Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph
Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph

Author: Jaś Elsner

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9780192842015

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Western culture saw some of the most significant and innovative developments take place during the passage from antiquity to the middle ages. This stimulating new book investigates the role of the visual arts as both reflections and agents of those changes. It tackles two inter-related periodsof internal transformation within the Roman Empire: the phenomenon known as the 'Second Sophistic' (c. ad 100300)two centuries of self-conscious and enthusiastic hellenism, and the era of late antiquity (c. ad 250450) when the empire underwent a religious conversion to Christianity. Vases, murals, statues, and masonry are explored in relation to such issues as power, death, society, acculturation, and religion. By examining questions of reception, viewing, and the culture of spectacle alongside the more traditional art-historical themes of imperial patronage and stylisticchange, Jas Elsner presents a fresh and challenging account of an extraordinarily rich cultural crucible in which many fundamental developments of later European art had their origins. 'a highly individual work . . . wonderful visual and comparative analysis . . . I can think of no other general book on Roman art that deals so elegantly and informatively with the theme of visuality and visual desire.' Professor Natalie Boymel Kampen, Barnard College, New York 'exciting and original . . . a vibrant impression of creative energy and innovation held in constant tension by the persistence of more traditional motifs and techniques. Elsner constantly surprises and intrigues the reader by approaching familiar material in new ways.' Professor Averil Cameron,Keble College, Oxford

The Art of the Roman Empire AD 100-450
The Art of the Roman Empire AD 100-450

Author: Jaś Elsner

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 019876863X

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A beautifully illustrated, new edition of the best single-volume guide to Roman and early Christian art. Provides an introduction to the great diversity of artistic styles during the period, and their context.

The Triumph of Empire
The Triumph of Empire

Author: Michael Kulikowski

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-11-28

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 0674974255

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“A genuinely bracing and innovative history of Rome.” —Times Literary Supplement The Triumph of Empire takes us into the political heart of imperial Rome and recounts the extraordinary challenges overcome by a flourishing empire. Roman politics could resemble a blood sport: rivals resorted to assassination as emperors rose and fell with bewildering speed, their reigns sometimes measured in weeks. Factionalism and intrigue sapped the empire from within, and imperial succession was never entirely assured. Michael Kulikowski begins with the reign of Hadrian, who visited the farthest reaches of his domain and created a stable frontier, and takes us through the rules of Marcus Aurelius and Diocletian to Constantine, who overhauled the government, introduced a new state religion, and founded a second Rome. Despite Rome’s political volatility, imperial forces managed to defeat successive attacks from Goths, Germans, Persians, and Parthians. “This is a wonderfully broad sweep of Roman history. It tells the fascinating story of imperial rule from the enigmatic Hadrian through the dozens of warlords and usurpers who fought for the throne in the third century AD to the Christian emperors of the fourth—after the biggest religious and cultural revolution the world has ever seen.” —Mary Beard, author of SPQR “This was an era of great change, and Kulikowski is an excellent and insightful guide.” —Adrian Goldsworthy, Wall Street Journal

Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity
Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity

Author: Jeremy M. Schott

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2013-04-23

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0812203461

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In Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity, Jeremy M. Schott examines the ways in which conflicts between Christian and pagan intellectuals over religious, ethnic, and cultural identity contributed to the transformation of Roman imperial rhetoric and ideology in the early fourth century C.E. During this turbulent period, which began with Diocletian's persecution of the Christians and ended with Constantine's assumption of sole rule and the consolidation of a new Christian empire, Christian apologists and anti-Christian polemicists launched a number of literary salvos in a battle for the minds and souls of the empire. Schott focuses on the works of the Platonist philosopher and anti- Christian polemicist Porphyry of Tyre and his Christian respondents: the Latin rhetorician Lactantius, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, and the emperor Constantine. Previous scholarship has tended to narrate the Christianization of the empire in terms of a new religion's penetration and conquest of classical culture and society. The present work, in contrast, seeks to suspend the static, essentializing conceptualizations of religious identity that lie behind many studies of social and political change in late antiquity in order to investigate the processes through which Christian and pagan identities were constructed. Drawing on the insights of postcolonial discourse analysis, Schott argues that the production of Christian identity and, in turn, the construction of a Christian imperial discourse were intimately and inseparably linked to the broader politics of Roman imperialism.

