bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Homo Novus Arpinas ex M. Crassi Familia, [Sallust], Cic 3
Authors: Rawson Elizabeth
Published: November 2023

One hesitates to make even the smallest contribution to the vastly over-swollen literature on the Invective against Cicero attributed to Sallust; and indeed, if one does not regard it as genuine, one cannot care very much what it says. It is, however, at the worst a reasonably well-informed work, showing, perhaps, some knowledge of Cicero’s own writings, though also the tendency of its genre to violent exaggeration; for example, it knows that Cicero practised speaking in youth with M. (Pupius) Pisa-though it naturally makes an obscene suggestion in connection with him. It is then perhaps worthwhile trying to make sense of its oddest remark.
Caesar, Etruria, and the Disciplina Etrusca
Authors: Rawson Elizabeth
Published: November 2023

In investigating the workings of the Roman clientela system in the first century nc, we are accustomed to finding a complex pattern. Within a province or other area, different cities or even different families inside a city may look to different Roman magnates, or even have a plethora of patrons, who can be played off against each other. For example, Sicily in Cicero’s time was particularly richly provided; various branches of the patrician and plebeian Claudii, notably the Marcelli, also Pompey, Cicero himself, and others. After the Mithridatic War, as I have tried to argue, Pompey’s view of his influence and responsibilities in the East clashed head-on with that of the patrician Claudii, who had long-established interests in many parts of the area. A great dynast might indeed control a city, though he would probably have some opponents in it; given inter-city and other rivalries he would find it hard to control a whole province, though his influence might be strong and widespread within it.
Chariot-Racing in the Roman Republic
Authors: Rawson Elizabeth
Published: November 2023

A great deal is known about the institutions connected with chariotracing in Rome and elsewhere m the imperial period, and there has been much interesting recent work on the subject, notably by Alan Cameron. But there has been no detailed discussion of the Republican period, for which of course there is far less evidence. In spite of Regner’s article on the ludi circenses in RE Suppl. 7, we are still largely dependent on the work of Mommsen, Friedlander, and Drexel. But some questions have never been asked, and certain pieces of possible new evidence have appeared. In particular, there are problems and conflicts of evidence which are worth investigating, since a not unimportant aspect of Roman social, or even political, life is involved.
The Life and Death of Asclepiades of Bithynia
Authors: Rawson Elizabeth
Published: November 2023

It can be argued that there was no intellectual figure at work in Rome in the period of the late Republic who had more originality and influence than the Bithynian doctor Asclepiades, who founded an important medical school and was still being attacked nearly three hundred years after his death by Galen, and two hundred years later still by Caelius Aurelianus. His claims to originality rested both on his theory of the causes of disease, and on his methods of treatment. Turning away from the Empiricism recently fashionable, he argued that experience without Jc6yoi;-, theory or reason, was useless. His own theory was based on the scientific ideas of the late fourthcentury philosopher Heraclides Ponticus, and seems to have postulated not awµa, tiny indivisible particles, but oyxot, masses, which are continually in motion and splitting into innumerable fragments, 0Qavaµara, of different shapes and sizes, which re-form to create perceptible bodies. The particles were separated by invisible gaps, TCOQOl or pores; friction between particles created the heat of the human body, but jamming of its pores was often the cause of pain and disease.
Cicero and the Areopagus
Authors: Rawson Elizabeth
Published: November 2023

Roman historians and Greek epigraphists do not always talk to each other as much as they should; in particular, Athenian inscriptions of the first century BC arc for outsiders an alarmingly difficult field. Y ct co-operation may throw some light on the history of both the states concerned, and on the relations of Rome with one of her most venerable, if not her most powerful allies. It is in that hope that the present study is offered.
Theatrical Life in Republican Rome and Italy
Authors: Rawson Elizabeth
Published: November 2023

Rome, by the early third century, was obviously the dominant state in Italy both militarily and politically. She was not, however, dominant either economically or culturally. Where the last field is concerned, T. P. Wiseman has recently written stimulatingly on activity in the Italian cities in the Hellenistic period, but though recognizing in general terms that there was a busy theatrical life he docs not discuss this in detail; and the paper in the same collection that does consider the Italian background to Roman drama is disappointing.1 It is of course well known that the Greek cities of Magna Graecia on the one hand and Oscan-speaking Campania on the other were theatrical centres, and that since Livius Andronicus originated from Tarentum, and Naevius most probably from Capua, the very roots of the Roman theatre were in these areas. It is equally well known that Plautus came from Umbrian Sarsina, and the influence of his Italian background is usually recognized (though its precise nature is disputed, and certainly the plays we have were written for Rome, as topical references show).
Sallust on the Eighties?*
Authors: Rawson Elizabeth
Published: November 2023

