Early Emperors Research Articles

The Sibylline Books in the Early Roman Empire

Abstract Many scholars have suggested that Augustus and Tiberius were afraid of prodigies and the Sibylline Books. Not only, they claim, did these emperors suppress prodigy reports, they also destroyed parts of the official Sibylline collection. This paper argues that the early emperors were not afraid of state divination. Rather than being a threat to their power, prodigies, expiations, and the Sibylline Books were used to confirm their position and to counter the authority of competing forms of divination.

“Melaka” in Chinese Texts: Archivalisation and Macro Patterns Related to Records of Melaka in the Ming and Qing Periods (Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries)

Abstract The reversion of the Chinese state, under the early Ming emperors, from private maritime shipping and trade to state-sponsored diplomatic and economic missions into Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean littoral under the Admiral Zheng He, has led to the Chinese textual documentation contains substantial information on the Sultanate of Melaka in the fifteenth century. However, this body of information, and the historical narrative of the Sultanate, has been based primarily on the extant records of the imperial Ming voyages, and the official bureaucratic records, such as the Ming shilu and Mingshi. Other texts post-dating the fifteenth century, including such encyclopedias as the Dongxi yangkao, draw their information on Melaka from these texts. The digitization of the Siku quanshu (Compendium of the Four Treasuries) commissioned in the late eighteenth century, has opened up the opportunity to discover hitherto unknown historical information, and the develop new paradigms and methodologies for the research of the history of Melaka. Importantly, the various entries of information on Melaka, found in the compendium that date after the fall of the Melaka Sultanate in 1511, provide insight into the lenses and experiences through which archivalisation, and the process in which Chinese officialdom collected information on the port-city, occurred through the course of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. This paper utilizes digital database search processes to elucidate new aspects of the history of Melaka’s trade and economic interactions with East Asia, and how Southeast Asia ports continued to feature in the memory landscape of the Chinese officialdom, long after the ceased to exist in the form of their original polities.

Ius vitae necisque: the politics of killing children

AbstractThis paper seeks to challenge the long-standing interpretation of the ius vitae necisque as a formal legal right of Roman fathers. It offers a review and critique of the evidence upon which the claim of ancient origin is founded and highlights the consequent problems in comprehending late Republican and Imperial references to the killing of sons by fathers. An alternative and more satisfactory understanding is to be found in sociological thinking and it is argued that the comprehension of the ius vitae necisque as a formal right is not only invalid but obscures the real significance of its promotion as a political phenomenon in the age of Augustus and the early emperors of Rome.

Two portraits from Aphrodisias: late-antique re-visualizations of traditional culture-heroes?

The “Last Statues of Antiquity”, the collaborative project directed by R. R. R. Smith and B. Ward-Perkins, gathers into a single database all extant late-antique portraits. As a member of the research team, I was given the opportunity to study all the portraits that are either known or conjectured to represent traditional culture-heroes. This exercise gave me “new” eyes for viewing two “old” portraits from Aphrodisias, until now not identifiable. One, excavated in 1982, is a clean-shaven portrait, once fancifully identified as Julius Caesar (fig. 2); the other, first published in 1958, is a bearded portrait broken off a bust (fig. 13).Neither of these two heads is immediately recognizable as a representation of any known individual by the scholarly method which works so well with portraits of Early and High Imperial Roman emperors: that is, neither is identifiable as following any known “portrait type” by the application of the rules of “Kopienkritik”, whereby a scholar establishes the indisputable dependence of two sculptures on a model by finding precisely shared details between two heads — details of hair locks, face, pose, or attributes. In late antiquity, however, fidelity to inherited models was more fluid, and a bold re-interpretation — in terms of contemporary portrait-style — was perhaps even to be desired. This is particularly true in the case of the portraits of traditional culture-heroes: the many highly variable portraits of Menander (here fig. 6) or of Socrates may serve to demonstrate this point.