Roman Eyes
Roman Eyes

Author: Jaś Elsner

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2007-04-15

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9780691096773

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In Roman Eyes, Jas Elsner seeks to understand the multiple ways that art in ancient Rome formulated the very conditions for its own viewing, and as a result was complicit in the construction of subjectivity in the Roman Empire. Elsner draws upon a wide variety of visual material, from sculpture and wall paintings to coins and terra-cotta statuettes. He examines the different contexts in which images were used, from the religious to the voyeuristic, from the domestic to the subversive. He reads images alongside and against the rich literary tradition of the Greco-Roman world, including travel writing, prose fiction, satire, poetry, mythology, and pilgrimage accounts. The astonishing picture that emerges reveals the mindsets Romans had when they viewed art--their preoccupations and theories, their cultural biases and loosely held beliefs. Roman Eyes is not a history of official public art--the monumental sculptures, arches, and buildings we typically associate with ancient Rome, and that tend to dominate the field. Rather, Elsner looks at smaller objects used or displayed in private settings and closed religious rituals, including tapestries, ivories, altars, jewelry, and even silverware. In many cases, he focuses on works of art that no longer exist, providing a rare window into the aesthetic and religious lives of the ancient Romans.

Imperial Triumph
Imperial Triumph

Author: Michael Kulikowski

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781846683701

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Imperial Triumph presents the history of Rome at the height of its imperial power. Beginning with the reign of Hadrian in Rome and ending with the death of Julian the Apostate on campaign in Persia, it offers an intimate account of the twists and often deadly turns of imperial politics in which successive emperors rose and fell with sometimes bewildering rapidity. Yet, despite this volatility, the Romans were able to see off successive attacks by Parthians, Germans, Persians and Goths and to extend and entrench their position as masters of Europe and the Mediterranean. This books shows how they managed to do it. Professor Michael Kulikowski describes the empire's cultural integration in the second century, the political crises of the third when Rome's Mediterranean world became subject to the larger forces of Eurasian history, and the remaking of Roman imperial institutions in the fourth century under Constantine and his son Constantius II. The Constantinian revolution, Professor Kulikowski argues, was the pivot on which imperial fortunes turned - and the beginning of the parting of ways between the eastern and western empires.

Religions of Rome: Volume 1, A History
Religions of Rome: Volume 1, A History

Author: Mary Beard

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1998-06-28

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 9780521316828

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This book offers a radical new survey of more than a thousand years of religious life at Rome. It sets religion in its full cultural context, between the primitive hamlet of the eighth century BC and the cosmopolitan, multicultural society of the first centuries of the Christian era. The narrative account is structured around a series of broad themes: how to interpret the Romans' own theories of their religious system and its origins; the relationship of religion and the changing politics of Rome; the religious importance of the layout and monuments of the city itself; changing ideas of religious identity and community; religious innovation - and, ultimately, revolution. The companion volume, Religions of Rome: A Sourcebook, sets out a wide range of documents richly illustrating the religious life in the Roman world.

Roman Art
Roman Art

Author: Nancy Lorraine Thompson

Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1588392228

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A complete introduction to the rich cultural legacy of Rome through the study of Roman art ... It includes a discussion of the relevance of Rome to the modern world, a short historical overview, and descriptions of forty-five works of art in the Roman collection organized in three thematic sections: Power and Authority in Roman Portraiture; Myth, Religion, and the Afterlife; and Daily Life in Ancient Rome. This resource also provides lesson plans and classroom activities."--Publisher website.

Augustus to Constantine
Augustus to Constantine

Author: Robert McQueen Grant

Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press

Published: 2004-01-01

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9780664227722

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This masterful study of the early centuries of Christianity vividly brings to life the religious, political, and cultural developments through which the faith that began as a sect within Judaism became finally the religion of the Roman empire. First published in 1970, Grant's classic is enhanced with a new foreward by Margaret M. Mitchell, which assesses its importance and puts the reader in touch with the advances of current research.

Through the Eye of a Needle
Through the Eye of a Needle

Author: Peter Brown

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013-09-02

Total Pages: 806

ISBN-13: 1400844533

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A sweeping intellectual history of the role of wealth in the church in the last days of the Roman Empire Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity. Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing attitudes toward money caused by the influx of new wealth into church coffers, and describes the spectacular acts of divestment by rich donors and their growing influence in an empire beset with crisis. He shows how the use of wealth for the care of the poor competed with older forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their money in hopes of treasure in heaven. Through the Eye of a Needle challenges the widely held notion that Christianity's growing wealth sapped Rome of its ability to resist the barbarian invasions, and offers a fresh perspective on the social history of the church in late antiquity.