In Lucan’s second book, an old man looks back to the atrocities perpetrated in the civil strife of the eighties, chiefly on the return of Marius and Cinna to Rome in late 87 and on that of Sulla in 82 (lines 70-233). The episodes that Lucan briefly refers to arc all otherwise known, and there seems no particular reason to assume that he is not drawing on Livy as his principal source, as he does for the events of his main narrative, the civil war between Pompey and Caesar. The scholia to the passage may be a different matter.
Law and Family in Late Antiquity
Authors: Grubbs Judith Evans
Published: November 2023

A new and thought-provoking study of marriage and the law in late antiquity, looking particularly at the new legislation enacted by the emperor Constantine (reigned AD 307-337). Constantine was famously the first Christian emperor - did his laws reflect Christian ideals, or pagan practice?
The First Fifty Years
Authors: Griffin Miriam T
Published: November 2023

‘EGONE equestri et provinciali loco ortus proceribus civitatis adnumeror ?’ In these words Tacitus’ Seneca expresses, at the moment when he was about to lose his great power and position, his amazement at what he had achieved. By comparison, his start as the son of a wealthy gentleman and scholar of Corduba in Spain seemed modest indeed.
The Philosopher On The Principate
Authors: Griffin Miriam T
Published: November 2023

What Seneca says of the last years of the Republic shows that he lamented its demise but regarded the change to the Principate as irrevocable. What was lost with the Republic was libertas and the rule of law; what was gained was peace and security. Seneca docs not compare the two constitutions. Did he approve of the Principate as a form of government? It is a common view that the Stoics of the first century A.D. can have had, on philosophical grounds, only sympathy for the Principate as they favoured monarchy as a constitution. One of the main texts cited in support of this view is Seneca’s condemnation of Brutus for failing to behave ‘ex institutione Stoica’: Caesar’s assassin feared the name of king ‘cum optimus civitatis status sub rcge iusto sit’.
The Philosopher On Political Participation
Authors: Griffin Miriam T
Published: November 2023

Of all the issues treated in the Greek philosophical schools, none had more appeal for the Romans than the choice between a life of service to the res publica and a life of otium devoted to philosophy. The thesis ‘sitne sapientis ad rem publicam accedere’ was in the late Republic and the Empire one of the favourite exercises taken over by the rhetorical schools from the philosophers. The prominence of this theme in Seneca’s works and the complexity of his views alone would recommend it for study, but it is particularly relevant to the present inquiry as a theme on which Seneca’s work might well be expected to reflect his own political career and friendships, and the political climate of the reign of Nero. But before we can examine the relation of his various works on the subject to the political and personal circumstances in which they were composed (III, IV, V), we must first try to give a clear account of what Seneca actually wrote on the subject (I) and then establish where he stood in relation to Stoic doctrines and Roman attitudes as they had evolved (II).
Hecuba and Troades
Authors: Lloyd Michael
Published: November 2023

Both Hecuba and Troades culminate in an agon in which a vindictive and rhetorically expert Hecuba attempts, before a son of Atreus, to demolish the case of a plausible adversary. The two plays generally have much in common. They are set in the period between the defeat of Troy and the departure of the Greek fleet for home, as the Greeks wait for a favourable wind (Hec. 900, 1289 f.; Tro. 19 f., 456). This period contains fresh suffering for the Trojans, and also gives scope for both retrospect and foreboding. There are also hints, at the end of Hecuba and the beginning of Troades, of troubles in store for the Greeks. Hecuba is a paradigm of suffering at the beginning of both plays (Hec. 55-8, Tro. 36-44), and must suffer even more during them. In Hecuba, she must face the deaths of her last two children, while in Troades she has to endure a series of disasters, each worse than the last, in which every hope and consolation is knocked away.She is on stage, as the embodiment of Trojan suffering, almost throughout the two plays, and her constant presence is an important unifying element.
Aristotle and Slavery
Authors: Brunt P A
Published: November 2023

Among the Greeks and Romans and all peoples known to them slavery was ubiquitous. In many communities slaves were doubtless employed only or chiefly as household servants, but in those which were economically most advanced, such as Athens, where Aristotle passed much of his life, or Rome, they also worked in the fields and the mines, and as craftsmen, traders, secretaries, accountants, teachers, doctors and public servants; they shaped and decorated the most admired vases of antiquity, and transcribed its literary master pieces. We cannot determine their numbers for any period or region, nor the exact proportion of the labour force that they constituted. Probably free workers always preponderated, peasants, craftsmen, and labourers who worked for a daily wage; it was not profitable to employ slaves who had to be maintained throughout the year in seasonal or merely intermittent work, though a large household establishment might be kept up for the splendour that it shed on the owner.
Comedy and Iconography
Authors: Taplin Oliver
Published: November 2023

The New York Goose Play, 10.2, is a kalyx-krater by the Tarporley Painter, who almost certainly worked in Taras. It is one of the earliest, if not the earliest, of the South Italian comic vases to survive, dated by Trendall to close to 400, well within the lifetime of Aristophanes. It is also one of the most interesting, if not the most interesting.
Dining in Round Buildings
Authors: Cooper Frederick , Morris Sarah
Published: November 2023

