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41796 results in Collections

Page 1845 of 2090

  • 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.

  • 9 - Creative rewriting

  • Edited by Matthew C. Roudané, Georgia State University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams
    Published online:
    28 May 2006
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 167-188

  • Summary

    Though Williams expressed himself, sometimes quite candidly, about his private life, he was always reluctant to give information about his working methods. Yet he repeatedly mentioned the influence of three writers - D. H. Lawrence, Hart Crane, Anton Chekhov - and cited numerous others; from an examination of recent criticism it is possible to compile a list that includes Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, Jean Cocteau, Federico Garcia Lorca, Eugene O'Neill, Harold Pinter, Luigi Pirandello, Bernard Shaw, August Strindberg, Oscar Wilde, and Thornton Wilder. I shall examine the effect on Williams's works of his acknowledged mentors and determine the guise of their presence in the plays. A recent investigation about the significance of Oscar Wilde in this context adds a new perspective on Williams's modes of reading and borrowing and on the subtle planes of intertextuality in his work.

    D. H. Lawrence's influence on Tennessee Williams was documented by Korman J. Fedderl as early as 1966. Fedder's analyses of thirty years ago are still persuasive but his conclusions need revising now that the respective statures of the two artists are more accurately assessed. There is external evidence that Williams had read the works of D. H. Lawrence. In 1939 already he had manifested his admiration for the English novelist by visiting Lawrence's widow, Frieda, in Taos, New Mexico and by promising her to complete a play about her husband.

  • 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.

  • 8 - The church as a public institution

  • 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 238-276

  • Summary

    The Christian church in the Roman empire had been transformed from an object of official indifference and active hostility into the recipient of favour, privilege and protection. The bishops at Sardica in 343 began to formulate the appellate jurisdiction of the Roman bishop ostensibly as a reaction against the rush to involve the imperial power as a court of last resort for settling church issues. At Constantinople the tally of church buildings increased steadily in the generations after Constantine, while in the time of bishop Macedonius, under Constantius II, the eastern capital also began to witness the emergence of a network of monasteries and charitable establishments. Although the bishop's role of judge and arbitrator for his fellow citizens had a history in earlier church procedure, and was enhanced by the increased public profile of the church in the fourth century, it was also given an institutional footing by the endorsement of imperial decrees.

  • 15 - The Germanic peoples

  • from PART IV - FOREIGN RELATIONS AND THE BARBARIAN WORLD
    • By Malcolm Todd, Principal of Trevelyan College and Professor of Archaeology at the University of Durham
  • 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 461-486

  • Summary

    Roman written sources suggest little change within the social order of the Germanic peoples from the first contacts to the migrations. The impact of environmental change in the later Roman Iron Age must also be allowed for, in certain areas at least, most notably in the northern coastlands. From some areas of northern Gaul, however, there have come clear signs of German settlement dating from the late fourth and early fifth centuries. The peoples of the northern German coastlands who posed an increasing threat to the security of the frontier on the lower Rhine and to the coasts of northern Gaul and Britain in the fourth century were lumped together by Roman sources as 'Saxons', though that name embraced wide ethnic variety. By the early fifth century, whether in Gaul, the Danube lands or Scandinavia, Germanic leaders could express a growing confidence that their place in a changed world was assured as never before.

  • 8 - Romantic textures in Tennessee Williams's plays and short stories

  • Edited by Matthew C. Roudané, Georgia State University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams
    Published online:
    28 May 2006
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 147-166

  • Summary

    I believe in Michelangelo, Velhsquez and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by beauty everlasting and the message of art that has made these hands blessed. Amen.

    This, Tennessee Williams proclaimed to be his own creed as an artist. Like his “Poet” of the short story by that name, Tennessee Williams was a natural romantic whose very existence was one of “benevolent anarchy” (“The Poet,” 246). His artistic creed (a term of some significance to a man nurtured in theology) signals the primacy of the artist, not God. He was dedicated to: (I) the power of “design” or artistic control over the material world; (2) the “mystery” of color or the non-rational, supernatural gift of beauty, affecting the artist and the audience; (3) the “redemption” of all things by “beauty” - an act of salvation by means of created and experienced splendor; (4) the “message” of art, the need to communicate the artist's vision of reality to the audience; and (S) the “blessedness” of his hands - his conviction that he is the chosen vessel for this important work.

