Roman Legions Research Articles

Novel path to the past

Ben Kane loved reading and history at school, but had always wanted to be a vet. After qualifying, the urge to travel found him visiting places he had read about, which reignited his passion for history; however, it was while working as a temporary veterinary inspector during the foot‐and‐mouth outbreak in 2001 that he had the chance to stand on Hadrian's Wall and imagine how the Roman legionaries must have felt. That experience led him to turn his hand to writing historical military fiction

Roman Infantry Helmets and Commemoration among Soldiers

It has long been recognized that perceptions of individual posthumous memory and the commemorative devices harnessed to maintain it differ greatly through time. In pre-Christian Rome, the belief that an individual enjoyed an afterlife through the perpetuation of their memory before and after death was central to Roman social identity and encompassed not only the act of reproducing or recalling anindividual or an event, but reflected an individual’s character and virtues. Recent studies demonstrate that the material correlates of commemorative behavior pervaded the Roman visual landscape. Although the majority of evidence bespeaking commemoration represents the elite, the importance of memory was widely recognized. It would, therefore, be difficult to assume that only the upper classes engaged in such rituals. Roman soldiers, as individuals in a profession that took them far from their native land, also practicedsuch behavior. Without the means to engage in traditional commemorative practices, Roman legionaries devised unique methods to fulfill their commemorative needs. This investigation argues that the personalization of infantry helmets did more than denote personal property. It also became a tool created by soldiers to safeguard their memory. As objects that pervaded the visual landscape of the military realm, legionary helmets became an ideal medium for commemorative behavior.

Las oportunidades del diálogo intercultural y El desarrollo de las comunidades marginales a través del turismo cultural. Un caso de estudio: South-East Archeritage

This article analyzes, through a case study, the potential of / archaeological tourism as an engine of development and dialogue in the Mediterranean marginal areas. In this scenario the role of cultural heritage and the specific routes or itineraries of cultural and tourist potential use turn fundamental in an environment of diversity in dialogue and exchange of south balance. The case study presented in this article refers to the of the project South - East Archeritage (project by the EU through the program CITY) and the enhancement of the common historical heritage and derived from the persistence Roman legacy.

My Historic Environment

For many of us, a life-long engagement with the historic environment is nurtured in childhood and has a near-spiritual dimension which transcends working life. As a child growing up in Newport in South Wales, long before the term ‘historic environment’ was in use, within an hour’s walk there were Iron Age hillforts, a Roman Legionary fortress, early Welsh religious sites, medieval castles and churches, and industrial monuments. A Ministry of Works season ticket (then 2/6d — the equivalent of 25p — for a child) enabled me to extend my horizons to the castles of North Wales, both Edwardian and Welsh. I felt the sense of landscape. Upland Wales contrasted dramatically with adjacent England, which helped to explain why the Romans struggled initially with the Silures, the scarcity of Saxon and English settlement names, and why the conquest of Wales took 200 years. History seemed alive. I knew that the Chartists had marched past the end of our road from the industrial valleys of South Wales to the riot in Newport in 1839. In the town, the development of streets and houses could be traced from the medieval period, through massive expansion generated by the industries of iron, steel, and coal, to the local authority estates of the 1950s. To a child, all evidence from the past seemed part of a common narrative. Later, when I started working with the historic environment, I found that archaeology and historic buildings were distinct in terms of management, documentation, and discipline. Archaeologists did not always interact with art or architectural history. Many buildings historians did not use aerial photographs or geographical information systems regularly, often reflecting a focus on individual buildings and structures. It has taken longer than a generation for the more holistic concept of the historic environment to be adopted, partly fuelled by multi-disciplinary programmes and projects looking at broader contexts which target evidence from all sources. This was difficult in the early days of information systems seemingly designed more for the inputting of data than for its use, beyond a priestly few. More sophisticated and interactive technologies and networks which engage specialist and general audiences help to demonstrate the power of more integrated access. 1 When we define the elements of the historic environment which require protection and management, we must include resources such as local historic environment records and the national collections of information and archives. These are often

The Reformation: A Brief History (review)

