Roman Rule in Greek and Latin Writing explores the ways in which Greek and Latin writers from the late 1st to the 3rd century CE experienced and portrayed Roman cultural institutions and power. The central theme is the relationship between cultures as reflected in Greek and Latin authors' responses to Roman power; in practice the collection revisits the orthodoxy of two separate intellectual groups, differentiated as much by cultural and political agenda as by language. The book features specialists in Greek and Roman literary and intellectual culture; it gathers papers on a variety of...

East and West in Late Antiquity combines published and unpublished articles by emeritus professor Wolf Liebeschuetz. The collection concerns aspects of what Gibbon called 'the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'. This interpretation is now much criticized, but the author agrees with Gibbon. Topics discussed are defensive strategies, the settlement inside the Empire of invaders and immigrants, and the modification of identities with the formation of new communities. Liebeschuetz is interested in both the eastern and the western halves of the Empire. In the East he is particularly...

In Aspects of Ancient Institutions and Geography colleagues and students honor Richard J.A. Talbert for his numerous contributions and influence on the fields of ancient history, political and social science, as well as cartography and geography. This collection of original and useful examinations is focused around the core theme of Talbert's work - how ancient individuals and groups organized their world, through their institutions and geography. The first half of the book considers institutional history in chapters on such diverse topics as the Roman Senate, Roman provincial politics...

The economic success of the Roman Empire was unparalleled in the West until the early modern period. While favourable natural conditions, capital accumulation, technology and political stability all contributed to this, economic performance ultimately depended on the ability to mobilize, train and co-ordinate human work efforts. In Work, Labour, and Professions in the Roman World, the authors discuss new insights, ideas and interpretations on the role of labour and human resources in the Roman economy. They study the various ways in which work was mobilised and organised and how these...

Following on previous workshops of the Impact of Empire network which looked at frontiers (Impact 9), integration (Impact 10) and the world(s) beyond the borders of the Roman empire (Impact 11), the twelfth meeting of the network focused on movement within the Roman world. The Impact of Mobility and Migration in the Roman Empire assembles a series of papers on key themes in the study of Roman mobility and migration. It discusses legal frameworks, the mobility of the army (both at war and in peace-time), ethnic identity, the mobility of women, the mobility of senators, diplomatic...

Die politische Rolle der stadtromischen Plebs in der Kaiserzeit engages with the topical question of the political role of the Roman plebs in the imperial period and seeks to reconstruct how it may have looked in practice and how it can be defined. Detailed source criticism of Tacitus, Suetonius, Dio Cassius, and others demonstrates that the passages thematizing citizens are primarily narrative in function. This approach further sharpens our understanding of the plebs actual historical actions both regarding their causes, forms, and extent, as well as their attitude towards the...

This volume explores the nature of religious change in the Greek-speaking cities of the Roman Empire. Emphasis is put on those developments that apparently were not the direct result of Roman actions: the intensification of idiosyncratically Greek features in the religious life of the cities (Heller, Muniz, Camia); the active role of a new kind of Hellenism in the design of imperial religious policies (Gordillo, Galimberti, Rosillo-Lopez); or the locally different responses to central religious initiatives, and the influence of those local responses in other imperial contexts (Cortes, Melfi,...

In Sophene, Gordyene, and Adiabene, M. Marciak offers the first-ever comprehensive study of the history and culture of these three little-known countries of Northern Mesopotamia (3rd century BCE - 7th century CE). The book gives an overview of the historical geography, material culture, and political history of each of these countries. Furthermore, the summary offers a regional perspective by describing the history of this area as a subject of the political and cultural competition of great powers. This book answers both a recent growth of interest in ancient Mesopotamia as the...

This volume aims to address the question of political communication in the Roman world. It draws upon social sciences and the current trend for the historical study of political communication. The book tackles three main problems: What constitutes political communication in the Roman world? In what ways could information be transmitted and represented? What mechanisms made political communication successful or unsuccessful? This edited volume covers questions like speech and mechanisms of political communication, political communication at a distance, bottom-up communication, failure of...