In the landscape of Greek architecture, dominated by rectangular structures, circular buildings make isolated but significant appearances. Many can be classified as round towers, altars, funerary monuments, monopteroi, or sculptural pedestals, but a special class of them demonstrates an association with ritual dining in sanctuaries. In our contribution to this symposium, the foremost purpose is a presentation of archaeological and literary evidence for the existence of dining in round buildings. This argument expands beyond its architectural aspect with the demonstration that such dining took place in a seated position, introducing significant implications for the domain of the ancient symposion. Our observations here are preliminary to a future and fuller investigation of the Greek tholos.
Ritual Dining in the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Corinth: Some Questions
Authors: Bookidis Nancy
Published: November 2023

In her stimulating analysis of the cult of Persephone at Locri, C. Sourvinou-Inwood1 calls for a re-examination of Greek religion at the level of the polis in order to focus on local views of divine personalities without the encumbrances of Panhellenic generalizations. The importance of such an approach-and, at the same time, the difficulty of it-is only too apparent when one attempts to restore cult practice in a single place on the basis of extant arte facts. I speak now with reference to the practice of dining in the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Corinth. We know a good deal from literary and epigraphical sources about ritual meals, among which festivals of Demeter and Kore play a prominent part. We also can draw from a growing corpus of publications on individual dining-buildings at various sites.
Around the Krater: An Aspect of Banquet Imagery
Authors: Lissarrague Franqois
Published: November 2023

It would be rash of me to attempt to synthesize here the iconography of the komos and the symposion, a task for which I have neither the space nor indeed the necessary competence; moreover general surveys are available, at least on the subject of the banquet, which can readily orientate the reader in the vast corpus of material. Before I broach my own subject-the iconography of the krater-I should like to offer some very brief and doubtless rather over-simplified guide-lines to the way in which one may undertake the reading of images.2 It does not seem wise to treat the images on Attic vases, however precise and detailed they may be, simply as ‘photographic documents’ transmitting to us an immediate and ‘objective’ view of everyday life in Greece.
The Play of Reflections between Literary Form and the Sympotic Theme in the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus
Authors: Lukinovich Alessandra
Published: November 2023

In sympotic literature, the dialogue of the Deipnosophistae by Athenaeus deserves a place of honour not only because of the wealth of evidence which it offers us about the customs of the symposion in antiquity, but also by virtue of the very real qualities of its literary formulation. Unfortunately, these qualities have often been overlooked in comparisons made between Athenaeus’ dialogue and analogous works born of quite different literary and aesthetic conceptions, such as Plato’s and Xenophon’s Symposia or Plutarch’s Quaestiones Convivales. The abridged and mutilated form in which the work has come down to us increases the difficulties of critical understanding and evaluation. None the less, even in its present form the work should be accorded greater consideration than is the case while it continues to be judged as the work of a mere man of letters, rather than as that of a writer.
The Greek Wars
Authors: Cawkwell George
Published: November 2023

The Greek Wars treats of the whole course of Persian relations with the Greeks from the coming of Cyrus in the 540s down to Alexander the Great's defeat of Darius III in 331 BC. Cawkwell discusses from a Persian perspective major questions such as why Xerxes' invasion of Greece failed, and how important a part the Great King played in Greek affairs in the fourth century. Cawkwell's views are at many points original: in particular, his explanation of how and why the Persian invasion of Greece failed challenges the prevailing orthodoxy, as does his view of the importance of Persia in Greek affairs for the two decades after the King's Peace. Persia, he concludes, was destroyed by Macedonian military might but moral decline had no part in it; the Macedonians who had subjected Greece were too good an army, but their victory was not easy.
Catullus and his Renaissance Readers
Authors: Gaisser Julia Haig
Published: November 2023

This is the first general study of the fortunes of Catullus in the Renaissance. After a brief introduction tracing the transmission of the poet from antiquity to the middle of the fifteenth century, the book follows his reception and interpretation by editors, commentators, university lecturers, and poets from the first edition (1472) through the sixteenth century. The focus is on Catullus but also on his Renaissance readers. Their text and interpretations not only influenced the ways in which later generations (including our own) would read the poet, but also provide windows into their own intellectual and historical worlds, which include Poliziano's Florence, Rome under the Medici Pope Leo X and his puritanical successor Adrian VI, the Paris of Ronsard and Marc-Antoine de Muret, post-Tridentine Rome, and sixteenth-century Leiden - as well as fifteenth-century Verona, where Catullus was an object of patriotic veneration, and Pontano's Naples, where poets learned to read and imitate him through Martial's imitations.
Mobility and the Polis
Authors: Purcell Nicholas
Published: November 2023

