Kategoria BISAC: History >> Ancient - Rome

The Greeks and Romans lived according to a distinctively Hellenic conception of time as an aspect of cosmic order and regularity. Appropriating ideas from Egypt and the Near East, the Greeks integrated them into a cosmological framework governed by mathematics and linking the cycles of the heavenly bodies to the human environment. From their cosmology they derived instruments for measuring and tracking the passage of time that were sophisticated embodiments of scientific reasoning and technical craft, meant not solely for the study of specialists and connoisseurs but for the public...

A heavy javelin, normally used as a shock weapon immediately before contact, the pilum was designed with a particular specialty: it could penetrate a shield and carry on into the individual behind it. Relying on mass rather than velocity, at short range a volley of pila had much the same effect on a charging enemy as musketry would in later periods. The design was not uniform, with a wide diversity of types throughout the developmental history of the weapon, but for more than four centuries it remained a vital part of the arsenal of weapons at the disposal of the Roman...

In 132 AD, Simeon Bar Kosiba, a rebel leader who assumed the messianic name Simon Bar Kokhba ('son of a star'), led the people of Judaea and Galilee in open rebellion, aiming to oust the occupying Romans and establish their own independent Jewish state. During the ensuing 'Bar Kokhba Revolt' (the Second Jewish War), the Jewish rebels held their own against the crack Roman troops for four years. The cost of this rebellion was catastrophic: hundreds of thousands of casualties, the destruction of Jerusalem as the Jewish capital and the expulsion of the Jewish community from the region, which...

Cantor analyzes the way Shakespeare chronicles the rise and fall of the Roman Republic and the emergence of the Roman Empire. The transformation of the ancient city into a cosmopolitan empire marks the end of the era of civic...

Profound cultural change defined the Byzantine world. For centuries after its embrace of Christianity, exchanges of ideas, objects, peoples and identities continued to flow across an empire that found itself located at the crossroads of so many other worlds. This book brings together a selection of important contributions to the study of cross-cultural exchange in the Byzantine world in its largest geographic and temporal sense. It employs an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, presenting papers first given by graduate and early career academic researchers from around the world at...

The remarkable story of the war is narrated by an eye-witness and participant, Josephus. He was at first a rebel commander, then after his capture, supported Titus in the final assault on Jerusalem. Josephus spares no detail...

The German Archaeological Institute has been publishing its yearbook since 1885, with each volume containing ten papers covering principally Classical ‑ i.e. Greek and Roman ‑ Archaeology, although from time to time Early Byzantine to Early Islamic topics are also treated, as are those from Early Anatolian and Western European History.

In recent years, the contents of the Yearbook have been constantly specialised and expanded; subjects include art history and the history of style, iconography, hermeneutics, typology, compilations of material and the...

For too long, the study of religious life in Late Antiquity has relied on the premise that Jews, pagans, and Christians were largely discrete groups divided by clear markers of belief, ritual, and social practice. More recently, however, a growing body of scholarship is revealing the degree to which identities in the late Roman world were fluid, blurred by ethnic, social, and gender differences. Christianness, for example, was only one of a plurality of identities available to Christians in this period.

In Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa,...

Band 20 des Jahrbuchs SYMBOLON dokumentiert Vortrage aus unterschiedlichen Disziplinen, die bei den Jahrestagungen der Gesellschaft fur wissenschaftliche Symbolforschung e. V. 2012-2014 in Koln, Erfurt und Essen gehalten wurden. Die Beitrage behandeln die folgenden Themenkreise: Von Schiffen & Fischen. Zeichen und Symbole im Lebensraum Wasser (Boschs Versuchungen des hl. Antonius), Flusse & Meere. Symbole und Mythen (Der aquatische Stier, Symbolik des Wassers, Symbolik der Muschel, symbolische Darstellung von Wasser in Musik, Agypten) und Die Gestirne. Symbole und Mythen (Symbolik der...

The Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis, also known as The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, is the first extant diary authored by a Christian woman. Vibia Perpetua was a young mother who lived in Roman Africa and, at the age of twenty-two, chose to publicly proclaim her Christian faith. She died as a...

Previous studies of tombstones and inscriptions dedicated to divinities have focused on methods of assigning names in Roman society, the age at marriage and death of demographic populations across the Roman Empire, relations of kinship, marriage, amity and dependence among elite and sub-altern families and communities, and the performance of acts in accordance with traditional forms of belief and custom. The present volume wishes to ask what conclusions can be drawn from the corpus of private Latin inscriptions from Roman Italy about the identity, social condition and cultural activity of...

The research and...