After the end of the Republic, Augustus and his successors were faced with the task of re-stabilising the social and political order. An emphasis on traditional values was a particularly important part of it. This edited volume, which has its origins in a special research group (Sonderforschungsbereich) in Dresden, a oeInstitutionality and Historicitya, deals with the relationship between Roman values and the political strategies and changing social roles of the early Principate as reflected in contemporary literary communication.

Are the Roman values focused upon above all by Latinists in the first half of the 20th century, still relevant to the classical studies of today, or can they, in view of new research approaches and interdisciplinary discourse, still be of interest? This volume, the result of an "Institutionalism and Historicity" special research area seminar at Dresden Technical University, discusses this question in a productive manner. Eleven contributions, written by classical philologists, ancient historians and classical archaeologists, offer a range of critical surveys as well as on-going conceptual ideas and concrete individual studies.

Die zunehmende AuflAsung der soziopolitischen Ordnung in der ausgehenden rAmischen Republik erfaAte auch das System allgemein verbindlicher Werte. Wie sich die literarische Kommunikation der Zeit zu dieser Entwicklung verhielt, untersuchen die hier versammelten BeitrAge. Sie sind, wie bereits der Band 'Moribus antiquis res stat Romana' zur rAmischen Literatur des 3. und 2. Jhs. v. Chr. (BzA 134), aus dem Dresdner Sonderforschungsbereich 'InstitutionalitAt und Geschichtlichkeit' hervorgegangen. Neben den literarischen Texten werden epigraphische und archAologische Zeugnisse berA1/4cksichtigt.

The essays in Conceiving the Empire explore the mental images, ideas, and symbolical representations of `empire' which developed in the two most powerful political entities of antiquity: China and Rome. While the central focus is on historiography, other related fields are also explored: geography and cartography, epigraphy, art and architecture, and, more generally, political thought and the history of ideas. Written by a collaborative team of experts in Sinology and Classical Studies, the volume focuses the attention of the emerging discipline of East-West cross-cultural studies on an essential feature of the ancient Mediterranean and Chinese worlds: the emergence of `empire' and the enduring influence of the `imperial' order.