Arion of Methymna, the inventor of the song called dithyramb, is not perhaps the most obvious figure to choose as an emblem of early Greek history; but he may begin to seem more representative if the tentative suggestions of this rather general paper are plausible. The singer from Lesbos in the eastern Aegean who voyaged via Corinth, where he resided for some time, to take part in many competitive festivals in the cities of the Ionian and Tyrrhenian coastlands is an apt symbol of personal mobility and of ease of communications. On a more mythic level his delivery from the widest sea of the Mediterranean by the sea god’s dolphin, and voyage to Cape Taenarum which turned seafaring into miracle, may be set as illustration and counterpoint to all that we frequently repeat of the horrors of storm, piracy, shipwreck, and being eaten by fishes, and of the awe felt for the sea by the Greeks and Romans. In stories like these, paradeigmatic or exemplary narratives meet ones which were regarded as literally factual; systems of explanation which depend on the supernatural jostle with those which prefer to leave it aside: they should not be ignored by the historian of the early Greek world.
Military Organization and Social Structure in Archaic Etruria
Authors: Agostino Bruno D’
Published: November 2023

The political and social organization of the Etruscan world is obscure: that is a consequence of the complete loss of those literary texts which we know to have existed, and of the nature of the epigraphic records, whi.ch for the most part consist of funerary inscriptions of a formulaic type.
Collective Activities and the Political in the Greek City
Authors: Schmitt-Pantel Pauline
Published: November 2023

The importance of patterns of behaviour, actions, and collective activities peculiar to social groups is widely recognized among modern historians and in contemporary studies. It is also becoming a preoccupation of research in ancient history.1 Such studies are not simply a question of rewriting the history of ‘everyday life’ under another name, that is, discussing collective practices such as hunting, athletic training, and banquets while separating them from their historical context. On the contrary, it is necessary to emphasize the close dependence that exists between such varied observances and the groups that practise them, as well as the particular political system (in this case the polis) that created and developed them. In order to avoid the trap of ‘static history’, we must provide a foundation in the history of the cities for practices that have had no place in the historiography of our discipline until now.
The Political Powers of the People’s Court in Fourth-Century Athens
Authors: Hansen Mogens Herman
Published: November 2023

Of the Athenian democratic institutions the two most important were the people’s assembly (ekklesia) and the people’s court (dikasteria). In the assembly some 6,000 citizens met 30-40 times every year to make political decisions relating to both foreign and domestic policy. In the courts panels of 20 1, 401, or 501 jurors selected by lot passed judgement in both private and public actions. The independence of the judiciary in most modern societies has tempted many historians-implicitly or explicitly-to draw an analogy and assert that in the Athenian democracy politics rested with the assembly and jurisdiction with the courts. A closer examination of the sources, however, points to a different and much more complicated relation between the two institutions. The ekklesia was sometimes involved in jurisdiction and, more important, a considerable number of political decisions were made by the courts.
Doomed to Extinction: The Polis as an Evolutionary Dead-End
Authors: Runciman W G
Published: November 2023

This chapter is an exercise in comparative sociology, not in the history of classical Greece. I say this not merely to excuse the ignorance of detail which specialist readers are likely to detect, but also to emphasize that it is addressed not to the question (interesting as it is) ‘how did Macedon become the dominant power in Greece?’ but to the question ‘with or without the rise of Macedon, could the polis have survived?’. In arguing that it could not, I am (so far as I can discover) within the general consensus of specialists. But there does not appear to be a consensus about why not, and my own answer may well be regarded by some readers as sensible but obvious and by others as intriguing but misconceived.
Roman Marriage
Authors: Treggiari Susan
Published: November 2023

Marriage, a fundamental institution in human societies, takes varying forms. This book seeks to explore the practicalities, the cultural assumptions, and the affective possibilities of marriage during the later Republic and the Principate (c.100 BC-AD 235). It takes a fresh view of the interaction of law and reality within Roman marriage, and builds on the accumulation of legal scholarship in the field, as well as on the latest insights into Roman society. Through detailed examination of original sources (which are translated), Professor Treggiari shows that marriage affected a Roman woman's social status and might entail legal consequences. The socio-legal effect on a man as an individual was less striking but it enabled him to father legitimate children, which was the main object of the institution. The creation of new family alignments, shifts in the distribution of property, and the birth of new generations were important for society as a whole. Professor Treggiari also examines the dynamics of the various influences on the choice of partner; behavioural norms; and the motives for divorce.
Graeco-Roman Theories of Marriage
Authors: Treggiari Susan
Published: November 2023

Let us take as an initial example the sententia of a censor of the late second century BC on the mixed advantages and disadvantages of marriage: ’If we could manage without wives ... we would all do without the annoyance (molestia), but since nature has taught us that we cannot live comfortably with them, nor live at all without them, we must take thought for our eternal welfare rather than our temporary pleasure.Stobaeus gives a list of quotations on this precise topic ofthe mixture of advantages and disadvantages. His topoi-headings derive from much earlier sources. The anthology here includes tags to show that you cannot have a household without evil, that although the rich wife stops her husband doing what he wants she produces one good result, children, and that marrying is an evil but a necessary evil.2 All of these, but especially the last, are part of the climate of opinion which produced Metellus’ remark.
Coniugalis Amor
Authors: Treggiari Susan
Published: November 2023

