Roman cities have rarely been studied from the perspective of women, and studies of Roman women mainly focus on the city of Rome. Studying the civic participation of women in the towns of Italy outside Rome and in the numerous cities of the Latin-speaking provinces of the Roman Empire, this books offers a new view on Roman women and urban society in the Roman Principate. Drawing on epigraphy and archaeology, and to a lesser extent on legal and literary texts, women's civic roles as priestesses, benefactresses and patronesses or 'mothers' of cities and associations (collegia and the Augustales) are brought to the fore. In contrast to the city of Rome, which was dominated by the imperial family, wealthy women in the local Italian and provincial towns had ample opportunity to leave their mark on the city. Their motives to spend their money, time and energy for the benefit of their cities and the rewards their contributions earned them take centre stage. Assessing the meaning and significance of their contributions for themselves and their families and for the cities that enjoyed them, the book presents a new and detailed view of the role of women and gender in Roman urban life.

Lost Knowledge: The Concept of Vanished Technologies and Other Human Histories examines the idea of lost knowledge, reaching back to a period between myth and history. It investigates a peculiar idea found in a number of early texts: that there were civilizations with knowledge of sophisticated technologies, and that this knowledge was obscured or destroyed over time along with the civilization that had created it. This book presents critical studies of a series of early Chinese, South Asian, and other texts that look at the idea of specific "lost" technologies, such as mechanical flight and the transmission of images. There is also an examination of why concepts of a vanished "golden age" were prevalent in so many cultures. Offering an engaging and investigative look at the propagation of history and myth in technology and culture, this book is sure to interest historians and readers from many backgrounds.

In Language and Meter, Dieter Gunkel and Olav Hackstein unite fifteen linguistic studies on a variety of poetic traditions, including the Homeric epics, the hieratic hymns of the Rgveda, the Gathas of the Avesta, early Latin and the Sabellic compositions, Germanic alliterative verse, Insular Celtic court poetry, and Tocharian metrical texts. The studies treat a broad range of topics, including the prehistory of the hexameter, the nature of Homeric formulae, the structure of Vedic verse, rhythm in the Gathas, and the relationship between Germanic and Celtic poetic traditions. The volume contributes to our understanding of the relationship between language and poetic form, and how they change over time.

Cassius Dio (c. 160-c. 230) is a familiar name to Roman historians, but still an enigmatic one. His text has shaped our understanding of his own period and earlier eras, but basic questions remain about his Greek and Roman cultural identities and his literary and intellectual influences. Contributors to this volume read Dio against different backgrounds including the politics of the Severan court, the cultural milieu of the Second Sophistic and Roman traditions of historiography and political theory. Dio emerges as not just a recounter of events, but a representative of his times in all their complexity.

In The Roots of Western Finance: Power, Ethics, and Social Capital in the Ancient World, Thomas K. Park and James B. Greenberg take an anthropological approach to credit. They suggest that financial activities occur in a complex milieu, in which specific parties, with particular motives, achieve their goals using a form of social, cultural, or economic agency. They examine the imbrication of finance and hidden interests in Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, classical Greece and Rome, the early Judeo-Christian traditions, and the Islamic world to illuminate the ties between social, ethical, and financial institutions. This unique breadth of research provides new perspectives on Mesopotamian ways of incentivizing production through financial arrangements, the source of Egyptian surpluses, linguistics and usury, metrological influences on finance, and the enduring importance of honor and social capital. This book not only illustrates the particular cultural logics that drove these ancient economies, it also depicts how modern society's financial techniques, ethics, and concerns with justice are attributable to a rich multicultural history.

Empires of the Sea brings together studies of maritime empires from the Bronze Age to the Eighteenth Century. The volume aims to establish maritime empires as a category for the (comparative) study of premodern empires, and from a partly 'non-western' perspective. The book includes contributions on Mycenaean sea power, Classical Athens, the ancient Thebans, Ptolemaic Egypt, The Genoese Empire, power networks of the Vikings, the medieval Danish Empire, the Baltic empire of Ancien Regime Sweden, the early modern Indian Ocean, the Melaka Empire, the (non-European aspects of the) Portuguese Empire and Dutch East India Company, and the Pirates of Caribbean.

Arminius the Liberator: Myth and Ideology deals with a particular, although wide-ranging, aspect in the long reception history of Arminius the Cheruscan, commonly called Hermann. Arminius inflicted one of their most devastating defeats on the Romans in the year 9 A.D., when he destroyed three legions under the command of Varus in the Battle in the Teutoburg Forest, as it is generally called. Martin M. Winkler traces the origin and development of the Arminius legend in antiquity and in political and ideological appropriations of Arminius-Hermann since the nineteenth century. The book's central theme is the ideological use and abuse of history and of historical myth in Germany: Weimar-era nationalism, National Socialism, and the reaction to the ideological taint of the Arminius figure after 1945. The book also examines the various appearances of Arminius in art and media from the 1960s until today. Special emphasis is on the representation of Arminius in the era of visual mass media in Germany, Italy, and the U.S.: painting (Anselm Kiefer) and theater (Claus Peymann) but, most extensively, cinema, television, and computer videos.

East and West in the Roman Empire of the Fourth Century examines the (dis)unity of the Roman Empire in the fourth century from different angles, in order to offer a broad perspective on the topic and avoid an overvaluation of the political division of the empire in 395. After a methodological key-paper on the concepts of unity, the other contributors elaborate on these notions from various geo-political perspectives: the role of the army and taxation, geographical perspectives, the unity of the Church and the perception of the divisio regni of 364. Four case-studies follow, illuminating the role of concordia apostolorum, antique sports, eunuchs and the poet Prudentius on the late antique view of the Empire. Despite developments to the contrary, it appears that the Roman Empire remained (to be viewed as) a unity in all strata of society.

