Antiquité et sciences humaines

In the remotest corners of the Roman Empire large crowds were as beguiled by spectacles as their Roman counterparts. Provincial spectacles however did not share the technical wonders of flying machines elephant dressage and synchronised swimming seen at imperial extravaganzas. Is it this lack of the sensational that accounts for the relative paucity of scholarly attention paid to regional spectacles and in particular their sponsors?

When spectacles are viewed purely as entertainment the messy realities of institutionalized social economic and political power that regulated them are obscured. A clearer understanding of the spectacle can therefore be achieved by contextualizing it in the big picture of regional and provincial life against the backdrop of Roman power and control. The spectacle itself was highly political in its aims and intent. Access to sponsorship of a spectacle similarly relied on hierarchies of political power and privilege and consequently required strategic negotiation of candidacy promises expenditure and recognition. Rivalry competition and emulation was endemic.

This epigraphic analysis focusing on the western Roman Empire (Italy Gaul and North Africa) during the Imperial period identifies the milieux of provincial sponsors their strategies and quest for public honours.

The archaeological excavations conducted from one end of the Mediterranean zone to the other have illuminated the place of gods in the ritual practices in the dwellings of the Graeco-Roman era. The discovery of multiple artefacts dedicated spaces and figurative paintings support new avenues of historical anthropological and social reflection with the aim of better understanding domestic religious practices in the polytheistic contexts of antiquity. This collective volume organizes those reflections around three axes.The first axis centres on identifying the deities that were favoured in domestic sanctuaries. Which gods are represented and which are not? The second axisconcerns the interrelationships evident within domestic ritual spaces and sanctuaries.The third axis is dedicated to the anthropology of rituals. Lines of inquiry informed by anthropological social and phenomenological approaches are assuming ever-greater importance in scholarship on Antiquity. It is from this perspective that the authors explore the role that domestic ritual spaces play in shaping the lived environment.

Recent years have seen a significant increase in migration and displacement. Due to economic political and climatic pressures large numbers of individuals are leaving their countries of origin and settling in new environments and societies. As a result national identity has increasingly come to the fore in public discourse. Shaping and reshaping national agendas debates surrounding national identity are affecting policies and influencing voting behaviours. Discourse on this issue is often centred on the idea of autochthony and nativism. Yet we do not encounter such anxieties in ancient Rome one of the longest-lasting political orders in history. Unlike among the Greeks the idea of autochthony did not take root among the Romans. Instead Rome’s identity tended to be fluid accommodating the development of highly variegated and multi-ethnic groups and societies.

The purpose of this volume is to understand how the Romans represented themselves and how others defined and regarded them. It aims to identify the various narratives that contributed to the construction of Roman self-representation by raising the following questions: What stories did Romans tell about themselves? How did they enact and perform their selfhood in biographic and autobiographical sources? How did Greek and Judean sources understand and define Roman identity? And taken together how did these narratives influence Roman self-perception?

Rather than arguing for a monolithic or coherent understanding of Romanitas this volume explores a variety of performances and manifestations of Roman identity. It focuses both on sources where the self or individual is the primary focus alongside more general texts dealing with specific elements of Roman identity.

What were the ideas that the ancient Greeks and Romans held about warfare? What do contemporary sources tell us about this? Is it possible to trace a development in the way of thinking about war in antiquity? These are the questions that are discussed (and answered) in this study. It combines a close reading of all the sources that we have - mostly written like literary and historiographical but also non-written like art monuments and coinage. The analysis of the discourse is accompanied by and contrasted with arguments raised by today’s specialists in the field of warfare and culture of ancient Greece and Rome.

The study treats recurrent cultural themes like courage fatherland or victory within a chronological framework for discourse features cannot be isolated from the context of their time. For each specific period - Greek Hellenistic and the six parts of the long and diverse Roman time - conclusions are drawn. The remarkable developments in time that can be observed especially in Rome are brought together in the final chapter.

Ce volume s'inscrit dans la tradition de l'étude du commentaire de la tradition et de l'autorité qu'il explore dans une perspective comparatiste sur une longue durée du monde antique jusqu'à l'époque contemporaine et dans un espace aussi vaste que possible. En cherchant à approcher les pratiques des commentateurs dans leur diversité et à faire voler en éclats la notion unificatrice même de commentaire les auteurs n'ont pas voulu participer à la constitution d'une synthèse ou d'une somme mais se sont délibérément positionnés à la croisée de plusieurs chemins philologie littérature anthropologie histoire de l'écrit et de l'érudition pour multiplier questionnements et points de vue. Le résultat est un dialogue polyphonique entre une parole et son commentaire entre une autorité et son commentateur mais aussi entre commentateurs érudits de tous ordres maîtres et disciples auteurs et lecteurs. Les pratiques de commentaire y voisinent et conversent avec d'autres l'Antiquité entre en débat avec le Moyen Âge ou la période moderne la Grèce ou Rome avec le monde des rabbins ou le Japon.

Ce volume est aussi le résultat d'un travail collectif mené au sein du séminaire "Antiquité au présent" en 2011-2013 autour du thème "Commenter expliquer paraphraser". Il reflète dans sa diversité et son foisonnement la polyphonie des collègues relevant de plusieurs institutions qui ont trouvé dans le séminaire un espace de dialogue et de discussion.

À la croisée entre philologie histoire anthropologie et sociologie cette étude revisite la problématique du don dans la Rome antique. Les écrits de Sénèque en particulier son traité intitulé De beneficiis sont lus à la lumière des travaux de Marcel Mauss et de ses héritiers scientifiques pour cerner l’épineuse question du statut et de la finalité de la bienfaisance. Doit-elle être pratiquée pour elle-même ou en vue d’une fin particulière ? Faut-il privilégier sa portée vertueuse ou sa dimension sociale ? Un examen de l’œuvre stoïcienne au prisme des théories modernes du don révèle une morale en tension et une vision originale de la pratique du don de ses temporalités de ses effets et de ses acteurs.