‘DAMNATIO MEMORIAE’ JAKO ŚRODEK WALKI Z OPOZYCJĄ POLITYCZNĄ

‘DAMNATIO MEMORIAE’ AS A KIND OF PENALTY FOR REPRESSING THE MEMORY OF THE PUBLIC ENEMYSummary The paper presents damnatio memoriae – a kind of penalty for repressing the memory of the public enemy in ancient Rome. This penalty might be imposed by decree of the senat (or of the emperor) in case of the posthumous prosecution or conviction of a person on charges of treason (crimen maiestatis). Damnatio memoriae (or – in a technical, juridical expression – memoria damnata) was not intended to destroy recollection of a person who was condemned, but rather to dishonor the record of such a person. Penalties for repressing the memory, enacted separately or together, included for instance the eradication of visual representations of the person, in particular of statues, busts, coins and medallions, or the erasure of his name. The representations of the condemned, which already existed, were to be altered or destroyed, and there were to be no representations in the future. Some statues have meen modified – removed, replaced or reworked to represent someone new. The name of the enemy might be erased from some public documents (especially from the state lists of officials – the fasti) and inscriptions. Historians were sometimes not allowed to use names of those, who have suffered the penalty in question. There were also some decrees of the senat requiring the family to discontinue the use of a particular element of the name of public enemy (praenomen or cognomen). The penalties included a ban of the observance of the funeral and mourning. The family of convicted was forbidden to keep his portraits within the home or to mour for him. The body of the public enemy could be denied to his relatives and not buried. His bust could not be paraded at the funeral ceremonies of members of his family. According to Tacitus, who used to criticize the political repressions of the early emperors, damnatio memoriae is a vain penalty – memory will survive.

INTO THE FRONTIERS: THE RELAY SYSTEM AND MING EMPIRE IN THE BORDERLANDS, 1368–1449

This article examines the myriad ways the relay system 驛傳 (yichuan) facilitated the movement of the Ming empire into the borderlands. As the early Ming emperors understood, an efficient relay system was vital to the movement of Ming armies into the periphery, the exercise of political authority over Han and non-Han populations, the rituals of diplomatic relations with foreign emissaries, and the routine exercise of bureaucratic power over the borderlands. By the early 1420s, early Ming emperors had used the relay system to spread and consolidate imperial control over the traditional Han territories, incorporate new, fragile areas like Guizhou and Yunnan into the Ming polity, and lead colonial invasions into upland Southeast Asia, throughout Đai Viêt, and all the way into the Siberian forests of Nurgan. In the 1430s and 1440s, however, just as the expensive relay system began to experience its own problems, the Ming presence in the borderlands provoked a series of wars in ĐaiViêt, Luchuan, and Mongolia that forced the Ming government to withdraw the relay system out of the imperial margins.

TAMQVAM FIGMENTVM HOMINIS: AMMIANUS, CONSTANTIUS II AND THE PORTRAYAL OF IMPERIAL RITUAL

<i>TAMQVAM FIGMENTVM HOMINIS</i>: AMMIANUS, CONSTANTIUS II AND THE PORTRAYAL OF IMPERIAL RITUAL

Causes of death among the Caesars (27 BC-AD 476)

The Roman Empire was ruled by 77 emperors between 27 BC and AD 476 (503 years); 18 (23,4%) of them held sway during the Early Empire (27 BC–AD 193, 220 years), and 59 (76,6%) during the Late Empire (193-476, 283 years). On the average emperors in the Early Empire ruled for a longer period (12,7 years as against 6,0 years), and died slightly later (53,4 years as against 46,0 years) than subsequent emperors. During the Early Empire 55,6% of the emperors died of natural causes or illness, as against 25,4% during the Late Empire. Of the second group more were murdered or executed (55,9% versus 33,3%) and more died on the battlefield (5 versus none). The incidence of suicide was slightly higher among the early emperors (11,1% as against 6,8%). Seven emperors abdicated before death brought an end to their rule — only 2 died of natural causes. 30 of the 33 murdered were killed by the sword or dagger (5 were beheaded), one was strangled, one was hanged and one was killed by stoning.

Was There a Constantinian Revolution?

