Fighting Hydra-like Luxury
Fighting Hydra-like Luxury

Author: Emanuela Zanda

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-11-20

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 1472519698

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From the Old Testament to Elizabethan England, luxury has been morally condemned. In Rome, sumptuary laws (laws controlling consumption) seemed the only weapon to defeat 'hydra-like luxury', the terrible monster that was weakening even the strongest citizens. The first Roman sumptuary law, the Lex Appia, declared that no woman could possess more than a half ounce of gold, wear a dress of different colours, or ride in a carriage in any city unless for a public ceremony. Laws listed how many different colours could be worn by members of different social classes: peasants could wear one colour, soldiers in the army could wear two, army officers could wear three, and members of the royal family could wear seven. A law passed by Emperor Aurelian stated that men couldn't wear shoes that were red, yellow, green, or white, and that only the emperor and his sons could wear red or purple shoes. A variety of other laws limited how much people could spend on parties and how many people they could invite. In this book, Emanuela Zanda explores the purposes behind the enactment of such legislation in Rome during the Republic. She engages with the historical-literary polemic against luxury and focuses on government intervention in matters of extravagance by taking into consideration not only sumptuary laws but also other measures that dealt with self-indulgence. She addresses and answers a number of questions about what exactly the ruling class was trying to achieve, about its real motivations, and about the significance of the ideological discourse surrounding the enactment of these laws.

Risk in the Roman World
Risk in the Roman World

Author: Jerry Toner

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-11-30

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 1108481744

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Risk is everywhere in the modern world. The Roman world was no different but its solutions were very different.

Roman Frugality
Roman Frugality

Author: Ingo Gildenhard

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-07-09

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 1108840167

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Explores frugal thought and practice in Roman history, from the archaic period to the early empire and beyond.

Infamy
Infamy

Author: Jerry Toner

Publisher: Profile Books

Published: 2019-07-04

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 178283124X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Rome is an empire with a bad reputation. From its brutal games to its depraved emperors, its violent mobs to its ruthless wars, its name resounds down the centuries like a scream in an alley. But was it as bad as all that? Join the historian Jerry Toner on a detective's hunt to discover the extent of Rome's crimes. From the sexual peccadillos of Tiberius and Nero to the chances of getting burgled if you left your apartment unguarded (pretty high, especially if the walls were thin enough to knock through) he leaves no stone unturned in his quest to bring the Eternal City to book. Meet a gallery of villains, high and low. Discover the problems that most exercised its long-suffering citizens. Explore the temptations of excess and find out what desperation can make a pleb do. What do we see when we look at Rome? A hideous vision of ancient corruption - or a reflection of our own troubled age?

The Reception of Jewish Tradition in the Social Imagination of the Early Christians
The Reception of Jewish Tradition in the Social Imagination of the Early Christians

Author: John M.G. Barclay

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-08-26

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0567696022

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The contributors to this volume take as their theme the reception of Jewish traditions in early Christianity, and the ways in which the meaning of these traditions changed as they were put to work in new contexts and for new social ends. Special emphasis is placed on the internal variety and malleability of these traditions, which underwent continual processes of change within Judaism, and on reception as an active, strategic, and interested process. All the essays in this volume seek to bring out how acts of reception contribute to the social formation of early Christianity, in its social imagination (its speech and thought about itself) or in its social practices, or both. This volume challenges static notions of tradition and passive ideas of 'reception', stressing creativity and the significance of 'strong' readings of tradition. It thus complicates standard narratives of 'the parting of the ways' between 'Christianity' and 'Judaism', showing how even claims to continuity were bound to make the same different.

The Roman Elite and the End of the Republic
The Roman Elite and the End of the Republic

Author: Henrik Mouritsen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-12-31

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 1009180657

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Presents a new understanding of the social and political world of the late republic and the reasons for its fall.

