A radical reexamination of the textual and archaeological evidence about Augustus and the Palatine Caesar Augustus (63 BC-AD 14), who is usually thought of as the first Roman emperor, lived on the Palatine Hill, the place from which the word "palace" originates. A startling reassessment of textual and archaeological evidence, The House of Augustus demonstrates that Augustus was never an emperor in any meaningful sense of the word, that he never had a palace, and that the so-called "Casa di Augusto" excavated on the Palatine was a lavish aristocratic house destroyed by the young Caesar in order to build the temple of Apollo. Exploring the Palatine from its first occupation to the present, T. P. Wiseman proposes a reexamination of the "Augustan Age," including much of its literature. Wiseman shows how the political and ideological background of Augustus' rise to power offers a radically different interpretation of the ancient evidence about the Augustan Palatine. Taking a long historical perspective in order to better understand the topography, Wiseman considers the legendary stories of Rome's origins-in particular Romulus' foundation and inauguration of the city on the summit of the Palatine. He examines the new temple of Apollo and the piazza it overlooked, as well as the portico around it with its library used as a hall for Senate meetings, and he illustrates how Commander Caesar, who became Caesar Augustus, was the champion of the Roman people against an oppressive oligarchy corrupting the Republic. A decisive intervention in a critical debate among ancient historians and archaeologists, The House of Augustus recalibrates our views of a crucially important period and a revered public space.

In Incidental Archaeologists, Bonnie Effros examines the archaeological contributions of nineteenth-century French military officers, who, raised on classical accounts of warfare and often trained as cartographers, developed an interest in the Roman remains they encountered when commissioned in the colony of Algeria. By linking the study of the Roman past to French triumphant narratives of the conquest and occupation of the Maghreb, Effros demonstrates how Roman archaeology in the forty years following the conquest of the Ottoman Regencies of Algiers and Constantine in the 1830s helped lay the groundwork for the creation of a new identity for French military and civilian settlers. Effros uses France's violent colonial war, its efforts to document the ancient Roman past, and its brutal treatment of the region's Arab and Berber inhabitants to underline the close entanglement of knowledge production with European imperialism. Significantly, Incidental Archaeologists shows how the French experience in Algeria contributed to the professionalization of archaeology in metropolitan France. Effros demonstrates how the archaeological expeditions undertaken by the French in Algeria and the documentation they collected of ancient Roman military accomplishments reflected French confidence that they would learn from Rome's technological accomplishments and succeed, where the Romans had failed, in mastering the region.

Cityscapes consist of houses, streets, civic buildings, sanctuaries, tombs, monuments and inscriptions created by multiple generations of citizens and foreigners with an interest in the city; they are interpreted and reinterpreted as expressions of past lives, changing relations of power, memories and various identities. The present volume publishes 25 contributions written by scholars specializing in the history and archaeology of western Asia Minor. New and well-known material - literary, epigraphical, numismatic, and archaeological - is presented and analyzed through the twin lenses of memory and identity. The contributions cover more than 1000 years of cultural diversity during changing political systems, from the Lydian and Persian hegemony in the Archaic period through Athenian supremacy and Persian satrapal rule in the Classical period, then autocratic kingship in Hellenistic times until, finally, more than half a millennium of Roman rule. Identities are voiced through several media and visible at many levels of the ancient societies. So are the places of memory - the Lieux de Memoire - and the studies presented here provide new insights into how human beings chose, deliberately or subconsciously, to commemorate their past and their ancestors, and how identity was displayed and expressed under shifting political rule.