Early Modern European Reformation: A Brief History. By Kenneth G. Appold. [Blackwell Brief Histories of Religion Series.] (Maiden, MA:Wiley-Blackwell. 2011. Pp. xi, 203. $84.95 clothbound, ISBN 978-1-4051-1749-4; $29.95 paperback, 9781-40511750-0.)Not long ago, a prominent German historian of Reformation lamented that we have lost Reformation. In fact, a search for new books on subject reveals that it is more than holding its own. At least nineteen general studies have appeared in English since mid-1990s, plus another thirteen in German. Most eschew both nineteenth-century elevation of Martin Luther as godfather of Western civilization and twentieth-century defense of Luther's theology as a metahistorical vision. In 1995 Bernd Moeller reminded theologians that makes no somersaults, and Luther was no miracle-worker who fell to earth.1Many of new works share a view of Luther and his Reformation as not dawn of modernity but fruition of medieval Christendom. Just as prominent is tendency to replace classic (Protestant) singular- The Reformation- with a concept of plural reformations- Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic. These changes reveal a shift of focus from theological ideas to religious practice and a setting of Reformation less in European history and more in general history of Christianity.Each of these shifts is visible in Reformation: A Brief History by Kenneth G. Appold of Princeton Theological Seminary. Reformation occurred, he writes, within a larger dynamic driven by Christianization of Europe (p. ix). Its agent was a church that was neither static nor backward, driven by dialectical movements of its two heritages: Roman legacy of hierarchical institutionalization and Celtic ethical drive toward the moral and spiritual transformation of individual lives and communities (p. ix). Medieval Christendom experienced an immense evolutionary dialectic between an aim to manage world and a desire to overcome it.The downshift from such great landscapes to person and thought of Luther is a stock device of general works on subject. Here Appold does not disappoint, as his second chapter bores into Luther as a phenomenon (p. 43) composed of heritages, actions, personality, and theological and other ideas. Although its rhetorical color and strong narrative make chapter 2 book's liveliest chapter, there is no appeal to Luther's genius as moving force. Rather, Luther's reformation comes as an acceleration, not a negation, of medieval dialectic and brings both successes and failures. Appold explains most fateful of latter, German Peasants' War, by Luther's formation in an urban world that was climbing for economic hegemony over vast landscapes of traditional, rural Europe. …

The crimes of Elagabalus: the life and legacy of Rome's decadent boy emperor

The four short years of Elagabalus' rule have generated nearly two millennia of sustained attention, from salacious rumor to scholarly analysis to novels that cast him as a gay hero avant la lettre. Here, Martijn Icks succeeds in distinguishing the reality of the emperor's brief life from the myth that clouds it - and in tracing the meaning of the myth itself to the present day. In 219 ce, when the fourteen-year-old Syrian arrived in Rome to assume the throne, he brought with him a conical black stone, which he declared was the earthly form of the sun god El-Gabal, who gave Elagabalus his name and lifelong office as high priest. Shoving Jupiter aside, the new emperor did the unthinkable, installing El-Gabal at the head of the Roman pantheon and marrying a vestal virgin. Whether for these offenses, his neglect of the empire, or weariness from watching the emperor dance at the elaborate daily sacrifices, the imperial guards murdered Elagabalus and put El-Gabal in a packing crate. Sifting through later accounts of the emperor's outrageous behavior, Icks finds the invented Elagabalus as compelling as the historical figure. In literature, art, and music from the fifteenth century on, Elagabalus appears in many guises, from evil tyrant to anarchist rebel, from mystical androgyne to modern gay teenager, from decadent sensualist to pop star. These many reincarnations reveal as much about the ages that produced them, Icks shows, as they do about the bad-boy emperor himself.

Post-Romantic irony in Bakhtin and Lefebvre

Although several writers have noted significant complementary features in the respective projects of Russian philosopher and cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) and the French social thinker Henri Lefebvre (1901–91), to date there has not been a systematic comparison of them. This article seeks to redress this oversight, by exploring some of the more intriguing of these conceptual dovetailings: first, their relationship to the intellectual and cultural legacy of Romanticism; and second, their respective assessments of irony (including Romantic irony), and, more specifically, of the ironic register as a potential vehicle for socio-cultural criticism. Although the positions Bakhtin and Lefebvre stake out vis-à-vis these issues reveal many similarities – such as extensive use of Socrates in the writings of each – there are also significant differences, not least because Lefebvre’s understanding of Romanticism is more fully developed than Bakhtin’s. Accordingly, the central argument advanced here is that Bakhtin’s fairly disparaging account of Romanticism, together with his scattered and often contradictory remarks on irony, can be subjected to re-envisioning and potential enrichment by reference to Lefebvre’s more considered thoughts, especially the latter’s notions of ‘Revolutionary romanticism’ and ‘Marxist irony’.