Many of the wars of the Late Republic were largely civil conflicts. There was, therefore, a tension between the traditional expectation that triumphs should be celebrated for victories over foreign enemies and the need of the great commanders to give full expression to their prestige and charisma, and to legitimize their power. Triumphs in the Age of Civil War rethinks the nature and the character of the phenomenon of civil war during the Late Republic. At the same time it focuses on a key feature of the Roman socio-political order, the triumph, and argues that a commander could in practice expect to triumph after a civil war victory if it could also be represented as being over a foreign enemy, even if the principal opponent was clearly Roman. Significantly, the civil aspect of the war did not have to be denied. Carsten Hjort Lange provides the first study to consider the Roman triumph during the age of civil war, and argues that the idea of civil war as "normal" reflects the way civil war permeated the politics and society of the Late Roman Republic.

Since it was written by tragedians and employed a number of formal tragic elements, satyr drama is typically categorized as a sub-genre of Greek tragedy. This categorization, however, gives an incomplete picture of the complicated relationship of the satyr play to other genres of drama in ancient Greece. For example, the humorous chorus of half-man, half-horse satyrs suggests sustained interaction between poets of comedy and satyr play. In Satyric Play, Carl Shaw notes the complex, shifting relationship between comedy and satyr drama, from sixth-century BCE proto-drama to classical productions staged at the Athenian City Dionysia and bookish Alexandrian plays of the third century BCE, and argues that comedy and satyr plays influenced each other in nearly all stages of their development. This is the first book to offer a complete, integrated analysis of Greek comedy and satyr drama, analyzing the details of the many literary, aesthetic, historical, religious, and geographical connections to satyr drama. Ancient critics and poets allude to comic-satyric associations in surprising ways, vases indicate a common connection to komos (revelry) song, and the plays themselves often share titles, plots, modes of humor, and even on occasion choruses of satyrs. Shaw's insight into this evidence reveals the relationship between satyr drama and Greek comedy to be much more intimately connected than we had known and, in fact, much closer than that between satyr drama and tragedy. Satyric Play brings new light to satyr drama as a complex, artful, inventive, and even cleverly paradoxical genre.

The book presents an analysis of communicative structures and deictic elements in Hellenistic dedicatory epigrams. Moving from the most recent linguistic theories on pragmatics and considering together both Stein- and Buchepigramme, this study investigates the linguistic means that are employed in texts transmitted on different media (the stone and the book) to point to and describe their spatial and temporal context. The research is based on the collection of a new corpus of Hellenistic book and inscribed dedicatory epigrams, which were compared to pre-Hellenistic dedicatory epigrams in order to highlight the crucial changes that characterise the development of the epigrammatic genre in the Hellenistic era. By demonstrating that the evolution of the epigrammatic genre moved on the same track for book and stone epigrams, this work offers an important contribution to the ongoing debate on the history of the epigrammatic genre and aims to stimulate further reflection on a poetic genre, which, since its origins in the Greek world, has been successful both in ancient and modern literary traditions.

This easy-to-use reference book covers the most important people, places, events, and technologies of Roman warfare during the republic (400-31 BCE), providing a wealth of reference material and invaluable primary source documents. The study of ancient Rome remains both a high-interest topic and a staple of high school and university curricula, while recent Hollywood movies continue to heighten popular interest in Rome. This multi-format handbook examines warfare in ancient Rome during the republic period, from approximately 400 BCE to 31 BCE. Presenting ready reference, primary source documents, statistical information, and a chronology, the title explore all aspects of conflict during this time period, including key military leaders, pivotal battles and sieges, new weapons and technologies, and the intersections of warfare and society in the ancient world. The reference entries provide detailed snapshots of key people, events, groups, places, weapons systems, and strategies that enable readers to easily understand the critical issues during 400 years of the Roman Republic, while various overview, causes, and consequences essays offer engaging, in-depth coverage of the most important wars. By providing students with in-depth information about how the Roman Army operated, they develop a fuller understanding Roman, ancient, and world history. Connects the constant change of the Roman Army adapting to new enemies and demands to the ongoing political and social changes in Rome itself Provides an easy-to-use, ready reference on Roman warfare during the Republic based on the most recent research Includes primary source documents that provide valuable information and encourage readers to apply their critical thinking skills Offers multiple topic finders that make it easy for readers to find the information they are looking for and follow connections within the material

This volume provides a series of contributions on the crucial aspects relating to the Bible and the Late Bronze Age period. The volume is introduced with a background essay surveying the main areas of history and current scholarship relating to Late Bronze Age Palestine and to the Egyptian New Kingdom (Dynasties 18-20) domination of the region, as well as the question of the biblical account of the same geographical area and historical period. Specific chapters address a range of key concerns: the history of Egypt's dealing with Canaan is surveyed in chapters by Grabbe and Dijkstra. The Amarna texts are also dealt with by Lemche, Mayes and Grabbe. The archaeology is surveyed by van der Steen. The Merenptah Stela mentioning Israel is of considerable interest and is discussed especially by Dijkstra. This leads on to the burning question of the origins of Israel which several of the contributors address. Another issue is whether the first Israelite communities practised egalitarianism, an issue taken up by Guillaume, with a response by Kletter.