Was There a Constantinian Revolution? Timothy Barnes Most modern accounts of Constantine, whatever their interpretation of the emperor, have given a central place in the logical structure of their arguments to Lactantius' political and military narrative of the years 303–313 in his pamphlet On the Deaths of the Persecutors and to Constantine's own letters and edicts preserved in works of Christian literature, especially in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History and Life of Constantine and among the documents that Optatus of Milevis appended to his polemic against the Dontatists. Raymond Van Dam's book about Constantine, The Roman Revolution of Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), breaks with this venerable scholarly tradition. He explicitly denies that "Constantine's involvement with Christianity was the defining characteristic of his long reign" (10), quoting the titles of seven books that he takes to typify the approach that he repudiates, whose authors are, in chronological order, Norman Baynes (1931), Andreas Alföldi (1948), A.H.M. Jones (1949), T.D. Barnes (1981), T.G. Elliott (1996), Harold Drake (2000), and Charles Odahl (2004). Van Dam asserts that "before Constantine was a Christian emperor, he was a typical emperor," proclaiming that his book "highlights different, and often alternative, perspectives on the significance of his reign" (11). Now, whereas Constantine did indeed behave very much like earlier emperors, including Diocletian and his colleagues between 293 and 305, in matters of administration and routine government,1 that did not prevent him from adopting fundamental and far-reaching innovations in religious matters. Van Dam's book is formally divided into three sections with the titles "A Roman Empire without Rome" (19–141), "A Greek Roman Empire" (143–220), and "Emperor and God" (221–353), framed by an introduction entitled "Augustus and Constantine" (1–18) and an epilogue entitled "One Emperor" (354–362). A bare list of chapter titles will suffice to convey the tone and flavor of the book's three sections, each of which has four chapters. The first quartet comprises "Constantine's Rescript to Hispellum," "His Favorite Rooster: Old Rome and New Rome," "'Hope in his Name': The Flavian Dynasty," and "Reading Ahead"; the second "Constantine's Dialogue with Orcistus," "'The Most Holy Religion': Petitioning the Emperor," [End Page 374] "'The Roman Language': Latin and the Greek East," and "Falling Water"; and the third "'Begotten of the Gods': The Imperial Tetrarchy," "'Begotten from the Father': The Christian Trinity," "'Only-Begotten Son': History Becomes Theology," and "The Search for the Christian Doctrine of the Emperor." Van Dam grounds his interpretation of Constantine on his textual analyses of the emperor's rescript to the Umbrian city of Hispellum (ILS 705) and the dossier of inscriptions from Orcistus in Phrygia (MAMA 7.305 = FIRA2 1.95): not only does each have a chapter to itself (23–34, 150–62), but the second also is discussed at length in other contexts (176–84, 196–200, 217–20), while two appendices provide a text and translation of both, preceded by discussion of their dates (363–72). Thus it is his exegesis of the rescript to Hispellum and the Orcistus dossier that provides the logical springboard for Van Dam's central thesis that Constantine was "open-minded" in matters of religion even after 324. This interpretation of Constantine I have long held to be completely misguided.2 Van Dam argues that Constantine "preached religious toleration" to the end of his reign because "he did not insist on universal conversion" (177). This inference from Constantine's unwillingness to "insist on universal conversion" to the conclusion that he "was apparently still quite open-minded" is logically flawed, relying as it does on a tacit premise whose falsity becomes obvious as soon as it is stated clearly. According to the criteria invoked here by Van Dam, any state, ancient, medieval, or modern, would be practicing "religious toleration" if it allowed the spoliation and pillage of Jewish synagogues so long as it did not "insist on universal conversion" for individual Jews to Christianity. Although many decades passed after the death of Constantine before any of his Christian successors required his non-Christian subjects to convert to the new religion of empire, the systematic confiscation of statues...

Eclipse of Empire? Perceptions of the Western Empire and Its Rulers in Late-Medieval France (review)

