Preliminary Material /Steven E. Sidebotham -- Introduction /Steven E. Sidebotham -- Erythraean Sea Trade: Wares, Type, Cost and Volume /Steven E. Sidebotham -- Facilitating the Commerce: Roads, Ports and Canals for the Expanding Roman Trade /Steven E. Sidebotham -- Regulations, Traders and Taxes /Steven E. Sidebotham -- The Genesis and Evolution of Roman Policy in the Erythraean sea /Steven E. Sidebotham -- Conclusion /Steven E. Sidebotham -- The Terms 'Erythra Thalassa ' and 'Rubrum Mare ' /Steven E. Sidebotham -- The Date of the Periplus Maris Erythraei /Steven E. Sidebotham -- Bibliography /Steven E. Sidebotham -- Index /Steven E. Sidebotham.
Fragile Hierarchies deals with the world of the urban elites of third century Roman Egypt. It discusses economic, social and demographic aspects of the position of the elites of the small towns that dotted the Nile. The work combines analysis of Greek papyri with modelling techniques used in ancient history. The first part of the book analyses patterns of urbanisation, property relations and their consequences for elite formation. The second part discusses demographic aspects, patterns of inheritance and their consequences for continuity and discontinuity. The central argument of the book is that a strong social and economic hierarchy occurred side by side with a dynamic pattern of elite renewal.
Strabo's Geography, completed in the early first century AD, is the primary source for the history of Greek geography. This Guide provides the first English analysis of and commentary on this long and difficult text, and serves as a companion to the author's The Geography of Strabo, the first English translation of the work in many years. It thoroughly analyzes each of the seventeen books and provides perhaps the most thorough bibliography as yet created for Strabo's work. Careful attention is paid to the historical and cultural data, the thousands of toponyms, and the many lost historical sources that are preserved only in the Geography. This volume guides readers through the challenges and complexities of the text, allowing an enhanced understanding of the numerous topics that Strabo covers, from the travels of Alexander and the history of the Mediterranean to science, religion, and cult.
This book sets out to replace the outdated notion of ‘Indo-Roman trade’, integrating new findings from the last 30 years. Analysis conducted demonstrates that highly substantial levels of trade took place between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean in the 1st–6th c. altering consumption and production in India, South Arabia and the Roman Empire.
This volume looks at 'visions of community' in a comparative perspective, from Late Antiquity to the dawning of the age of crusades. It addresses the question of why and how distinctive new political cultures developed after the disintegration of the Roman World, and to what degree their differences had already emerged in the first post-Roman centuries. The Latin West, Orthodox Byzantium and its Slavic periphery, and the Islamic world each retained different parts of the Graeco-Roman heritage, while introducing new elements. For instance, ethnicity became a legitimizing element of rulership in the West, remained a structural element of the imperial periphery in Byzantium, and contributed to the inner dynamic of Islamic states without becoming a resource of political integration. Similarly, the political role of religion also differed between the emerging post-Roman worlds. It is surprising that little systematic research has been done in these fields so far. The 32 contributions to the volume explore this new line of research and look at different aspects of the process, with leading western Medievalists, Byzantinists and Islamicists covering a wide range of pertinent topics. At a closer look, some of the apparent differences between the West and the Islamic world seem less distinctive, and the inner variety of all post-Roman societies becomes more marked. At the same time, new variations in the discourse of community and the practice of power emerge. Anybody interested in the development of the post-Roman Mediterranean, but also in the relationship between the Islamic World and the West, will gain new insights from these studies on the political role of ethnicity and religion in the post-Roman Mediterranean.
Roman Egypt is a critical area of interdisciplinary research, which has steadily expanded since the 1970s and continues to grow. Egypt played a pivotal role in the Roman empire, not only in terms of political, economic, and military strategies, but also as part of an intricate cultural discourse involving themes that resonate today - east and west, old world and new, acculturation and shifting identities, patterns of language use and religious belief, and the management of agriculture and trade. Roman Egypt was a literal and figurative crossroads shaped by the movement of people, goods, and ideas, and framed by permeable boundaries of self and space. This handbook is unique in drawing together many different strands of research on Roman Egypt, in order to suggest both the state of knowledge in the field and the possibilities for collaborative, synthetic, and interpretive research. Arranged in seven thematic sections, each of which includes essays from a variety of disciplinary vantage points and multiple sources of information, it offers new perspectives from both established and younger scholars, featuring individual essay topics, themes, and intellectual juxtapositions.
