The year of the four emperors in AD 193 shows the cosmopolitan interconnectedness of the Roman Empire, yet scholarship has long framed the Severan dynasty in a narrative of descent stressing their North African and in particular their Syrian origins. The contributions of this volume question this conventional approach and instead examine more closely actual Severan policy in the Near East to detect potential local connections that determined this policy as well as how local communities and elites reacted to it. The volume thus explores new beginnings and old connections in the Roman Near East.

The Religious World of Quintus Aurelius Symmachus examines the religious life of one of the last pagan senators of Rome, dates c. 340-402, who lived in a tumultuous time during the Late Antique period of the Roman Empire, dying just a few years before the Western Empire began to break up. Symmachus could not have imagined the political reality developing so soon after his death, so he is important as a late example of the old Roman Western aristocracy, as well as one of the last pagans of Rome. He was regarded as the foremost orator of his time and was a prolific letter-writer who had correspondents in high places and throughout the Empire. He also filled the posts of Urban Prefect of Rome and Consul - and was the opponent of Bishop Ambrose of Milan during the so-called 384 CE "Altar of Victory Dispute," which was one episode of many leading to the " triumph" of Christianity over traditional Roman polytheism. Symmachus cache of 900 private letters and his official despatches while Urban Prefect have provided the raw material for this book.

Marcus Furius Camillus is the dominant figure in our traditional history of the Roman Republic in the early fourth century. He has been featured in histories of Rome since the Renaissance, but currently is viewed with great scepticism, some even questioning his very existence. What is notably absent, however, is any reference to a system of historical method: how one distinguishes fact from fiction. This is the first modern monograph on Camillus, and it grapples head-on with this problem. The results are unexpected.

This volume offers the first comprehensive analysis in English of all the writings of Julian (r. AD 361-363), the last pagan emperor of Rome, noted for his frontal and self-conscious challenge to Christianity. The book also contains treatments of Julians laws, inscriptions, coinage, as well as his artistic programme. Across nineteen papers, international specialists in the field of Late Antique Studies offer original interpretations of an extraordinary figure: emperor and philosopher, soldier and accomplished writer. Julian, his life and writings, are here considered as parts of the tumult in politics, culture and religion during the Fourth Century AD. New light is shed on Julians distinctive literary style and imperial agenda. The volume also includes an up-to-date, consolidated bibliography.

Appian of Alexandria lived in the early-to-mid second century AD, a time when the pax Romana flourished. His Roman History traced, through a series of ethnographic histories, the growth of Roman power throughout Italy and the Mediterranean World. But Appian also told the story of the civil wars which beset Rome from the time of Tiberius Gracchus to the death of Sextus Pompeius Magnus. The standing of his work in modern times is paradoxical. Consigned to the third rank by nineteenth-century historiographers, and poorly served by translators, Appians Roman History profoundly shapes our knowledge of Republican Rome, its empire and its internal politics. We need to know him better. This collection of 15 new papers from a distinguished international team studies both what Appian had to say and how he said it. The papers engage in a dialogue about the value of Appians text as a source of history, the relationship between that history and his own times, and the impact on his narrative of the authors own opinions - most notably that Rome enjoyed divinely-ordained good fortune. Some authors demonstrate that Appians text (and even his mistakes) can yield significant new information, others re-open the question of Appians use of source material in the light of recent studies showing him to be far more than a transmitter of other peoples work.

Sextus Pompeius Magnus Pius, son of Pompey the Great, fits uneasily - or not at all - into the grand narrative of the civil war of 49-31BC. Modern scholars tend to exclude him or mention him without asking what or whom he represented. Ronald Syme, the father of international orthodoxy in this field, famously remarked that Sextus was in reality an adventurer who was easily represented as a pirate. He was wrong. Sextus Pompeius plays havoc with key elements of the accepted narrative. His military success destroys the myth of continuous Caesarian victory. His commitment to rescuing the victims of Triumviral violence belies claims that only the Caesarian side represented clementia and justice. The naval strategy by which he conducted the war demonstrates his commitment to the same cause and ethics as his father and his fathers allies. Welch argues that, far from being a side-show or a bit player, Sextus Pompeius was integral to the fight for the res publica. She solves the problem by placing him at the centre of the story of Romes transition from Republic to Empire and so reveals a very different landscape that emerges as a result.