The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome’s Decadent Boy Emperor by Martijn Icks (review)

Reviewed by: The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome’s Decadent Boy Emperor by Martijn Icks Charmaine Gorrie Martijn Icks. The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome’s Decadent Boy Emperor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012. Pp. 304. CDN $33.44. ISBN 9780674064379. Although not as well known as Caligula or Nero, Elagabalus ranks among the more notorious Roman emperors. He is portrayed in the ancient sources as a cruel, cross-dressing, sexually depraved religious fanatic who transgressed Roman sexual and religious taboos, going so far as to marry a Vestal Virgin. With such press, it is not surprising that Elagabalus has enjoyed an interesting legacy in both ancient and more modern times. In The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome’s Decadent Boy Emperor, it is Martijn Icks intent to examine both how this emperor has been constructed as one of Rome’s bad emperors in ancient literature and how he has been perceived [End Page 269] and reinvented in later times (5). The book is divided into two parts: the first reconstructs and interprets events during Elagabalus’ reign and the second describes and examines how the emperor has been perceived and reinvented through the ages. One of the problems with the study of a figure such as Elagabalus is to sort fact from fiction. In the first three chapters, Icks tries to determine “what happened” during the years ad 218–222. Recognizing the limitations and biases of the ancient literary sources writing about this period, and the tendency of modern scholarship to rely on these sources in their analysis, Icks argues that by including material culture such as coins, statues, papyri, inscriptions, and archaeological remains a more balanced account can be achieved. Using these resources, Icks examines how Elagabalus came to the throne, how much power he actually had, and what the regime hoped to accomplish. The emperor’s young age (he came to the throne when he was barely 14) necessitated that others were probably in charge. The emperor’s family from Emesa, which had played an important role in placing Elagabalus on the throne, had substantial control of affairs, but Icks also suggests that there was support and influence from a pro-Severan faction in Rome that included senators and equestrians. These men would have benefited politically from having the “heir” of Caracalla as emperor. Although Elagabalus is heavily criticized by the ancient sources for the way that he governed, Icks comes to the conclusion that in terms of political and economic reforms the reign was uneventful and the administration of the empire went on without disruption. He argues, in fact, that compared to the upheaval that was to come Elagabalus’ reign can be considered one of the most tranquil and peaceful periods of the third century (88). In this section, Icks also questions the view that Elagabalus’ reign represented a clash between the Syrian “East” and the Roman “West.” He points out that the emperor came from the local elite at Emesa, who had been Roman citizens for two centuries, and had spent some of his childhood in Caracalla’s court. He would therefore not have been a total stranger to Roman culture, nor would those who advised him. At the beginning of the reign, during the years ad 218–220, Icks shows that in order to shore up support the regime presented the emperor in a highly traditional manner. Taking the official name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, he was portrayed through coinage, inscriptions, and portraiture as the legitimate heir descended from Caracalla and the Antonines. Blessed by the gods, he would re-establish the dynasty and a period of peace and prosperity. Icks argues that Elagablus veered from Roman ways only at the end of ad 220 when the religious reforms were implemented and the emperor was voted “sacerdos amplissimus dei invicti Solis Elagabali” by the senate. The god Elagabal was now promoted to chief deity at the expense of the traditional Roman pantheon, but the intent was never to establish a monotheistic religion, as others have suggested. Icks suggests that the elevation of Elagabal may have been at the instigation of the emperor himself, who...