A comprehensive and richly illustrated history of one of the most important athletic, religious, and political sites in the ancient Greek and Roman world The memory of ancient Olympia lives on in the form of the modern Olympic Games. But in the ancient era, Olympia was renowned for far more than its athletic contests. In Olympia, Judith Barringer provides a comprehensive and richly illustrated history of one of the most important sites in the ancient Greek and Roman world, where athletic competitions took place alongside-and were closely connected with-crucial religious and political activities. Barringer describes the development of the Altis, the most sacred area of Olympia, where monuments to athletes successful in the games joined those erected to the gods and battlefield victories. Rival city-states and rulers built monuments to establish eminence, tout alliances, and join this illustrious company in a rich intergenerational dialogue. The political importance of Olympia was matched by its place as the largest sanctuary dedicated to Zeus, king of the gods. Befitting Zeus's role as god of warfare, the Olympian oracle was consulted to ensure good omens for war, and the athletic games embodied the fierce competition of battle. Other gods and heroes were worshipped at Olympia too, Hera, Artemis, and Herakles among them. Drawing on a comprehensive knowledge of the archaeological record, Barringer describes the full span of Olympia's history, from the first monumental building around 600 BC to the site's gradual eclipse in the late Christianized Roman empire. Extensively illustrated with maps and diagrams, Olympia brings the development of Olympia vividly to life for modern readers.

In this book Dr Wallace makes a fundamental contribution to the study of urbanism in the Roman provinces. She attempts for the first time to present a detailed archaeological account of the first decade of one of the best-excavated cities in the Roman Empire. Delving into the artefact and structural reports from all excavations of pre-Boudican levels in London, she brings together vast quantities of data which are discussed and illustrated according to a novel methodology that address both the difficulties and complexity of 'grey literature' and urban excavation.

This innovative look at ancient Greek painting combines the most complete survey to date of the painted monuments of classical antiquity with an in-depth exploration of the ways in which the people of Ancient Greece appreciated this demanding art. Plantzos looks at techniques, styles, themes and masters as well as their admirers, clients, and critics. At the same time, he discusses recent breakthroughs in archaeology, cultural studies, and art history. The book is unique in its reflections of new, multidisciplinary approaches to the material record which it combines with a more traditional, art-historical exploration; it draws on a wide range of ancient authorities - from Plato and Xenophon to Cicero, Pliny, Lucian, and Philostratus. The book covers painting in Bronze-Age Greece (Cyclades, Crete, Santorini, Mycenaean Greece); painting of the Archaic, the Classical, and the Hellenistic periods, and ends with a study of Graeco-Roman painting in the 2nd-3rd c. AD. Dimitris Plantzos is the author of Greek Art and Archaeology, 1200-30 BC (Kapon Editions, 2016).

This volume catalogues more than 400 lamps and lamp fragments dating from the Late Archaic to the Byzantine periods found over several decades at the Isthmian Sanctuary of Poseidon. These come from excavations undertaken by UCLA from 1967 to 1987 under the direction of Paul Clement and since then by OSU under the direction of Timothy Gregory. As well as the detailed descriptions of the lamps in the catalogue, the volume presents a commentary on the types of lamps used at the Sanctuary that enriches our knowledge of their manufacture, use, and artistic evolution over time. The lamps also contribute to a better understanding of the site, as they reflect the various historical, political, and religious vicissitudes at Isthmia and the Corinthia in general over the centuries. The author is one of the leading authorities in the world on lamps from ancient Greece, and her work advances our knowledge of the subject in Isthmia, the Corinthia, and beyond.

Migration, Mobility and Place in Ancient Italy challenges prevailing conceptions of a natural tie to the land and a demographically settled world. It argues that much human mobility in the last millennium BC was ongoing and cyclical. In particular, outside the military context 'the foreigner in our midst' was not regarded as a problem. Boundaries of status rather than of geopolitics were those difficult to cross. The book discusses the stories of individuals and migrant groups, traders, refugees, expulsions, the founding and demolition of sites, and the political processes that could both encourage and discourage the transfer of people from one place to another. In so doing it highlights moments of change in the concepts of mobility and the definitions of those on the move. By providing the long view from history, it exposes how fleeting are the conventions that take shape here and now.