On the Fall of the Roman Republic
On the Fall of the Roman Republic

Author: Thomas E. Strunk

Publisher: Anthem Press

Published: 2022-01-11

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 1839980567

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Violence exploding in public spaces, corruption by political figures and economic elites, the will of the people thwarted in both elections and votes in the senate, military misadventures abroad, and rampant economic inequality at home diminishing a shared sense of the common good – in sum, a republic in disarray. These descriptions are not only familiar from ancient Roman political and social life but are also recognizable to any United States citizen who follows the news and American civic life. On the Republic proceeds chronologically through the fall of the Roman Republic beginning in 133 BCE and continuing down to around 14 CE, providing a continuous narrative of the fall of the Roman Republic juxtaposed with the contemporary political landscape of the United States. In 20 short chapters, On the Republic explores how the United States now faces many of the same challenges that toppled the Roman Republic - political divisions, economic inequality, and creeping authoritarianism. How we respond to these challenges today will determine the future of American democracy.

Voluntas Militum: Community, Collective Action, and Popular Power in the Armies of the Middle Republic (300–100 BCE)
Voluntas Militum: Community, Collective Action, and Popular Power in the Armies of the Middle Republic (300–100 BCE)

Author: Dominic M. Machado

Publisher: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza

Published: 2023-06-20

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 8413406382

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Scholars, military men, and casual observers alike have devoted significant energy to understanding how the armies of the Roman Middle Republic (300 – 100 BCE) were able to function so effectively, examining their organization, hierarchy, recruitment, tactics, and ideology in close detail. But what about the concerns, interests, and goals of the soldiers who powered it? The present study argues that the military forces of the Middle Republic were not simply cogs in the Roman military machine, but rather dynamic and diverse social units that played a key role in shaping an ever-changing Mediterranean world. Indeed, the soldiers in the armies of this period not only developed connections with one another, but also formed bonds with non-military personnel who traveled with as well as inhabitants of the places where they campaigned. The connections soldiers developed while on campaign gave them significant power and agency as a group. Throughout the third and second centuries BCE, soldiers took collective actions, ranging from mutiny to defection to looting, to ensure that their economic, social, and political interests were advanced and protected. Recognizing the communities that Roman soldiers formed and the power that they exerted not only reframes our understanding of the Middle Republic and its armies, but fundamentally alters how we conceptualize the turbulent years of the Late Republic and the massive social, political, and military changes that followed.

Egypt in Italy
Egypt in Italy

Author: Molly Swetnam-Burland

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-04-06

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1316239985

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book examines the appetite for Egyptian and Egyptian-looking artwork in Italy during the century following Rome's annexation of Aegyptus as a province. In the early imperial period, Roman interest in Egyptian culture was widespread, as evidenced by works ranging from the monumental obelisks, brought to the capital over the Mediterranean Sea by the emperors, to locally made emulations of Egyptian artifacts found in private homes and in temples to Egyptian gods. Although the foreign appearance of these artworks was central to their appeal, this book situates them within their social, political, and artistic contexts in Roman Italy. Swetnam-Burland focuses on what these works meant to their owners and their viewers in their new settings, by exploring evidence for the artists who produced them and by examining their relationship to the contemporary literature that informed Roman perceptions of Egyptian history, customs, and myths.

Corrupting Luxury in Ancient Greek Literature
Corrupting Luxury in Ancient Greek Literature

Author: Vanessa B Gorman

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2014-11-06

Total Pages: 493

ISBN-13: 0472120468

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A widely accepted truism says that luxury corrupts, and in both popular and scholarly treatments, the ancient city of Sybaris remains the model for destructive opulence. This volume demonstrates the scarcity of evidence for Sybarite luxury, and examines the vocabulary of luxury used by the Hellenic world. Focus on the word truphe reveals it means an attitude of entitlement: not necessarily a bad trait, unless in extreme form. This pattern holds for all Classical evidence, even the historian Herodotus, where the idea of pernicious luxury is commonly thought to be thematic. Advancing a new method to evaluate this fragmentary evidence, the authors argue that almost all relevant ancient testimony is liable to have been distorted during transmission. They present two conclusions: first, that there exists no principle of pernicious luxury as a force of historical causation in Hellenic or Hellenistic literature. Rather, that idea is derived from early Latin prose historiography and introduced from that genre into the Greek writers of the Roman period, who in turn project the process back in time to explain events such as the fall of Sybaris. The second conclusion is methodological. The authors lay down a strategy to determine the content and extent of fragments of earlier authors found in cover texts such as Athenaeus, by examining the diction along synchronic and diachronic lines. This book will appeal to scholars of intellectual history, the history of morality, and historiographical methodology.