A woman may achieve greatness, or at any rate great renown, by merely being a wonderful wife and mother, like the mother of the Gracchi; whereas the men who have achieved great renown by being devoted husbands and fathers might be counted on the fingers of one hand.IN a seminal article in 1958, Gordon Williams traced specifically Roman ideas of marriage, drawing particularly on Plautus and Catullus.’ He suggested that the poets who insist on the wife’s duty to be morigera or morem gerere to her husband-or (in comedy) a mistress’ to her lover-are drawing on a formula from the ancient marriage ceremony, perhaps spoken by the pronuba at the moment of the joining of hands.
Sexual Relations
Authors: Treggiari Susan
Published: November 2023

We have already discussed the positive theories of conjugal virtues and the prominence given to wifely fidelity. It has also been suggested that the marital relationship was expected by ordinary Romans to give scope for both love and sexual expression. The task of this chapter is to explore attitudes to the extra-marital sexual activity of either partner during a marriage. The object is to cast light on sexual relations between husband and wife.Something about attitudes may be deduced from vocabulary and construction. The technical language is more robustly native and more sharply defined when it describes the infidelity of a wife. The verb adulterare seems to have been prior to the abstract noun adulterium and the nouns which describe the agents, adulter and adultera.
Ancient Greek Music
Authors: West M L
Published: November 2023

Ancient Greece was permeated by music, and the literature teems with musical allusions. For most readers the subject has remained a closed book. Here at last is a clear, comprehensive, and authoritative account that presupposes no special knowledge of music. Topics covered include the place of music in Greek life; instruments; rhythm; tempo; modes and scales; melodic construction; form; ancient theory and notation; and historical development. Thirty surviving examples of Greek music are presented in modern transcription with analysis, and the book is fully illustrated. Besides being considered on its own terms, Greek music is here further illuminated by being seen in ethnological perspective, and a brief Epilogue sets it in its place in a border zone between Afro-Asiatic and European culture. The book will be of value both to classicists and historians of music.
Fathers and Sons
Authors: Eyben Emiel
Published: November 2023

In this chapter the stress is on Roman fathers who took care of the moral education of their male children: not so much small children but growing children from about fifteen to twenty-five/thirty years, men in their youth (adulescentia). The extremes of poverty and bad conduct6 are omitted, and intellectual training has been dealt with elsewhere (Eyben 1968).

The authority a Roman father possessed over his children (and grandchildren) is claimed by the lawyer Gaius as ‘typically Roman’: ‘There are hardly any people who wield as much power over their sons as we do’ (1. 557).
Herodotus on Alexander I of Macedon: A Study in Some Subtle Silences
Authors: Badian E
Published: November 2023

There is not much Macedonian history in Herodotus, and what there is is difficult to interpret, for it touches upon Persian and Athenian history, and it must be viewed in the light of Herodotus’ habits and prejudices. It is in any case marginal to his interest in the great war between Greeks and barbarians and therefore comes up only incidentally. There is, on the other hand, a good deal of myth, but I shall not be concerned with it here, since it has been ably sorted out by N. G. L. Hammond. Herodotus seems to repeat it as he heard it, as a backdrop to his treatment of Alexander I, who is the only Macedonian relevant to his narrative in the books about the war. Alexander does indeed appear at some crucial points in the war, and his character clearly aroused the historian’s interest: he fashioned an elaborate prelude in order to introduce him, and the themes stated in that prelude are developed on the occasions of Alexander’s appearances in the war. I am not here concerned with the character of Alexander, but rather with the way in which Herodotus depicts that character. We shall find that he employs a great deal of subtle art even on this incidental actor in his drama, and the very fact that the author’s treatment of him on each of his appearances after the prelude is brief makes it easier to study that art. The focus of this study is historiographic and not historical; but as is usually the case, there will be some incidental accretion of historical knowledge–or at least conjecture.
The Tradition about the First Sacred War
Authors: Davies John
Published: November 2023

Every historian of archaic Greece has to come to terms with the First Sacred War. Located with welcome precision in time by the source material in the 5 90s and 5 Sos, involving many of the major Greek cities and powers of the period, and significantly affecting the life and functions of one of the major sanctuaries and oracles of Greece, the war has to be incorporated into any narrative or analysis. Yet for the modern historiography of archaic Greece it presents acute dilemmas of method and credibility. The problems are not those presented by Athenian history, where it is the historicity or otherwise of a growing list of documents (or of ‘documents’) which poses the major challenge, compounded by growing awareness of the rolling nature of oral tradition and its impact on ‘history’.1 Rather, with the First Sacred War we have to deal with a tradition which suddenly appears in crystallized written form long after the event, so that modern scholarship has an unwelcome choice between cautious acceptance en bloc and a quasi-archaeological disinterment of the various layers which inevitably deconstructs the whole. The exposition which follows here will therefore have to oscillate between the registers of modern and ancient historiography, I hope without loss of clarity, in an effort to reach a formulation which stands some chance of conveying the truth.
Diodorus and his Sources: Conformity and Creativity
Authors: Hornblower Simon
Published: November 2023