  • 2 - Entering The Glass Menagerie

  • Edited by Matthew C. Roudané, Georgia State University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams
    Published online:
    28 May 2006
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 29-44

  • Summary

    In The Seagull Chekhov's Trepliov insists that “We need new art forms . . . and if they aren't available, we might just as well have nothing at all.” The statement is not without its irony given Trepliov's own incapacity, but it carried the force of a playwright who was himself dedicated to such innovation. Fifty-five years later, and in a world as much in transition as Chekhov's, Tennessee Williams was conscious of trying to create just such a new form, a “plastic” theatre which owed something, indeed, to the Russian writer for whom a detailed realism was never really a primary objective. As Stanislavsky had remarked of Chekhov's work, “At times he is an impressionist, at times a symbolist; he is a 'realist' where it is necessary.” A tracery of the real was an essential scaffold for his exploration of character and subtle recreation of mood, but his characters inhabit more than a tangible world and reach for something more than the merely material.

  • 6 - Senators and senates

  • 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 184-210

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses the total revolution in the nature of the imperial senatorial order. It considers the institutional changes put in place in the course of the century, the new career patterns which resulted, and the evolving political role of senators, both in central, imperial politics and in the governing of localities. The most obvious institutional innovation of the fourth century was the creation of the senate of Constantinople. The new body did not spring fully formed from the head of the emperor Constantine, however, having at least three marked phases of development. The link between the bureaucracy and the senate was fully institutionalized in the reign of Valentinian I and Valens. The fundamental changes in the nature of the senatorial order naturally affected the type of careers being followed by its members. Individual senators and institutional bodies dominated by senators were involved in a wide variety of ways in imperial politics: the formulation of policy and regimes.

  • 20 - Asceticism: pagan and Christian

  • 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 601-631

  • Summary

    In a tense and ambitious age, asceticism was one possible form of achievement among many. Most important of all, late Roman asceticism would not have been so exuberantly creative if the 'statements' made by differing ascetic traditions and 'read' by those around them had not varied dramatically. To a modern reader all late antique ascetic practices can appear equal, because all seem to be equally a departure from what we have been accustomed to regard as the less ascetic, more world-affirming tone of the classical period. This chapter concentrates on the differences in meaning, attached by differing groups, to what were often commonplace ascetic practices. With Augustine the process is complete. Only through Christ and the Catholic church had the tragic gap between the world of unchanging truth and the world of time been bridged. In the next centuries, the history of asceticism, especially in the west, would increasingly coincide with the history of die Christian church.

  • 2 - Julian

  • 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 44-77

  • Summary

    It was at Nicomedia that Julian first encountered the teaching of Libanius. Libanius' own claim is that Julian was moved to Nicomedia on the orders of the emperor, for fear of his growing popularity in 'court circles' in the capital. Julian remained at Nicomedia when his older brother was elevated to imperial rank in March 351; the two met as the new Caesar passed through the city en route to taking up his residence at Antioch. More significant, though, is Julian's misrepresentation of his position as Caesar in relation to Constantius and the existing military establishment in Gaul. The Paris proclamation displays some of the classic ingredients of a late Roman usurpation. When the law on the qualifications of teachers was issued in June 362, Julian may already have embarked on the journey from Constantinople to Antioch, with the intention of assembling an army to resume the war against Persia which Constantius had left unfinished.

  • 14 - The eastern frontier

  • 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 437-460

  • Summary

    Any description of the eastern frontier must start with a discussion of the relationship between Rome and Persia. During most of the reign of Yezdegerd I (399-420) and in the first years of Theodosius II (408-50), relations between Rome and Persia were marked by a policy of mutual tolerance. In the fourth century the Arab nomad forces, 'Saracens', as they are called in the contemporary literature, became an important factor in the warfare between Rome and Persia to an extent previously unknown. The Jews in Palestine and the Diaspora had enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy under Roman rule from the second century onward. The military organization of the second half of the fourth century had more in common with that of the sixth than with that of the third. This period witnessed the institution of territorial commands held by duces as distinct from the field arm.

  • 22 - Education and literary culture

  • 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 665-707

  • Summary

    This chapter concentrates on literary culture and the cognitive aspects of cultural systems. The traditional rhetorical education continued to be valued throughout the period; it was indeed the only kind of education available, except in special fields like philosophy and law. Christians and pagans alike were deeply influenced by Neoplatonism, and especially by certain key texts. The late fourth century is remarkable for the intensity of literary and intellectual activity among certain members of the upper class, both Christian and pagan; for the sheer volume of surviving works, this is surely the richest period of antiquity. It is hardly surprising if Christian and pagan epistolography followed a similar pattern, with an emphasis on letters of recommendation, consolation and encouragement, in accordance with the demands of late Roman amicitia. A dense and complex ascetic literature, ranging from the more or less popular to the highly rhetorical, developed in the eastern empire from die fourth century onwards, and spread to the west.

Page 1845 of 2090