Eclipse of Empire? Perceptions of the Western Empire and Its Rulers in Late-Medieval France. By Chris Jones. [Cursor Mundi, 1.] (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers. 2007. Pp. xxiv, 416. euro80,00. ISBN 978-2-503-52478-8.) In an introduction and eight richly detailed chapters, Chris Jones addresses the question of the attitude of the toward the Empire, which is to say, the (Holy) Roman Empire or, in Jones's formulation, the We stern Empire, in the High Middle Ages. By French, he means elites in northern France, in particular chroniclers of various traditions (royal and local), writers of legal treatises, and men of state. He systematically explores their views by describing how they depicted or imagined the early emperors like Charlemagne, their own contemporaries like Frederick II, and the aspirants (Richard of CornwaE, Alfonso X of Castile, Philip III of France, et al). The book could have used a thorough revision to reduce both the excessive repetition and the use of multiple footnotes in single sentences, like one on page 172 with five footnotes, which is not at all unusual. The subject is a big one. Was the Western Empire considered a superprincipality in terms of prestige? Were emperors, for example, conceived as the ideal leaders of the crusades? What were the parameters of the relationship between empire and papacy, as seen through French eyes? Was the emperor regarded as possessing higher political authority than the king of France? If he was regarded as superior to the French king theoreticaEy did this have any practical impact on French governance or diplomacy? Did French kings act in ways they imagined emperors should act, in line with the famous maxim, rex imperator in regno suo*. Were the imperial boundaries, if one can even use this word for a superprincipality more sacrosanct than the boundaries of kingdoms? Certain French authors did believe that there were territorial limits to the empire, but did French rulers care enough to regard those limits as sacrosanct or did they violate them in their desire to expand royal authority? Did royal chroniclers, largely based at Saint-Denis, have a different vision of the empire and its rulers than local chroniclers writing in regions near the imperial lands? Did local chroniclers in Western France care anything at all about the distant empire? One can go on and on. The number and range of questions means that Jones's book is a very sprawling one.The overarching thesis is his answer to the question in the title. The reigning assumption is that there was a time when empire was a powerful concept and reality.The received opinion until now, as Jones sees it, is that the troubles of the late eleventh and early twelfth century (the Investiture Controversy) and the recurrent tragedies of imperial history occasioned by struggles between emperors and German aristocrats, emperors and Italian towns, and emperors and popes weakened the concept of imperial authority and the reality of imperial power. The dominant view, according to Jones, is based on a master narrative about the medieval origins of the modern state, one rooted in the French experience. Jones rightly asserts that Joseph R. Strayer was one of the most able defenders of this master narrative, but Jones also thinks Strayer was largely wrong. …

The Philosophical Influence of the Sage Kings of High Antiquity, Lao Tzu, Sun Tzu, and Confucius on Chinese Management Thought

From the time of the early emperors, to present day managers, Chinese leadership and managerial practice has been influenced by social, political, and philosophical elites. Chinese managerial theory and practice has its roots in the ancient doctrines and philosophies of Confucius, Lao Tzu, Sun Tzu, and the Sage Kings of High Antiquity. This paper explores these historical roots in order to provide a better understanding of the managerial principles and practices of the Chinese.

‘Beware the Ides of March!’: an astrological prediction?

This paper will examine the circumstances that inspired the famous utterance attributed to the haruspex Spurinna, ‘Beware the Ides of March!'1Recently the argument has been made that this warning to Caesar was based upon an astrological calculation, rather than on the usual arts of an haruspex who read signs of the future by inspecting the entrails of sacrificial animals (exta) or by interpreting bolts of lightning (fulgura) and portents (ostenta). As intriguing as this astrological theory is, I am convinced that it is fatally flawed, and I intend to show why it must ultimately be rejected. The question is not merely an academic one, having to do with the methods employed by a particular seer on a given occasion. Rather, if it can be established as even probable that Spurinna based his prophecy upon an astrological calculation, which helped convince the conspirators that Caesar was vulnerable to attack on the Ides as being an unlucky day for him according to the stars, then we are presented with a very significant and hitherto unsuspected instance of astrology influencing the course of public affairs at Rome several decades before astrology came into its own under the early emperors. According to such a reconstruction, astrology played a key role in determining the date of one of the most fateful murders in Roman history. It is the contention of this paper, on the contrary, that there is no reason whatsoever to attribute Spurinna's prophecy to an astrological calculation.

Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China: A Social History Examinations

Professor Chaffee offers a stimulating investigation into the social impact of examinations on the Sung. Analysis of the development of the examination system and of the associated government schools reveals attempts by the early emperors to develop meritocratic recruitment, the growth of unprecedented examination competition as the elite increasingly turned to learning, and the appearance of special examinations for the privileged that subverted the system's fairness. Study of the geographical patterns of success points not only to the remarkable dominance of south-eastern China but also to the relationship between the socio-economic development of regions and their success in the examinations. Finally, the profound cultural impact of these examinations on the upper class is explored through examination rituals and the depictions of gods, ghosts and wandering literati in Sung vernacular literature.

The Sects under Constantine

Looking back a hundred years after the death of Constantine the historian Sozomen wrote: Under earlier emperors those who worshipped Christ, though they differed in their opinions, were considered the same by the Hellenizers and were similarly badly treated. They could not interfere with each other because of their common sufferings, and for this reason each group used to assemble without difficulty and form a church, and by keeping up continual mutual contact, even if they were few in number, they were not dispersed.He contrasted this with Constantine’s success in repressing the sects. Sozomen is clearly right as far as he goes. Antiheresy laws gave powers to bishops they did not have before. He goes on: But after this law they could neither assemble publicly, because they were prevented, nor in secret, because the bishops and clergy in every city kept them under observation.We shall look more closely at this change.

Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kairānawī and Muslim-Christian Controversy in India in the Mid-19th Century

During the 1850's a prolonged encounter took place in the city of Agra between a Muslim ‘ālim, Maulānā Raḥmat Alläh Kairānawī, and a German evangelical missionary, the Reverend K. G. Pfander. The early Mughal emperors had developed Agra as the capital of their expanding empire, and even after the transfer of the court in 1648 to nearby Delhi, the city had retained some importance as a centre of Muslim culture and learning. But the period of the decline of the Mughal fortunes in the 18th century culminated in the capture of Agra in 1803 by the forces of the East India Company, and the next half-century saw the transformation of the city into a key administrative centre in the expansion of British control over north India. In 1836 Agra was made the headquarters of a new unit of administration—the North-Western Provinces. Hence the phase of active religious encounter which began shortly after that date should be examined in terms of the impact which British rule, Western culture, and the Christian religion had effected on the people of the province since its annexation. Indeed in the eyes of missionary as well as ‘ālim, the generating force behind the new confrontation was a fear that the beginning of Christian preaching activity in Agra was a threat to the hold of Islam on the uneducated Muslims of the city and the surrounding region.

Sexual Life in Ancient Rome

IN matters relating to sex, the ancient Romans displayed the practical qualities which they brought to bear on all the problems of their lives, both public and private. It affected their attitude generally to all forms of erotic emotion, as well as in the relation of the sexes. For it has to be remembered that the ancient Romans, if not universally, very commonly, were indifferently homo- and heterosexual, and accepted that as a matter of course. Dr. Kiefer, in the work of which this is a translation, has explored the records of the reactions of the Roman world in marriage, in religion, in literature and in art, and finds not only that there is little of the spiritualisation of this emotion such as existed among many of the Greeks, but also that there is in it no little of a sadistic element. He is, however, by no means a supporter of the view which would ascribe the downfall of the Empire to decadent mores in relation to sex. An acute analysis of the sexual element in the character of certain of the early emperors and members of their entourage, discounts the scandals of their biographers in some, but not all, instances.

The speed of the Roman Imperial post

In attempting to estimate the rate of the Imperial Post in the first two centuries, two points must be borne in mind. The first of these is that the object chiefly aimed at was not speed, but the certainty of arrival within a reasonable and calculable time. It was as an instrument of government, and a means of centralising the administration of the Empire, that Augustus instituted the Imperial Post. This is clear enough from the whole scheme of his administrative system, and is accepted by ancient writers generally, though expressed most clearly by Procopius, in the period when the Byzantine government had demonstrated the full use which might be made of the institution. ‘The earlier Emperors, in order to obtain information as quickly as possible regarding the movements of the enemy in any quarter, sedition or unforeseen accidents in individual cities, and the actions of the governors or other persons in all parts of the Empire, and also in order that the annual tributes might be sent up without danger or delay, had established a rapid service of public couriers throughout their dominions according to the following system. As a day's journey for an active man they fixed eight ‘stages,’ or sometimes fewer, but as a general rule not less than five. In every stage there were forty horses and a number of grooms in proportion. The couriers appointed for the work, by making use of relays of excellent horses, when engaged in the duties I have mentioned, often covered in a single day, by this means, as great a distance as they would otherwise have covered in ten.’

President Address. The Burial Mounds and Dolmens of the Early Emperors of Japan.

President Address. The Burial Mounds and Dolmens of the Early Emperors of Japan.

Art. IX.—Chinese Antiquity

The question of the antiquity of the Chinese nation has long exercised the minds of Sinologists, and various are the conclusions arrived at by them on the subject.Professor Lacouperie has pointed out that the Chinese are offshoots of the Accadian stock. This I am quite ready to admit; but I cannot agree with him in thinking that the early Chinese Emperors can be identified with Babylonian Kings about 2000 years B.C. There are no ancient monuments, inscribed sarcophagi and stones, or contemporary excessive antiquity; so we are compelled to criticize carefully the evidence handed down to us in the shape of the old Chinese classics.