Velleius Paterculus short work is the earliest surviving attempt on the part of a post-Augustan historian to survey the history of the res publica from its origins to his own times. In a period from which no other contemporary historical narrative survives in more than meagre fragments, Velleius work is uniquely important. It is a critical counter to the later accounts of Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio, not simply because it offers a different view of Tiberius, but because Velleius saw continuity where later authors saw only radical change which destroyed the Republic and put monarchy in its place. For other reasons, too, Velleius occupies a unique position in Roman historiography. This collection of papers, by a distinguished cast of scholars, represents a wide-ranging re-examination of Velleius work, of its place within, and contribution to, Roman historiography and the intellectual history of the early Principate.

Cicero, and others in the Roman Republic, were masters of both invective and panegyric, two hugely important genres in ancient oratory, which influenced the later theory and practice of rhetoric. The papers in this volume address strategies of vituperation and eulogy within the Republic, and examine the mechanisms and effects of praise and blame.

The fifteen papers in this volume discuss issues of Roman social, cultural and political history from the foundation of the Principate to the age of barbarian settlements of the west. Working imaginatively from within the diverse evidence, they show the institutional continuity of the Roman empire between its early and later periods, and reveal the roots of political behaviour in social practice. Five of the papers, including three of the most substantial, are previously unpublished; others have appeared in collections which are now difficult to find. The author has edited the whole to bring out thematic connections as well as for consistency of presentation.

The bawdy comedies of Aristophanes gradually began to attract more attention among learned circles in the later 16th century. This trend culminated in 1586, when Nicodemus Frischlin produced new and strikingly original Latin versions of five plays by Aristophanes. With this work Frischlin completely recast the place of Aristophanes in the Republic of Letters, forcing readers to approach him as a dramatist of tremendous contemporary relevance. Frischlin was able to rehabilitate Aristophanes by calling attention both to the practical advice his plays could give on the administration of a res publica, and to the light they could shed on serious problems concerning rhetorical education and political discourse within the troubled Holy Roman Empire under Rudolf II. This work aims to restore Frischlins translations to their rightful place of honor within the broader reception tradition of Aristophanes and Old Comedy, while analyzing them within the context of Frischlins own longstandingcampaigns for educational and political reform.

Augustus Memoirs, written probably in the mid 20s BC, might have been one of the most revealing texts of Roman history - had they survived. Far longer than his surviving Res Gestae, the Memoirs seem to date from a period at which the wounds of Romes civil wars were fresh, and the emperors partisan past might be recalled with discomfort. Existing fragments and testimonia have suggested that the work was apologetic in purpose. In this, the first ever comprehensive study of the subject, a cast of internationally-respected scholars reconstruct aspects of the work, its importance for historians, and its relation to Roman literary genre. The book also contains, by kind permission of Oxford University Press, the fragments and testimonia of the Memoirs as they will appear, newly edited by Christopher Smith, in The Fragmentary Roman Historians.

The Tiber has been joined by the Orontes. So wrote the Roman satirist Juvenal, in a complaint about immigration to the Empires capital. Rome was constantly sustained by immigrants. Some were voluntary - craftworkers, soldiers, teachers and intellectuals. Countless others came as slaves. What happened to them after arrival? Did they try to keep contact with their homelands? Did they form distinctive communities within Rome? This book is the first comprehensive study of Romes foreign-born element. The author uses inscriptions and literature to explore the experiences of newcomers to the capital. The results are compared with the colourful Roman stereotypes of different immigrant groups.

Eleven new essays, from an international cast, trace the development of political culture in the Roman Republic. Themes include the flourishing of civic society, as with the introduction of the Roman Games, and the emergence of a theory of politeness. How was a Roman aristocrat formed? How did the term Optimates develop from the middle Republic onwards? And how, especially, did the rhetoric of Cicero reflect and adapt to the pressures of civil war in the Republics climactic and dying years?

The period AD 300-600 saw huge changes. The Graeco-Roman city-state was first transformed then eclipsed. Much of the Roman Empire broke up and was reconfigured. New barbarian kingdoms emerged in the Roman West. Above all, religious culture moved from polytheistic to monotheistic. Here, twenty papers by international scholars explore how group identities were established against this shifting background. Separate sections treat the Latin-speaking West, the Greek East, and the age of Justinian. Themes include religious conversion, Roman law in the barbarian West, problems of Jewish identity, and what in Late Antiquity it meant to be Roman.