In this book, Kramer-Hajos examines the Euboean Gulf region in Central Greece to explain its flourishing during the post-palatial period. Providing a social and political history of the region in the Late Bronze Age, she focuses on the interactions between this 'provincial' coastal area and the core areas where the Mycenaean palaces were located. Drawing on network and agency theory, two current and highly effective methodologies in prehistoric Mediterranean archaeology, Kramer-Hajos argues that the Euboean Gulf region thrived when it was part of a decentralized coastal and maritime network, and declined when it was incorporated in a highly centralized mainland-looking network. Her research and analysis contributes new insights to our understanding of the mechanics and complexity of the Bronze Age Aegean collapse.

From Zeus and Europa, to Diana, Pan, and Prometheus, the myths of ancient Greece and Rome seem to exert a timeless power over us. But what do those myths represent, and why are they so enduringly fascinating? Why do they seem to be such a potent way of talking about our selves, our origins, and our desires? This imaginative and stimulating Very Short Introduction goes beyond a simple retelling of the stories to explore the rich history and diverse interpretations of classical myths. It is a wide-ranging account, examining how classical myths are used and understood in both high art and popular culture, taking the reader from the temples of Crete to skyscrapers in New York, and finding classical myths in a variety of unexpected places: from arabic poetry and Hollywood films, to psychoanalysis, the bible, and New Age spiritualism. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Gordion is frequently remembered as the location of an intricate knot ultimately cut by Alexander, but in antiquity it served as the center of the Phrygian kingdom that ruled much of Asia Minor during the early millennium B.C.E. The site lies approximately seventy kilometers southeast of Ankara in central Turkey, at the intersection of the great empires of the East (Assyrians, Babylonians, and Hittites) and the West (Greeks and Romans). Consequently, it occupied a strategic position on nearly all trade routes that linked the Mediterranean and the Near East. The University of Pennsylvania has been excavating at Gordion since 1950, unearthing a wide range of discoveries that span nearly four millennia. The vast majority of these artifacts attests to the city's interactions with the other great kingdoms and city states of the Near East during the Iron Age and Archaic periods (ca. 950-540 B.C.E.), especially Assyria, Urartu, Persia, Lydia, Greece, and the Neo-Hittite city-states of North Syria, among others. Gordion is thus the ideal centerpiece of an exhibition dealing with Anatolia and its neighbors during the first millennium B.C.E. Through a special agreement signed between the Republic of Turkey and the University of Pennsylvania, Turkey has loaned the Penn Museum more than one hundred artifacts gathered from four museums in Turkey (Ankara, Gordion, Istanbul, and Antalya) for an exhibition titled The Golden Age of King Midas. The exhibition features most of the material recovered in Tumulus MM, or the "Midas Mound" (ca. 740 B.C.E.), which was the burial site of King Midas's father, as well as a number of objects found in a series of Lydian tombs. The Turkish loan has made possible a uniquely comprehensive and elaborate exhibition that also features a disparate group of rarely seen objects from the Penn Museum's own collections, particularly from sites in the Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Greece. With the historic King Midas (ca. 740-700 B.C.E.) as its guiding theme, the exhibition illuminates the relationships Phrygia maintained with Lydia, Persia, Assyria, and Greece. The accompanying catalog includes full-color illustrations and essays that expound on the sites and objects of the exhibition.

