In Pannonia and Upper Moesia, first published 1974, András Mócsy surveys the Middle Danube Provinces from the latest pre-Roman Iron Age up to the beginning of the Great Migrations. His primary concern is to develop a general synthesis of the archaeological and historical researches in the Danube Basin, which lead to a more detailed knowledge of the Roman culture of the area. The economic and social development, town and country life, culture and religion in the Provinces are all investigated, and the local background of the so-called Illyrian Predominance during the third century crisis of the Roman Empire is explained, as is the eventual breakdown of Danubian Romanisation. This volume will appeal to students and teachers of archaeology alike, as well as to those interested in the Roman Empire – not only the history of Rome itself, but also of the far-flung areas which together comprised the Empire’s frontier for centuries.
The rugged, parched landscape and fierce inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula resisted Rome’s best generals for two centuries. Roman Spain tells the story of this conquest, making use of the latest archaeological evidence to explore the social, religious, political and economic implications of the transition from a tribal community accustomed to grisly human sacrifices to a civilised, Latin-speaking provincial society. From the fabled kingdom of Tartesos to the triumph of Christianity, Professor Curchin traces the evolution of Hispano-Roman cults, the integration of Spain into the Roman economy, cultural ‘resistance’ to Romanisation, and surveys the chief cities of the Roman administration as well as conditions in the countryside. Special emphasis is placed on social relationships: soldier and civilian, the emperor and the provincials, patrons and clients, the upper and lower classes, women and the family.
The first two centuries of the Christian era were largely a period of consolidation for the Roman Empire. However, the history of the heyday of Roman imperium is far from dull, for Augustus’ successors ranged from capable administrators - Tiberius, Claudius and Hadrian - to near-madmen like Caligula and the amateur gladiator Commodus, who might have wrecked the system but for its inherent strength. Albino Garzetti’s classic From Tiberius to the Antonines, first published in 1960, presents a definitive account of this fascinating period, which combines a clear and readable narrative with a thorough discussion of the methodological problems and primary sources. Regarding difficult historical questions, it can be relied upon for careful and reasonable judgments based on a full mastery of an immense amount of material. Nearly three hundred pages of critical notes and a comprehensive bibliography complement the text, ensuring its continuing relevance for all students of Roman history.
Ancient religions are definitely complex systems of gods, which resist our understanding. Divine names provide fundamental keys to gain access to the multiples ways gods were conceived, characterized, and organized. Among the names given to the gods many of them refer to spaces: cities, landscapes, sanctuaries, houses, cosmic elements. They reflect mental maps which need to be explored in order to gain new knowledge on both the structure of the pantheons and the human agency in the cultic dimension. By considering the intersection between naming and mapping, this book opens up new perspectives on how tradition and innovation, appropriation and creation play a role in the making of polytheistic and monotheistic religions. Far from being confined to sanctuaries, in fact, gods dwell in human environments in multiple ways. They move into imaginary spaces and explore the cosmos. By proposing a new and interdiciplinary angle of approach, which involves texts, images, spatial and archeaeological data, this book sheds light on ritual practices and representations of gods in the whole Mediterranean, from Italy to Mesopotamia, from Greece to North Africa and Egypt. Names and spaces enable to better define, differentiate, and connect gods.
