Political & institutional history (up to c. 500)
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Spectacle benefaction and the politics of appreciation
Case studies from Italy, Gallia Narbonensis and Africa Proconsularis
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.
Elite Women in Hellenistic History, Historiography, and Reception
The Hellenistic world with its many new cultural trends and traditions has often proved a challenging period for scholars. In the wake of changing political religious cultural economic and social conceptions and practices gender roles and notions also underwent significant change leading to the emergence of strong female figures. Up to now however no major encompassing research work on elite Hellenistic women has been published. This volume aims to fill this historiographical gap by gathering together contributions covering a wide range of geographical chronological and cultural backgrounds. While mostly focused on royal women the chapters included here also seek to provide readers with an accurate and diverse description of the female experience in the Hellenistic period. The contributors to this book both renowned scholars and new voices in the discipline together advocate for a fresh approach that goes beyond the often problematic approaches of earlier historiography and provides a new understanding of elite women in the period.
Leadership and Community in Late Antiquity
Essays in Honour of Raymond Van Dam
Throughout a distinguished career Raymond Van Dam has contributed significantly to our understanding of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages with ground-breaking studies on Gaul Cappadocia and the emperor Constantine. The hallmarks of his scholarship are critical study of a wide variety of written and material sources and careful historical analysis insightfully rooted in sociological and anthropological methodologies. The essays in this volume written by Van Dam’s former students colleagues and friends explore the dynamics between leaders and their communities in the fourth through seventh centuries. During this period people negotiated profound religious intellectual and cultural change while still deeply enmeshed in the legacy of the Roman Empire. The memory of the classical past was a powerful and compelling social and political force for the denizens of Late Antiquity even as their physical surroundings came to resemble less and less the ideals of the Greco-Roman city. These themes - leadership community and memory - have been central to Van Dam’s work and the contributors to this volume build on the legacy of his scholarship. Their papers examine how leaders exercised their authority in their communities at times exhibiting continuity with ancient patterns of leadership but in other cases shifting toward new paradigms characteristic of a post-classical world. Taken together the essays produce a fuller picture of the Mediterranean world and add further nuance to our understanding of Late Antiquity and early Middle Ages as a time of both continuity and transformation.
The Roman Senate as arbiter during the Second Century bc
Two Exemplary Case Studies: the Cippus Abellanus and the Polcevera Tablet
In the wider context of the border conflicts that involve Rome as a third authority super partes for which there is evidence already in the second century BC two epigraphic documents stand out for the peculiarities distinguishing them from all others: the so-called Polcevera Tablet (concerning a dispute between Genuates and Viturii Langenses) and the Cippus Abellanus (related to a border dispute between Nolani and Abellani and written in Oscan). They make us aware of the political and municipal dynamics underlying the complex principle of Roman arbitration often required to resolve territorial disputes which were gradually evolving as Rome opened up to the East. What role did the Roman Senate play in such disputes? What exactly was the function of the referees sent by the City to settle the disputes with a super partes judgment? What was the importance of the agrarian reform of the Gracchi and the realisation of road axes in the acuity of such antagonisms? These are the questions to which this study tries to provide an answer.
The Past as Present
Essays on Roman History in Honour of Guido Clemente
This volume in honour of Guido Clemente collects essays by nearly 40 established and younger scholars from all over the world who want to express their gratitude for prof. Clemente's direct or indirect teaching. While the essays included in the volume cover domains ranging from methodology and (the history of) historiography over archaeology and epigraphy to politics and religion they all resort under the main theme of ‘the past as present’. This main theme is inspired by a prominent feature of Guido Clemente's scholarly work: the awareness that from the last centuries of the Roman Republic up until Late Antiquity a sense of the past ‘as present’ marked the rhythm of everyday life and provided the key to understanding ongoing societal change.
Beyond Intolerance
The Milan Meeting in ad 313 and the Evolution of Imperial Religious Policy from the Age of the Tetrarchs to Julian the Apostate
313 ad is generally considered a “turning point” in religious and political Western history. The meeting of Constantine and Licinius in Milan and the subsequent “edict” not only gave Christians the right to assemble and practice their faith but opened the way to the Christianisation of Roman imperial structures and finally to the declaration of Christianity as the only religion allowed in the Roman Empire.
The papers collected in this volume tackle this complex historical phase from a number of perspectives (from Church history and theology to political and juridical history) following a strongly multidisciplinary approach. The chronological schope stretching from the decades preceding the meeting of 313 to the reign of Julian the Apostate sheds light on the cultural political and juridical premises of Constantine and Licinius’s decisions as well as the way those premises affected a number of aspects of everyday life within the Empire up to Julian's pagan “restoration” and afterward.
Jéroboam et la division du royaume
Étude historico-philologique de 1 Rois 11, 26 - 12, 33
La figure de Jéroboam tracée par la Septante est celle d’un homme venu du bas qui parvient à conquérir un niveau social élevé grâce à son ambition et qui ose même se révolter contre Salomon pour supplanter la dynastie davidique et inaugurer un nouveau cursus politique. Il est présenté comme un arriviste sans scrupules un fauteur de troubles prêt à profiter des circonstances en faveur de ses propres ambitions personnelles.
Dans le texte massorétique l’image du roi est plus lumineuse : son ambition est toujours patente mais il est présenté comme le défenseur des demandes légitimes des tribus d’Israël disposées à l’élire comme roi contre une réduction sur les tributs imposés par Salomon et non pas comme fomentateur de conjurations. Jéroboam est traité ici avec plus d’équité bien qu’à la lumière de la sévère idéologie du Deutéronomiste qui fait de lui l’instrument choisi par Dieu pour punir l’idolâtrie de la maison de David.
Lequel des deux portraits est-il le plus fiable ? Le problème exégétique consiste à vérifier si les divergences entre les récits parvenus dans 1 Rois 1126 - 1233 se sont produites au fil de la transmission textuelle - n’oublions pas la réélaboration libre du grec conservée dans 1224a-z de fait une troisième version des événements - ou si elles remontent à des traditions plus anciennes.
L’examen du texte antiochien de la Septante est particulièrement significatif. En effet les variantes des manuscrits lucianiques quand elles sont confirmées par la Vetus Latina et par la réélaboration historiographiques de Flavius Josèphe peuvent attester le « protolucianique » texte très proche de la Septante ancienne et donc nous reporter à une forme plus proche de l’original.
L’apport de la critique littéraire mérite aussi une attention particulière. En effet la relecture théologique des rédacteurs deutéronomistes a fait de Jéroboam l’archétype de l’apostasie pour avoir impliqué le peuple dans son péché et avoir été imité par ses successeurs. Il s’agit donc d’une historiographie idéologisée qui relit les événements à la lumière de certains présupposés théologiques avec une vision ciblée qui produit souvent une historiographie « à thèse » à vérifier minutieusement à chaque cas.