Seven Roman Statesmen (Serapis Classics)
Seven Roman Statesmen (Serapis Classics)

Author: Charles Oman

Publisher: Serapis Classics

Published: 2017-10-19

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 3962559604

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THERE WAS A TIME, NOT so very long ago, when the taunt was true that history was written as if it were a mere string of anecdotal biographies of great men. But for the last forty years the pendulum has been swinging so much in the other direction, that it has become necessary to enforce the lesson that the biographies of great men are, after all, a most important part of history. It is well to have conceptions of the streams of tendency and the typical developments of every age, but the blessed word "evolution" will not account for everything, and it is absurd to neglect the influence of the great personalities. Roman history in particular has been so much treated of late years as a mere example of constitutional growth and degeneration, or as a bundle of interesting administrative and legal details, that it seems not out of place to recall that other aspect of it which was more familiar to elder generations, and to look at it for a moment from the personal and biographical point of view, with Plutarch before us as well as Mommsen and Marquardt's Stoatsrecht and Staatsverwaltung. This is all the more rational because in the last century of the Roman Republic we find ourselves in a time of dominating personalities. In Rome's earlier days this was conspicuously not the case, and her history was (as has been truly said) the history of great achievements done by men who were themselves not great. But from the Gracchi onward we come to a period in which individuals make and mar the course of the times, when the doings of a Sulla and a Caesar, or even of a Marius and a Pompey, form the main determining element in the history of the day...

Dealings with the Inquisition (Serapis Classics)
Dealings with the Inquisition (Serapis Classics)

Author: Giacinto Achili

Publisher: Serapis Classics

Published: 2017-10-07

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 3962558691

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It was in the month of July, 1842, that I was released, by order of Pope Gregory, from my first imprisonment in the dungeons of the Inquisition. On this occasion, one of the Dominican monks who serve the office of Inquisitor, inquired of me, with a malicious look, whether I, also, intended, one day, to write an account of the Inquisition, as a well-known author had done before me, with respect to Spielberg, in his celebrated work, "Le mie prigioni." Perceiving at once the object of this deceitful interrogation, which was only to afford a pretext for renewing my incarceration, at the very moment when liberty was before me, I smiled at my interlocutor...

Tacitus, Annals, 15.20–23, 33–45
Tacitus, Annals, 15.20–23, 33–45

Author: Mathew Owen

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2013-09-23

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1783740000

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e emperor Nero is etched into the Western imagination as one of ancient Rome's most infamous villains, and Tacitus' Annals have played a central role in shaping the mainstream historiographical understanding of this flamboyant autocrat. This section of the text plunges us straight into the moral cesspool that Rome had apparently become in the later years of Nero's reign, chronicling the emperor's fledgling stage career including his plans for a grand tour of Greece; his participation in a city-wide orgy climaxing in his publicly consummated 'marriage' to his toy boy Pythagoras; the great fire of AD 64, during which large parts of central Rome went up in flames; and the rising of Nero's 'grotesque' new palace, the so-called 'Golden House', from the ashes of the city. This building project stoked the rumours that the emperor himself was behind the conflagration, and Tacitus goes on to present us with Nero's gruesome efforts to quell these mutterings by scapegoating and executing members of an unpopular new cult then starting to spread through the Roman empire: Christianity. All this contrasts starkly with four chapters focusing on one of Nero's most principled opponents, the Stoic senator Thrasea Paetus, an audacious figure of moral fibre, who courageously refuses to bend to the forces of imperial corruption and hypocrisy. This course book offers a portion of the original Latin text, study aids with vocabulary, and a commentary. Designed to stretch and stimulate readers, Owen's and Gildenhard's incisive commentary will be of particular interest to students of Latin at both A2 and undergraduate level. It extends beyond detailed linguistic analysis and historical background to encourage critical engagement with Tacitus' prose and discussion of the most recent scholarly thought.

The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean
The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean

Author: Raoul McLaughlin

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2014-09-11

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 1473840953

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This study of ancient Roman shipping and trade across continents reveals the Roman Empire’s far-reaching impact in the ancient world. In ancient times, large fleets of Roman merchant ships set sail from Egypt on voyages across the Indian Ocean. They sailed from Roman ports on the Red Sea to distant kingdoms on the east coast of Africa and southern Arabia. Many continued their voyages across the ocean to trade with the rich kingdoms of ancient India. Along these routes, the Roman Empire traded bullion for valuable goods, including exotic African products, Arabian incense, and eastern spices. This book examines Roman commerce with Indian kingdoms from the Indus region to the Tamil lands. It investigates contacts between the Roman Empire and powerful African kingdoms, including the Nilotic regime that ruled Meroe and the rising Axumite Realm. Further chapters explore Roman dealings with the Arab kingdoms of southern Arabia, including the Saba-Himyarites and the Hadramaut Regime, which sent caravans along the incense trail to the ancient rock-carved city of Petra. The first book to bring these subjects together in a single comprehensive study, The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean reveals Rome’s impact on the ancient world and explains how international trade funded the legions that maintained imperial rule.

Ancient Libraries
Ancient Libraries

Author: Jason König

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-04-25

Total Pages: 501

ISBN-13: 1107244587

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The circulation of books was the motor of classical civilization. However, books were both expensive and rare, and so libraries - private and public, royal and civic - played key roles in articulating intellectual life. This collection, written by an international team of scholars, presents a fundamental reassessment of how ancient libraries came into being, how they were organized and how they were used. Drawing on papyrology and archaeology, and on accounts written by those who read and wrote in them, it presents new research on reading cultures, on book collecting and on the origins of monumental library buildings. Many of the traditional stories told about ancient libraries are challenged. Few were really enormous, none were designed as research centres, and occasional conflagrations do not explain the loss of most ancient texts. But the central place of libraries in Greco-Roman culture emerges more clearly than ever.

Divining the Etruscan World
Divining the Etruscan World

Author: Jean MacIntosh Turfa

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-07-16

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 1139536400

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The Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar is a rare document of omens foretold by thunder. It long lay hidden, embedded in a Greek translation within a Byzantine treatise from the age of Justinian. The first complete English translation of the Brontoscopic Calendar, this book provides an understanding of Etruscan Iron Age society as revealed through the ancient text, especially the Etruscans' concerns regarding the environment, food, health and disease. Jean MacIntosh Turfa also analyzes the ancient Near Eastern sources of the Calendar and the subjects of its predictions, thereby creating a picture of the complexity of Etruscan society reaching back before the advent of writing and the recording of the calendar.