hitherto guaranteed the process of imperial legitimation. On a number of occasions during the two centuries before the Severans, the central authority had intervened in the internal affairs of the Italian urban communities. The administrative areas in which the central government interfered were few and far between, and were those that somehow lay outside the territorial boundaries within which the magistrates of individual towns were allowed to act.

  • 14 - The Sassanians

  • from PART V - THE NON-ROMAN WORLD
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 461-480

  • Summary

    The rise of the Sassanians is better documented than subsequent history, but even so there are conflicting versions of the origin of Ardashir. The first capital of Ardashir in Fars most likely was at Firuzabad, then known as Gor, although later in the reign of Ardashir it received the name Ardashir-khwarreh 'the glory of A', probably in honour of his victories over the Parthians. The Sassanians respected and feared the mighty Roman Empire and continued to designate the later Byzantine state by the same name, although they knew that different peoples lived in the enemy state and served in its armies. The Romans too learned to respect the Sassanians more than they had the weaker Parthians. Perhaps the most significant changes in outlook, culture and society in the third and fourth centuries, both in the Roman and the Sassanian worlds, were the changes in religion which marked the end of the old 'pagan' religions and the flowering of 'universal' religions.

  • 4 - The Reign of Constantine, a.d. 306–337

  • from PART I - NARRATIVE
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 90-109

  • Summary

    Constantine emerged as victor first over Maxentius at the battle of the Milvian Bridge in the late autumn of 312, and then over his erstwhile ally Licinius at Cibalae in 316 and Chrysopolis in 324; however, most of the surviving literature favours and justifies his success. Constantine was to reign as sole emperor from 324 until his death in May 337. The episodes of Constantine's campaign are famously depicted on the arch of Constantine: these include his progress through northern Italy and the siege of Verona, as well as vivid scenes of the defeat of Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge and his army's dramatic engulfment in the Tiber. Constantine's first move during the winter of 312-13 was to strike an alliance with Licinius, cemented by a marriage at Milan between Licinius and Constantine's sister Constantia. Constantine himself was a product of the tetrarchic system and in many respects he behaved no differently from his colleagues and rivals.

  • 18a - Christianity, a.d. 70–192

  • from PART VI - RELIGION, CULTURE AND SOCIETY
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 573-588

  • Summary

    It may have been in Syria that Lucian first encountered Christianity; for not only was he a native of that province, but he says that it was in Syria that the Cynic Peregrinus formed a temporary alliance with the church. Appealing to Greek philosophy in support of Christian teachings, Theophilus produced a learned demonstration that the Pentateuch is superior in antiquity to the literature of Greece. Among the numerous apostolic churches of the Troad Ephesus had the strongest claim on Paul and also purported to house the tombs of John the Apostle and the Virgin Mary. The consumption of pagan offerings is now treated as a heresy, since the idols had been fed with the blood of Christians. Remains of Christianity in Phrygia are prolific, the most famous being the epitaph of Abercius Marcellus. The writings of Paul and Clement show that Greek was the earliest language of the Christians in the capital.

  • 3 - Diocletian and the first tetrarchy, a.d. 284–305

  • from PART I - NARRATIVE
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 67-89

  • Summary

    The two decades of Diocletian's reign saw the re-establishment of political, military and economic stability after half a century of chaos, at the price of a more absolutist monarchy, a greatly expanded army and bureaucracy and a more oppressive tax regime. Probably in 286 or 287, a new feature of the imperial collegiality emerged. Diocletian and Maximian began respectively to use the adjectival epithets Iovius and Herculius, bringing themselves into some sort of relationship with the cognate deities, Jupiter and Hercules. The years 287-90 had also seen important developments in the eastern half of the empire, to which Diocletian had repaired after the appointment of Maximian and perhaps a campaign against the Sarmatians in the autumn, reaching Nicomedia in Bithynia by 20 January 286. Iovius for Diocletian and Galerius, Herculius for Maximian and Constantius, epithets survived in the naming of new provincial divisions in Egypt some years after the end of the first tetrarchy.

Page 1538 of 2129