This volume presents the results of diachronic archaeological and palaeoecological research conducted in two study areas: the intermontane Kazanlak Valley along the Upper Tundzha River of central Bulgaria, and the Thracian Plain along the Middle Tundzha River south of the city of Yambol in southeastern Bulgaria. The Tundzha Regional Archaeology Project (TRAP), a cooperative effort including Australian, Bulgarian, and Czech investigators, undertook archaeological survey and environmental sampling between 2009-2011. Major field activities of the project included over 100 sq km of systematic pedestrian survey, legacy data verification and mapping, trial excavations, artefact processing, and environmental sampling in and around the study areas. Through this research, TRAP inventoried over 100 surface artefact concentrations and 800 burial mounds. At the heart of the volume is a geospatial analysis of settlement patterns derived from the survey dataset, which relates the footprint of past human activities to environmental and sociocultural drivers. We also present a range of associated studies conducted between 2009-2015: histories of archaeological research in both study areas, soil erosion and productivity modelling in the Kazanlak Valley, reconstruction of a 30,000-year environmental history based on samples from a wetland in the Thracian Plain north of Yambol, investigation of palaeodiet using isotope analysis of human remains from Bronze Age burials in the Yambol study area, exploration of shifting Roman occupation patterns based on trial excavations in the Yambol area, research into subsistence strategies based on palaeobotanical evidence recovered from one of the Yambol area trial excavations, analysis of trade and exchange based on the transport amphorae fragments recovered during Yambol-area survey, and epigraphic comparison and synthesis of Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman inscriptions from the two study areas. Finally, TRAP has produced a granular digital dataset of surface artefacts and features unparalleled in Bulgaria to promote reinterpretation of our results, encourage secondary studies, and foster comparative research.

This luxuriously illustrated book surveys Greek archaeology from the collapse of the Mycenaean palaces to the subordination of the last Hellenistic kingdoms to Rome. Its aim is to study Greek art through the material record, and against its cultural and social backdrop. It takes the reader on a tour of ancient Greece along the most important period in its history, the 1st millennium BC. Architecture, city planning, sculpture, painting, pottery, metallurgy, jewellery, and numismatics are some of the areas covered. With concise, systematic coverage of the main categories of classical monuments, the book caters for the non-specialist looking for the essential in ancient Greece, students of Greek archaeology and art, as well as anyone interested in Greek art and culture. The text is divided into accessible, user-friendly sections including case studies, terminology, charts, maps, a timeline and full index. This is the first English language edition of the original Greek edition and was thoroughly revised and expanded by Dimitris Plantzos before translation by the British archaeologist Nicola Wardle. 592 colour illustrations.

The period described in this volume begins in the year after the death of Julius Caesar and ends in the year after the fall of Nero. Its main theme is the transformation of the political configuration of the state to a dynastic monarchy and the establishment of the Roman Empire. Central to the period is the achievement of the first emperor, Augustus.

The fully revised second edition of this successful volume includes updates on the latest archaeological research in all chapters, and two new essays on Greek and Roman art. It retains its unique, paired essay format, as well as key contributions from leading archaeologists and historians of the classical world. * Second edition is updated and revised throughout, showcasing the latest research and fresh theoretical approaches in classical archaeology * Includes brand new essays on ancient Greek and Roman art in a modern context * Designed to encourage critical thinking about the interpretation of ancient material culture and the role of modern perceptions in shaping the study of art and archaeology * Features paired essays one covering the Greek world, the other, the Roman to stimulate a dialogue not only between the two ancient cultures, but between scholars from different historiographic and methodological traditions * Includes maps, chronologies, diagrams, photographs, and short editorial introductions to each chapter

Over his long and illustrious career as Lecturer, Reader and Professor in Edinburgh University (1961-1976), Lawrence Professor of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge (1976-2001) and currently Fellow of the McDonald Institute of Archaeology at Cambridge, Anthony Snodgrass has influenced and been associated with a long series of eminent classical archaeologists, historians and linguists. In acknowledgement of his immense academic achievement, this collection of essays by a range of international scholars reflects his wide-ranging research interests: Greek prehistory, the Greek Iron Age and Archaic era, Greek texts and Archaeology, Classical Art History, societies on the fringes of the Greek and Roman world, and Regional Field Survey. Not only do they celebrate his achievements but they also represent new avenues of research which will have a broad appeal.