This book does not claim absolute truths, but it speaks for those who can no longer speak for themselves by the histories they witnessed, wrote about, and which defined their ancestors and descendants, including the most powerful woman that ever lived – Countess Elizabeth Bathory. She tried to change the world; she paradoxically succeeded and failed. But what drove her? What did she know, we do not? What is her history? To begin to understand all this, one must travel back in time to when it began, when truth first became obscured, and when European society – Western culture - went horribly wrong. It is why her world was the way it was. Today, historiological “truths” of European Medieval Dark Ages, at best, exist as dim flashes of information in ancient manuscripts. A very interconnected European medieval history has much more, but inconvenient historiological information to informs us of events, names, places, and dates, but like a giant, complicated jigsaw puzzle. Unfortunately, many pieces are still missing, none more so than that of Carpathia. Consequently, an incomplete, theoretical picture of historical reality remains. There’s a reason for it. Throughout history, Europeans struggled for Humility, Humanity and Liberty, but only Carpathian Ungars maintained and struggled to keep it for more than a millennium – from about 600 to 1711. Their history has gone missing, supplanted by myths. Their greatest leaders are caricatures of Gothic horror literature, and their greatest traitors are their heroes. Their monuments are everywhere. Carpathia’s history does not exist in Western consciousness. What is it about Carpathia we are not supposed to know? Its missing medieval jigsaw puzzle pieces, when liberated from obscure archives, then reassembled, and inserted into the macro context of centuries, however, allows us to understand why. The period covered in this book is roughly seven centuries. It’s a litany of tragic moral failures. It begins with spiritual leaders who consistently failed in their moral duty because they misguidedly assumed a Roman imperial culture from the outset. It ends with the creation of a repressed imperial Ungaria and the supposed “first kings of Hungary.” Events within this book’s pages cover most of the first great pendulum swing of “European Cultural Chrysalis” – it’s Metamorphosis of Odium.” It explores the complexity of why, and how European culture became one of intolerance and hatred which tried to extinct all non-conformists within their divine Medieval European World Order. It explains why it was perfectly ethical and moral, and why society believed in the Resurrection of all things good after the final Apocalypse – this order’s primary vision. Resisting all this, of course, were all Carpathian cultures, the last being the Slavic-Turkic Ungars. To the Medieval European World Order, they, like the Caliphates, were the greatest heretics and heathens of the Dark Ages. These civilisations were the last refuge of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness in a world which had none. It’s a story of us.
This book traces the establishment of a master narrative of the Middle Ages in Bulgaria and its evolution to the present day, including the attempt at a Marxist counter-narrative, thereby offering a critical analysis of Bulgarian historiographical views.
Roman law is one of the key legal systems from which modern European law is derived. In this book Dr Tellegen-Couperus discusses the way in which Roman jurists created and developed law, and the way in which Roman law has come down to us.
Shows how Europe's barbarians, strengthened by centuries of contact with Rome on many levels, turned into an enemy capable of overturning and dismantling the mighty Empire.
The Oxford Handbook of the European Iron Age presents a broad overview of current understanding of the archaeology of Europe from 1000 BC through to the early historic periods, exploiting the large quantities of new evidence yielded by the upsurge in archaeological research and excavation on this period over the last thirty years. Three introductory chapters situate the reader in the times and the environments of Iron Age Europe. Fourteen regional chapters provide accessible syntheses of developments in different parts of the continent, from Ireland and Spain in the west to the borders with Asia in the east, from Scandinavia in the north to the Mediterranean shores in the south. Twenty-six thematic chapters examine different aspects of Iron Age archaeology in greater depth, from lifeways, economy, and complexity to identity, ritual, and expression. Among the many topics explored are agricultural systems, settlements, landscape monuments, iron smelting and forging, production of textiles, politics, demography, gender, migration, funerary practices, social and religious rituals, coinage and literacy, and art and design.
Syria has long been one of the most trouble-prone and politically volatile regions of the Near and Middle Eastern world. This book looks back beyond the troubles of the present to tell the 3000-year story of what happened many centuries before. Trevor Bryce reveals the peoples, cities, and kingdoms that arose, flourished, declined, and disappeared in the lands that now constitute Syria, from the time of it's earliest written records in the third millennium BC until the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian at the turn of the 3-4th century AD. Across the centuries, from the Bronze Age to the Rome Era, we encounter a vast array of characters and civilizations, enlivening, enriching, and besmirching the annals of Syrian history: Hittite and Assyrian Great Kings; Egyptian pharaohs; Amorite robber-barons; the biblically notorious Nebuchadnezzar; Persia's Cyrus the Great and Macedon's Alexander the Great; the rulers of the Seleucid empire; and an assortment of Rome's most distinguished and most infamous emperors. All swept across the plains of Syria at some point in her long history. All contributed, in one way or another, to Syria's special, distinctive character, as they imposed themselves upon it, fought one another within it, or pillaged their way through it. But this is not just a history of invasion and oppression. Syria had great rulers of her own, native-born Syrian luminaries, sometimes appearing as local champions who sought to liberate their lands from foreign despots, sometimes as cunning, self-seeking manipulators of squabbles between their overlords. They culminate with Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, whose life provides a fitting grand finale to the first three millennia of Syria's recorded history. The conclusion looks forward to the Muslim conquest in the 7th century AD: in many ways the opening chapter in the equally complex and often troubled history of modern Syria.
