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This volume looks at various ways in which royal images functioned within different ideological frameworks in the ancient Near East, Greece and Rome. It argues that visibility lies at the heart of power, especially under monarchic rule. The contributions highlight how, throughout the ancient Mediterranean, patterns can be detected in the use of royal images. There seem to have been continuous (re)negotiations between innovation and tradition, East and West, and between aerealAe and aeimaginaryAe kings. Contents Richard Fowler / Olivier Hekster: Imagining kings: From Persia to Rome Lindsay Allen: Le roi imaginaire: An audience with the Achaemenid king Peter Thonemann: The tragic king: Demetrios Poliorketes and the city of Athens Margherita Facella: Roman perception of Commagenian royalty Matthew Gisborne: A curia of kings: Sulla and royal imagery Richard Fowler: aeMost fortunate rootsAe: Tradition and legitimacy in Parthian royal ideology Olivier Hekster: Captured in the gaze of power: Visibility, games and Roman imperial representation Ted Kaizer: Kingly priests in the Roman Near East? Bibliography Index
The Letter of Mara bar Sarapion to his son – preserved in a single Syriac manuscript (7th. cent. CE) – still speaks to its readers, evocatively depicting the dramatic situation of a nobleman imprisoned after the Roman capture of Samosata, capital of Commagene. The letter is best known today for a passage on the “wise king of the Jews,” which may be one of the earliest pagan testimonies concerning Jesus Christ. Ongoing controversy over the letter’s date, nature, and purpose has, however, led to the widespread neglect of this intriguing document. In the present volume, Merz and Tieleman have brought together cutting-edge research from an interdisciplinary team of leading experts that significantly advances our appreciation of the letter and its historical context.
This book accounts for the results of fieldwork in Doliche, located in Gaziantep, South East Turkey. Doliche was an important city of ancient North Syria which continued to thrive into the Middle Ages. For the first time, an international research project started to explore the site in 2015. The chapters collected in this volume discuss the main discoveries of the first seasons. It is divided in two parts. The first part considers the main excavation results, with a particular emphasis on a newly discovered early Christian basilica and its decoration. This section also contains the first comprehensive discussion of a newly discovered Roman Imperial hypogeum from the city necropolis. The chapters of the second part deal with the preliminary findings from an intra-urban intensive survey. Between 2017 and 2019, a significant portion of the city area has been investigated, and the results of the survey offer new insights in the spatial and chronological of the city. The chapters consider methodological questions, but also discuss artefact groups. In general, the results presented in this volume add to the knowledge of urbanism in Roman and Late antique North Syria.
With contributions from thirty archaeologists, epigraphists, historians, and philologists, this book covers Palmyra's archaeological remains and history from its earliest phases in the pre-Roman era to the destruction of many of its monuments during the Syrian Civil War and subsequent looting. The authors give comprehensive overviews of already published evidence, as well as significant new findings and analyses from fieldwork, and cover a broad range of themes, which not only relate to the archaeology and history of the site, but also to its relationship with the rest of the ancient world as a major trade hub during the Roman period.
Ancestry played a continuous role in the construction and portrayal of Roman emperorship in the first three centuries AD. Emperors and Ancestors is the first systematic analysis of the different ways in which imperial lineage was represented in the various 'media' through which images of emperors could be transmitted. Looking beyond individual rulers, Hekster evaluates evidence over an extended period of time and differentiates between various types of sources, such as inscriptions, sculpture, architecture, literary text, and particularly central coinage, which forms the most convenient source material for a modern reconstruction of Roman representations over a prolonged period of time. The ...
In ancient Rome, where literacy was limited and speech was the main medium used to communicate status and identity face-to-face in daily life, an education in rhetoric was a valuable form of cultural capital and a key signifier of elite male identity. To lose the ability to speak would have caused one to be viewed as no longer elite, no longer a man, and perhaps even no longer human. We see such a fantasy horror story played out in the Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass, written by Roman North African author, orator, and philosopher Apuleius of Madauros—the only novel in Latin to survive in its entirety from antiquity. In the novel’s first-person narrative as well as its famous inset tales ...
The study presents a critical analysis of the political relations between Rome and Near Eastern kingdoms and principalities during the age of civil war from the death of Julius Caesar in 44 to Mark Antony’s defeat at Actium in 31 BC. By examining each bilateral relationship separately, it argues that those relations were marked by a large degree of continuity with earlier periods. Circumstances connected to the civil war had only a limited impact on the interstate conduct of the period despite the effects that the strife had on Rome’s domestic politics and the res publica. The ever-present rival Parthia and its external policies were more influential in steering the relations between Rome and Near Eastern powers.
Sex is a difficult issue for contemporary Christians, but the past decade has witnessed a newfound openness regarding the topic among Eastern Orthodox Christians. Both the theological trajectory and the historical circumstances of the Orthodox Church differ radically from those of other Christian denominations that have already developed robust and creative reflections on sexuality and sexual diversity. Within its unique history, theology, and tradition, Orthodox Christianity holds rich resources for engaging challenging questions of sexuality in new and responsive ways. What is at stake in questions of sexuality in the Orthodox tradition? What sources and theological convictions can uniquel...
Examines the relationship between social networks and religious transmission to reappraise how new religious ideas spread in the Roman Empire.
A timely and academically-significant contribution to scholarship on community, identity, and globalization in the Roman and Hellenistic worlds Community and Identity at the Edges of the Classical World examines the construction of personal and communal identities in the ancient world, exploring how globalism, multi-culturalism, and other macro events influenced micro identities throughout the Hellenistic and Roman empires. This innovative volume discusses where contact and the sharing of ideas was occurring in the time period, and applies modern theories based on networks and communication to historical and archaeological data. A new generation of international scholars challenge traditiona...