Germania was one of the most important and complex zones of cultural interaction and conflict between Rome and neighbouring societies. A vast region, it became divided into urbanised provinces with elaborate military frontiers and the northern part of the continental 'Barbaricum'. Recent decades have seen a major effort by German archaeologists, ancient historians, epigraphers, numismatists, and other specialists to explore the Roman era in their own territory, with rich and often surprising new knowledge. This Handbook aims to make the results of this great effort of modern German and overwhelmingly German-language scholarship more widely available to Anglophone scholarship on the empire. Archaeology and ancient history are international enterprises characterised by specific national scholarly traditions; this is notably true of the study of Roman-era Germania. This volume compromises a collection of essays in English by leading scholars working in Germany, presenting the latest developments in current research as well as situating their work within wider international scholarship through a series of critical responses from other, very different, national perspectives. In doing so, this book aims to reveal the riches of the archaeology of Roman Germany, promote the achievements of German scholars in the area, and help facilitate continued English and German language discourses on the Roman era.

This book investigates how varying practices of gender shaped people's lives and experiences across the societies of ancient Greece and Rome. Exploring how gender was linked with other socio-political characteristics such as wealth, status, age and life-stage, as well as with individual choices, in the very different world of classical antiquity is fascinating in its own right. But later perceptions of ancient literature and art have profoundly influenced the development of gendered ideologies and hierarchies in the West, and influenced the study of gender itself. Questioning how best to untangle and interpret difficult sources is a key aim. This book exploits a wide range of archaeological, material cultural, visual, spatial, demographic, epigraphical and literary evidence to consider households, families, life-cycles and the engendering of time, legal and political institutions, beliefs about bodies, sex and sexuality, gender and space, the economic implications of engendered practices, and gender in religion and magic.

For a century following the end of the Lamian War in 322 B.C., Athens' harbour at Pireus was almost constantly occupied by a Macedonian garrison. The Macedonian presence dealt a crucial blow to Athenian independence and Athenian democracy, initiating the first in a long and intermittent series of foreign occupations. The twenty-eight papers in this volume are based on an international conference hosted by the University of Athens in May 2001, and focus on various aspects of Athenian art, archaeology and history in the century of Macedonian domination. They consider Athens' new role as a political stepping stone for potential Successors to the throne of Macedon - Cassander, Demetrios Poliorketes and Antigonos Gonatas were each able to secure Macedonia by using Athens as a power base - and the ways in which Athenian culture was affected by the Macedonian presence. They contribute to the ongoing debate about the reasons for the Macedonian ascendancy, the degree of independence accorded Athens by their Macedonian overlords, the third-century archon list, and changes in Athenian art and architecture.

The life cycle of a coin is long. One might even argue that its existence as a coin is only a minor part of the recycling of metal. In the field of archaeology, coin finds are evidence of connections between human beings. Coins were brought from one place to another by someone, with a reason to do so. Any object acquires new properties when moved from one cultural context to another, and the meaning of the Roman coin in the Danish Iron Age context no doubt differed greatly from its original significance. The Roman denarius was meant to be used as a coin in a monetary economy. Having left the area where the denarius was recognized as coin, it assumed new meanings. But, what were those new meanings? How was the denarius perceived in non-Roman communities? Which purposes did the coin serve? This book covers the later part of the Roman coin's existence - its arrival in Bornholm, its use there, and its deposition in and recovery from the soil.

A multifaceted exploration of the interplay between civic and military life in ancient Rome The ancient Romans famously distinguished between civic life in Rome and military matters outside the city-a division marked by the pomerium, an abstract religious and legal boundary that was central to the myth of the city's foundation. In this book, Michael Koortbojian explores, by means of images and texts, how the Romans used social practices and public monuments to assert their capital's distinction from its growing empire, to delimit the proper realms of religion and law from those of war and conquest, and to establish and disseminate so many fundamental Roman institutions across three centuries of imperial rule. Crossing the Pomerium probes such topics as the appearance in the city of Romans in armor, whether in representation or in life, the role of religious rites on the battlefield, and the military image of Constantine on the arch built in his name. Throughout, the book reveals how, in these instances and others, the ancient ideology of crossing the pomerium reflects the efforts of Romans not only to live up to the ideals they had inherited, but also to reconceive their past and to validate contemporary practices during a time when Rome enjoyed growing dominance in the Mediterranean world. A masterly reassessment of the evolution of ancient Rome and its customs, Crossing the Pomerium explores a problem faced by generations of Romans-how to leave and return to hallowed city ground in the course of building an empire.