Literature in the “Land of God”: Marrakech, Morocco

6 World Literature Today photo : michael camilleri notebook H istory and modernity meet in Marrakech. Ancient mosques loom over new museums, and twisted alleyways lead to vibrant souks in this city whose names include “the Ochre City” and “Land of God.” And with its snowcapped Atlas Mountains, and foothills, and its proximity to the Sahara Desert, Marrakech is an example of striking topological variation. The city’s history dates back to the Roman era, when Roman legions clashed with the Kingdom of Mauretania in 40 bce. The kingdom grew with the fall of the Roman Empire, and by the Middle Ages, various dynasties built edifices that still stand today in this city whittled by holy wars, colonization, and imperialism. With a population nearing one million, Marrakech is now a cultural center and microcosm for Morocco itself. Cultural variation is most apparent at Djemaa el Fna, one of the busiest market squares in Africa and the world. Artisans sell their crafts by day, and acrobats, storytellers, dancers, and musicians populate the Ochre City by night. It is in this market that the storyteller in Tahar Ben Jelloun ’s The Sand Child tells the story of Ahmed, an eighth daughter raised as a male. This cultural oasis has long been attractive to free spirits of the Western world wishing to slough off old selves and search for alternate spiritualities. Esther Freud explores this desire in Hideous Kinky, a novel in which a London mother uproots her two children and moves to Marrakech. Set in the early 1970s, the novel was made into a 1998 film. More recently, the city has become the venue for the Marrakech Biennale (www.marrakechbiennale.org). Begun in 2005 and run by the AiM Association, the biennale is a trilingual (Arabic, English, French) festival focusing on contemporary art, film, and literature. – Kayley Gillespie an invigorating wash in ten liters of water. (My showers in New York consume more than two hundred liters.) The best part of the day is when the work is done and the stars come out. When there is no moon, they blaze. When the moon is full, it is almost as light as day on the hillside, and the snakes are in their holes. I have often felt at ease and wholly happy at such moments—especially once I had a desk in my tent and could write at it from the warm light of a lantern. Of course the atmosphere of the next Piet Barol book is very different from the European glamor and luxury of History of a Pleasure Seeker. WLT: You set the novel in 1907, and we’ve read that you wrote it by hand. Yet you have also developed an app for iPhones to supplement the book, which is on its way to becoming a television show. Do you consider yourself old-fashioned or modern? RM: My allegiance is to the story and the best way to tell it. Inspired by the briskness and feeling in Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française, I decided to write History of a Pleasure Seeker by hand. Many modern novels, including some I have written, are too long, in my opinion, because the word processor encourages wordiness. They are also over-perfectified, because infinite alteration is possible on a machine. I wanted to make a story by hand; to make it short and rich and capable of transporting its audience to a world they had not yet imagined. As I wrote History of a Pleasure Seeker, I remembered what William Morris said: “There is hope in honest error. None in the icy perfections of the mere stylist.” As for the rapp (reading application ), ask me about it in November. April 2012 Editorial note: To learn more about Project Lulutho, visit www.lulutho.org. Books to Read Tahar Ben Jelloun, The Sand Child, tr. Alan Sheridan (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987) Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky (Penguin, 2006) Elias Canetti, The Voices of Marrakesh: A Record of a Visit, tr. J. A. Underwood (Penguin Classics, 2012) Esther Freud, Hideous Kinky (Ecco Press, 1992) Diane Johnson, Lulu in Marrakech (Dutton, 2008) Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya, The Storyteller of Marrakesh: A Novel (Norton, 2011) Literature in...