The son of Pompey the Great cast a long shadow. Acclaimed by the Roman populace in his lifetime, his traditional virtues and military successes put to shame his civil-war rival Octavian. After his death, he was passionately and safely abused by Octavian and Augustan writers as a marginal nuisance, a pirate. The image of a second rank figure has been propagated by scholars into recent times. But a very different story can now be constructed, from the testimony of historians and poets in antiquity and from the eloquent and long-neglected coinage of Sextus Pompeius himself. Here ten studies from an international cast reveal a figure whose actions and image shaped the ethos not just of the civil-war period but of the early Principate.

The plays of Seneca the Younger, minister and philosopher under Nero, are today increasingly studied, appreciated and performed. Here, in twelve new papers from a distinguished international cast, scholars explore established questions, such as whether the plays were written for the stage, and newer topics such as the playwrights subtleties of characterisation, his relation to contemporary Roman spectacle and art - and the problems arising in translating him to modern text or stage.

Con ocasión del bimilenario de la muerte de Augusto en 2014, nos sumamos a la conmemoración internacional de esta efeméride con una serie de actividades que tomaron como hilo conductor el tratamiento interdisciplinar de la mujer en el saeculum augustum. Esta monografia se forja en ese concreto contexto; asi, desde los campos del Derecho romano, Historia del Derecho, Historia antigua, Historia medieval, Literatura, Arqueologia e Historia del arte, se recogen diversos trabajos de investigacion sobre mujeres reales en la frontera temporal y politica en la que convergen dos siglos, dos sistemas de poder: la Republica y el Imperio.

Studies of Pompeian material culture have traditionally been dominated by art-historical approaches, but recently there has been a renewed and burgeoning interest in Pompeian houses for studies of Roman domestic behavior. This book is concerned with contextualized Pompeian household artifacts and their role in deepening our understanding of household behavior at Pompeii. It consists of a study of the contents of thirty so-called atrium houses in Pompeii to investigate the spatial distribution of household activities, both within each architectural room type and across the house. It also uses this material to investigate the state of occupancy of these houses at the time of the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in AD 79. It thus examines artifact assemblages within their spatial and decorative contexts for a more material cultural approach to these remains and for the information which they provide on living conditions in Pompeii during the last decades. In this it takes a critical perspective the textual nomenclature which is traditionally applied to Pompeian room types.

The writings of Julius Caesar have beguiled by their apparent simplicity. Generations of readers have been encouraged to see them as a limpid record of positive achievement. The contributors to this volume demonstrate that the appearance of simplicity is achieved by devious and accomplished art. In nine original studies, focussing mainly on the Gallic War, the contributors trace systems of justification and omission, of measured praise and subtle criticism, which served to promote Caesar and to leave Roman enemies empty-handed. It is shown that Caesars writing has an ingenuity of description which might seduce the casual Roman sceptic, and an artfulness of focus which now recalls the cinematographic. Even the notorious regularity of Caesars syntax and his economy of vocabulary are revealed as pointed elements of a political manifesto. Far from being a plain and traditional record of warfare, Caesars Commentaries are here shown to illuminate the political thinking of a man on his way to reshaping the world.

Las disposiciones de Derecho conocidas como constituciones imperiales nuevas, esto es, Novelas, emitidas por el emperador Mayoriano entre el 457-460 d.C. han estado siempre presentes en los escritos especializados sobre el Bajo Imperio a proposito de multiples temas, pero normalmente como sucintas referencias al hilo de investigaciones sobre materias legisladas por otros emperadores; no obstante, desde finales del s. XIX d.C., el perfil sui generis de Mayoriano ha suscitado interes propio en algunos articulos especificos y en obras de conjunto, comenzando por la de Cantarelli en 1883. Se destaca sin duda alguna en el estudio de la normativa mayorianea la monografia de Oppedisano, quien desde su formacion como historiador en el año 2013 ofrecio una esplendida vision de conjunto del contexto politico-militar, vida y obra de este Emperador, asi como de su legislacion.En esta investigacion pongo especialmente el foco de atencion en cuatro de las Novelas mayorianeas, publicadas entre los años 458 y 459 d.C., que afectan a la condicion juridica de las mujeres que le son coetaneas; abarcando con ello la descripcion de modelos femeninos que conviven en un mismo espacio temporal y fisico el Imperio romano de Occidente, pero dispares por su extraccion social: Solteras, casadas, viudas, aristocratas y campesinas-colonas.