When in his great commentary on Thucydides Arnold Gomme comes to discuss the merits of Diodorus, he adds the expletive: alas! Gomme, of course, only echoes the judgement of most scholars. Diodorus’ Bibliotheke extends from the mythological period before the Trojan War to Diodorus’ lifetime in the first century BC, and its range has been its saving grace. We depend on it for much of what is known of the mid-fourth century, Alexander the Great, his Successors, and almost the entirety of Sicilian history. And throughout the Bibliotheke, even when the text is fragmentary, there are occasional bits of information which close important gaps in our knowledge.
Christian Origins
Authors: Mitchell Stephen
Published: November 2023

The story of Christianity in Anatolia begins at the beginning. The Acts of the Apostles place the evangelization of the south Galatian communities of Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe at the centre of St Paul’s first missionary journey outside Syria and Palestine. More still, there is good reason to think that the Epistle to the Galatians was written soon after this journey, and thus becomes, quite simply, the earliest surviving document of the Christian church. These two sources together offer an unhoped-for, if elusive, glimpse into the Jewish, pagan, and nascent Christian communities of central Asia Minor in the middle of the first century AD. The information which they provide is hard to interpret, both because it is so isolated and because there is so much room for argument about the sources from which it comes, but it is a privilege to have so much with which to work.
The Rise of Monasticism from the Fourth to the Sixth Century
Authors: Mitchell Stephen
Published: November 2023

Around AD 420 Palladius of Ancyra compiled his Lausiac History, a collection of biographical sketches of eastern monks and other ascetics, who now occupied so large a place on the ecclesiastical stage. Most of these edifying portraits depicted the heroic achievements of Christian holy men in the Egyptian wastes, or in the desert penumbra around the cities of Palestine and Syria. A handful, not altogether in the same style, concerned his native region. There was the octogenarian priest Philoromus, child of a citizen by a slave woman, who had openly defied Julian, thereby incurring tortures which were modest indeed compared to the self-imposed discipline which followed—eighteen years of seclusion, wearing chains, and abstinence from wheaten bread and all cooked foods—all designed to strengthen his defences against the temptations of lust and greed. Thereafter he spent forty years in the same monastery, earning his keep as a copyist, evidently of sacred books, and donated his earnings to the support of cripples. He made four pilgrimages in his life, all on foot and at his own expense, to the shrine of St Peter at Rome, to the tomb of St Mark at Alexandria, and twice to the Holy Places in Jerusalem. Never had his faith in God wavered, even in his private thoughts.
Ovid and the Fasti
Authors: Herbert-Brown Geraldine
Published: November 2023

Despite the death of contemporary witnesses for the late Augustan and early Tiberian Principates, Ovid's Fasti has remained curiously neglected as an historical source for the period. The aim of this new research is to show that the poem of some five thousand lines on the Roman calendar, written and revised in the years between AD 4-16, provides students of the Augustan age with a wealth of information, both about the author himself, and about his cultural and political environment. The author discovers important new insights into the way in which Augustus and his family were incorporated into the ancient religion of the city of Rome, and reveals Ovid as a unique contemporary witness of the last decade of Augustus' life and the first years of Tiberius' rule. From his poem the Fasti, Dr Herbert-Brown finds new evidence of the processes which marked the transition from the Republic to Empire.
Zones of Interaction
Authors: Batty Roger
Published: November 2023

The Pontic-Danubian area mostly falls within the jurisdiction of several modern states: Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, the Republic of Macedonia, and the Republic of Moldova. In this vast geographical space, areas of true steppes form one common identifiable physical feature, especially for the more northerly of these territories. To the south, the links between the mountain ranges and the lowlands are the key to the region’s geography; the mountain chains fragment the region, breaking it up into several easily distinguished areas (Fig. 2.1).
Dying for the Law: The Martyr ‘s Portrait in Jewish-Greek Literature
Authors: Rajak Tessa
Published: November 2023

The anonymous author of the fourth book of Maccabees summarizes, in one long Greek sentence, the achievements of the heroes and of the heroine whose dreadful deaths he has recounted. Good rhetorician as he is, he presents the events in a variety of perspectives. At one stage they are imagined as a picture, a visual portrayal of piety in action, which cannot fail to make any spectator shudder; he now parades the ingenious device of an imaginary epitaph.
The Armenian Gates
Authors: Birley Anthony
Published: November 2023

The geographical knowledge acquired and acted upon by traders and soldiers in antiquity was slow to find its way into military manuals. Historians can seldom be complimented for adequate attention to geography. As concerns the Tigris, however, Sallust (and even Livy) surely outshone the professional purveyors of information. Sallust’s account of the campaigns of Lucullus beyond Euphrates was probably very good. Plutarch’s narrative, of which Sallust is the main or ultimate source, though deplorably lacking in precise indications of locality and direction, cannot be convicted of any enormities; and a younger contemporary of Livy, Pompeius Trogus, knew that the Tigris rises, not south of Lake Van, but a long way to the west, in the region called Sophene.
Sophene and Gordyene
Authors: Birley Anthony
Published: November 2023