Imagery and iconography served specific functions in public, private, and ritual spheres in the Roman world. State-sanctioned imagery communicated politically charged ideas through an often-complex pictorial language, composed of emblems and attributes that signaled aspects of policy. In the private sphere, imagery communicated ethnic, social, and religious identities through specific signs, symbols, and forms, and through the emulation of state-sanctioned art. This volume focuses primarily on visual imagery in the Roman world, examined by context and period, and the evolving scholarly traditions of iconographic analysis and visual semiotics that have framed the modern study of these images. Among other subjects, essays touch on iconography and style in republican and early imperial art, public sculpture and social practice in the Roman Empire, coin iconography, funerary imagery, imagery in ritual use, and images and interpretation of Africans in Roman art. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Imagery and Iconography is an important reference work for both the communicative value of images in the Roman world and the tradition of iconographical analysis.

Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua XI: Monuments from Phrygia and Lykaonia is a corpus of 387 Greek and Latin inscriptions and other ancient and medieval monuments from inner Anatolia (Phrygia, Lykaonia, and south-western Galatia). Most of these monuments were recorded by William Calder and Michael Ballance in annual expeditions to Asia Minor between 1954 and 1957. The results of these expeditions were never published, and around three-quarters of the monuments in the volume are published here for the first time. All the inscriptions are translated in full, with extensive commentaries and photographic illustration. The volume includes a geographical introduction to the sites and regions covered by the corpus, and full indices. Peter Thonemann teaches Greek and Roman history at Wadham College, Oxford. He is the author of The Maeander Valley: A Historical Geography from Antiquity to Byzantium (Cambridge, 2011), and the editor of Roman Phrygia: Culture and Society (Cambridge, 2013), a companion volume to this corpus.

A new account of the famous site and story of the last stand of a group of Jewish rebels who held out against the Roman Empire Two thousand years ago, 967 Jewish men, women, and children-the last holdouts of the revolt against Rome following the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple-reportedly took their own lives rather than surrender to the Roman army. This dramatic event, which took place on top of Masada, a barren and windswept mountain overlooking the Dead Sea, spawned a powerful story of Jewish resistance that came to symbolize the embattled modern State of Israel. The first extensive archaeological excavations of Masada began in the 1960s, and today the site draws visitors from around the world. And yet, because the mass suicide was recorded by only one ancient author-the Jewish historian Josephus-some scholars question if the event ever took place. Jodi Magness, an archaeologist who has excavated at Masada, explains what happened there, how we know it, and how recent developments might change understandings of the story. Incorporating the latest findings, she integrates literary and historical sources to show what life was like for Jews under Roman rule during an era that witnessed the reign of Herod and Jesus's ministry and death. Featuring numerous illustrations, this is an engaging exploration of an ancient story that continues to grip the imagination today.

The Etruscans are one of the enigmas of history. A cultured, artistic, socially adept and seemingly tolerant and pleasure-loving people, they dominated Central Italy for 800 years until their civilization was absorbed and their identity obliterated by the growing power of Rome in the fourth and third centuries BC. During the last 400 years their art has come to be appreciated and enjoyed; rich archaeological evidence survives despite a continuing history of pillage, with the emergence of richly frescoed tombs, exquisite jewelry and sculpture, metalwork and painted vases at sites such as Ceverteri, Tarquinia and Vulci paying testament to the rich artistic culture of the Etruscans. The author has also written "Understanding Greek Sculpture".