Sophene and Gordyene crop up more than once as disputed territories in the various intrigues and negotiations concerning the disposal of Tigranes’ vast and transient empire. Sophene was indubitably Armenian. Two principalities broke loose from Seleucid control after the defeat of Antiochus the Great by the Romans, Armenia proper ruled by Artaxias, Sophene by Zariadres. The last ruler of the latter dynasty, Artanes, was deposed by Tigranes, who annexed Sophene. In his southward expansion towards Mesopotamia Tigranes also brought under his sway Gordyene, a Parthian vassal state. A king of that land, Zarbienus, was won over by the diplomatic arts of the envoy Ap. Claudius Pulcher in 70 B.C., suppressed in time by Tigranes, and posthumously honoured by Lucullus with a magnificent funeral.
Tigranocerta
Authors: Birley Anthony
Published: November 2023

No discussion of the borderlands of Armenia and Mesopotamia can hope to avoid the problem of Tigranocerta. The controversy about the site of Tigranes’ new capital has thrown up endless argumentation, illustrious partisans, strong opinions—and changes of opinions; and rival theories about the Battle of Tigranocerta have been expounded with a confidence and a precision that ancient accounts of military operations are seldom explicit enough to justify.
Atropatene and Matiane
Authors: Birley Anthony
Published: November 2023

Media Atropatene possessed an abundance of natural resources and frontiers easy to define or defend. On three sides it was guarded by mountain ranges; along the fourth ran the River Araxes, followed by a wide tract of desolate steppe. These conditions favoured the growth and the survival of a separate political unit with its nucleus round about Lake Urmia. The annals of Assyria and of Urartu (Van) are familiar with the realm of Mannai; and Atropatene maintained a Persian dynasty and virtual independence throughout the Hellenistic period.
Pompeius and the Parthians
Authors: Birley Anthony
Published: November 2023

The campaigns of the Romans against Mithridates Eupator led to hostilities with Tigranes, the ruler of Armenia, and thereby brought another power, the Parthians, into the ambit of their diplomacy through an ephemeral compact quickly ignored by the stronger party. Tigranes had earned signal disasters and complete humiliation. The wide territories that he had seized one after another since his accession (c.95 B.C.) were now forfeit. Syria and Cilicia he had no hope of regaining. East of the Euphrates his principal gains had accrued from Parthia, or rather from the vassals of Parthia, in the period of disturbances and debility after the death of Mithridates II (c.87 B.C.). The region Sophene which he annexed was Armenian land. Not so Atropatene, Adiabene, and Gordyene, the rulers of which he forced to own his allegiance. Tigranes took the title ‘King of Kings’: four monarchs were ever at his beck and call, whether he sat or rode.
The Euphrates Crossings
Authors: Birley Anthony
Published: November 2023

Rome now commanded three routes of prime military importance leading across Asia Minor towards Armenia and Mesopotamia. In the north a new province was largely built up around the Pontic highway; the road to Melitene and the river-crossing at Tomisa traversed the dependent kingdoms of Cappadocia; and in the south the main artery of Seleucid rule through the Cilician Gates reached the Euphrates at Zeugma, Nicator’s famous foundation. Pompeius saw no reason to restrict Rome’s influence to the western bank of the Euphrates. Osrhoene is proof of that. Further evidence has been adduced, and it is generally believed that Pompeius assigned Sophene to Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia and gave to Commagene a strip of territory beyond the river with a bridgehead facing Samosata.
The Accession of Archelaus Philopatris
Authors: Birley Anthony
Published: November 2023

Archelaus, on whom Pompeius Magnus bestowed the principality of Comana in Pontus, met his end on an ambitious venture, fighting for a bride and a throne in Egypt (s 5 B.C.). His son inherited Comana, but did not hold it for long. Caesar installed an adherent of his own, Lycomedes the Bithynian, of royal ancestry. After that, Fontus knows the family no more. The wife—or rather the widow-of the dynast of Comana, a lady called Glaphyra, subsequently turns up in Cappadocia along with her young son, another Archelaus. Cappadocia, afflicted with a feeble and discordant dynasty, an unruly baronage, was a refuge for an adventurer with a pedigree. The grandfather of young Archelaus claimed to be a bastard of Mithridates Eupator; and there was a genuine link between Pontus and Cappadocia in the person of Athenais, the queen-mother, widow of Ariobarzanes II—she was a daughter of Eupator. As for Glaphyra, one historian describes her as a ‘hetaera’. The term baffles exact definition but implies an active and variegated existence. Glaphyra had talent as well as charm.
Campaigns in the Milyas
Authors: Birley Anthony
Published: November 2023

Termessus occupies a strong and secure position at the head of a valley on the southern flank of the defile through which passes the road out of Pamphylia to Isinda and Cibyra—-the main road to the valley of the Maeander. That would be enough to explain the strategic importance of Termessus. There is something more. The defile is also an exit from Pamphylia into central Anatolia. Emerging west of Termessus into open country near Isinda the main western road meets a natural route of communication northwards through Milyas in the direction of Phrygia. The River Taurus (the istanoz su), changing its course below Isinda, wanders along a wide plain and loses itself in the marshes to the south of Lake Kestel: it traverses a fertile region which preserves abundant traces of settlement in prehistoric times. From Lake Kestel a series of long flat valleys, bounded but not unduly constricted by mountains on either hand, leads northwards, stopping not far short of the shore of Lake Ascania (Burdur). From this point there is passage through the hills, either direct to the lake, or, north-eastwards, into the plain below Sagalassus. That city naturally diverted the route. Armies or travellers in transit would tend to go by Sagalassus. But the valley of Sagalassus is enclosed by a great mountain on the north separating it from the plain of Baris and Seleucia.
The Taurus Tribes
Authors: Birley Anthony
Published: November 2023

IF Strabo’s references to contemporary affairs one of the most valuable is his account of the Cilician tribe of the Homonadenses in relation to Amyntas, the last king of Galatia, and to the Roman general P. Sulpicius Quirinius. The campaigns and the fate of Amyntas are otherwise unrecorded, and only Tacitus preserves a reference to Quirinius’ war. It has a bearing upon certain historical problems that have not always been examined in the proper perspective or sequence. Strabo’s principal sources were written sources—few of them very recent. From time to time the geographer interrupts the process of copying and transmuting and makes an effort to bring his information up to date. The results are not always happy and harmonious. Many of Strabo’s insertions are brief phrases, easily detected and easily detached from their context. The larger additions that have been worked into the structure of the narrative also betray their origin in one way or another.
The Augustan Colonies
Authors: Birley Anthony
Published: November 2023

AucusTus in the Res Gestae affirms that he planted colonies of veterans in Pisidia; Pliny attests the status of Antioch, ‘colonia Caesarea’; and Strabo, besides Antioch, furnishes another name, Cremna. Coins and inscriptions add four more—Comama, Olbasa, Parlais, and Lystra. It is generally conceded that Antioch was founded in or shortly after 25 B.C. when the new province of Galatia was being organized by the first Roman governor, M. Lollius (cos. 21 B.C.): there is no reason for going down as far as 19 B.C.Antioch seems primordial as well as pre-eminent among the Pisidian colonies. A strong persuasion regards the other foundations as a homogeneous group and puts them nearly twenty years later.
Pontus in the Time of Augustus
Authors: Birley Anthony
Published: November 2023

The interval between Tiberius’ departure to Rhodes and his full reinstatement, with adoption by the Princeps, is the dark decade of Augustan history.’ It begins in 6 B.C. The historical sources dry up—only Velleius flows on, a poisoned fountain. Most evident and most deplorable are the gaps in the history of the northern frontier region. The eastern lands have also suffered. Some record has survived of the expedition of C. Caesar, Agrippa’s eldest son whom Augustus adopted, but it is meagre and partial. Other transactions of the period have all but passed from knowledge—or can be recovered only by the accidental aid of coins and inscriptions. The kingdom of Paphlagonia was annexed in 6 B.C., and, a few years later, the territory of three cities in Pontus.
The Legacy Of Mesopotamia
Authors: Dalley Stephanie , Reyes A T , Dalley Stephanie , Pingree David , Salvesen Alison , McCall Henrietta
Published: November 2023

Influence from Mesopotamia on adjacent civilizations has often been proposed on the basis of scattered similarities. For the first time a wide-ranging assessment from 3000 BC to the Middle Ages investigates how similarities arose in Egypt, Palestine, Anatolia, and Greece. The development of writing for accountancy, astronomy, devination, and belles lettres emanated from Mesopotamians who took their academic traditions into countries beyond their political control. Each country soon transformed what it received into its own, individual culture. When cuneiform writing disappeared, Babylonian cults and literature, now in Aramaic and Greek, flourished during the Roman Empire. The Manichaeans adapted the old traditions which then perished under persecution, but traces persist in Hermetic works, court narratives and romances, and in the Arabian Nights. When ancient Mesopotamia was rediscovered in the last century, British scholars were at the forefront of international research. Public excitement has been reflected in pictures and poems, films and fashion.
After the ’Big Bang’-What? or Minoan Symbols and Shrines beyond Palatial Collapse
Authors: Peatfield Alan
Published: November 2023

Beginning or ending, any Big Bang implies a fragmentation, a scattering of elements previously bound together in a structural form. This analogy is surely applicable to the end of the palatial system of Minoan Crete. There we can see the breakup of political and economic structures; this breakup is equally apparent in the religious dimension, and this article examines it on two levels, a dis integration of shrine relationships, and a significant reformulation of one of the key symbolic belief elements of Minoan religion-the iconography of the Minoan Goddess.