A Brief Conversation with Richard Mason

notebook photo : michael lionstar Richard Mason’s first novel, The Drowning People, published when he was twenty-one, sold more than a million copies worldwide and won Italy’s Grinzane Cavour Prize for Best First Novel. Born in South Africa in 1978, he is also the author of Natural Elements, which the Washington Post chose as one of the best books of 2009. In 1999 Mason, with Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, started the Kay Mason Foundation (www.kaymasonfoundation.org), which helps disadvantaged South Africans access quality education. WLT: The South African hillside where you sometimes live and farm sounds quite unlike the first-class accommodations Piet Barol pursued in History of a Pleasure Seeker. How did you end up there? Richard Mason: When Piet Barol reached South Africa, I knew I could not continue his story. I knew what happened to him, but I did not know the people among whom it happened. I wanted to bring the richness of South Africa’s Xhosa society to life— with the confidence I had brought to the European characters in History of a Pleasure Seeker. As a white child raised in South Africa under the Apartheid regime, it was impossible for me to render truthfully a story that involved black Africans. There was only one thing to do: leave my comfortable nineteenth-century house in Scotland and go live in the rural Eastern Cape. WLT: What is a typical day there like for you? RM: Nowadays, my day at Lulutho begins on a red pullout chair. I wake in a tent with a mud floor and a desk made at Lulutho itself by Lubaballo and Landu, the two young men who trained as carpenters during the project ’s early phases. In my tent is a piano on a wooden pallet to protect it from dampness, bought for 150 euros and transported on a lorry from Cape Town. It is a wonderful piano, though very out of tune because I have not yet had the energy to entice a tuner all the way from East London, which is the nearest large town. Interestingly, the highest note in one of my favorite Chopin waltzes is still in tune—which makes me feel like the instrument is meant to be here, and forgives my ill treatment of him. If it’s cold, I put on an extra two layers. If it’s hot, shorts and boots. (You don’t wear flip-flops because of the snakes.) Up to the shoddily built wooden hut that serves as our kitchen, where Sibusiso (one of Cape Town’s best chefs, tempted by me to join us on an adventure and give up his Michelin-starred kitchen for a wooden hut) makes breakfast. He is used to a twelve-burner stove. At Lulutho, he has two gas burners and three feet of counter space to cook for as many as thirty people three times a day. Twice a week or so, I fill a black bag with hot water, leave it in the sun, and take it down to a tree-shower for A Brief Conversation with Richard Mason City Profile: Marrakech, page 06 What to Read Now: Migration Narratives, page 07 New Books: Writers and Their Cities, page 08 july – august 2012 5 6 World Literature Today photo : michael camilleri notebook H istory and modernity meet in Marrakech. Ancient mosques loom over new museums, and twisted alleyways lead to vibrant souks in this city whose names include “the Ochre City” and “Land of God.” And with its snowcapped Atlas Mountains, and foothills, and its proximity to the Sahara Desert, Marrakech is an example of striking topological variation. The city’s history dates back to the Roman era, when Roman legions clashed with the Kingdom of Mauretania in 40 bce. The kingdom grew with the fall of the Roman Empire, and by the Middle Ages, various dynasties built edifices that still stand today in this city whittled by holy wars, colonization, and imperialism. With a population nearing one million, Marrakech is now a cultural center and microcosm for Morocco itself. Cultural variation is most apparent at Djemaa el Fna, one of the busiest market squares in Africa and...

Tausend Jahre epigraphische Kultur im römischen Hispanien: Inschriften, Selbstdarstellung und Sozialordnung

Tausend Jahre epigraphische Kultur im römischen Hispanien: Inschriften, Selbstdarstellung und Sozialordnung

Beyond DiMaggio: Italian Americans in Baseball (review)

Reviewed by: Beyond DiMaggio: Italian Americans in Baseball Peter Carino Lawrence Baldassaro . Beyond DiMaggio: Italian Americans in Baseball. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. 472 pp. Cloth, $34.95. While too often baseball books that purport to examine some aspect of baseball and culture end up treating the former more than the latter, Lawrence Baldassaro's Beyond DiMaggio: Italian Americans in Baseball avoids this trap. In fact, this book will interest ethnic studies scholars and baseball fans equally, Italian-American or otherwise. Baldassaro not only delivers a comprehensive history of Italian-American baseball players but also achieves his goal of historicizing these men in the rich cultural context of their ethnicity, beginning with Ed Abbaticchio and finishing with managers, front office executives, team owners, and one very famous commissioner. The organization of the book itself reflects the initial obstacles, the various prejudices, the steady progress, eventual assimilation, and ultimate success of Italian Americans in America's National Pastime as it reflects the larger culture. Although Abbaticchio is often credited as the first Italian-American major leaguer, Baldassaro notes that it is difficult to tell since many Italian Americans, voluntarily or involuntarily, underwent name changes upon arriving as immigrants. Abbaticchio, however, was not the typical immigrant; his father [End Page 140] had arrived in the United States in 1875, prior to the largest waves of Italians, and became a successful businessman, first owning a string of barbershops and then a tavern and a hotel. The first-generation son, then, did not enter the game from immigrant privation but with a college degree and experience as a professional athlete with an early pro football team in his native Latrobe. Despite Abbaticchio's middle-class pedigree and respectable play on the field, his Italian surname caused some consternation in baseball. Sportswriters cavalierly misspelled it, and he was quickly dubbed "Abby" or "Batty." Though not maliciously prejudiced, such responses, as Baldassaro notes, indicate that baseball was not ready to grant an Italian full enfranchisement in a game dominated by the then more assimilated Irish and Germans. Without the class status of Abbaticchio, those Italians following him faced, if not the historically shameful struggle of black and Latin players, an experience in which perceptions of them as less than fully American were always in play. Such was the case with the most recognizable Italian-American player of the 1910s and 1920s: Francesco Pezzolo-or, as most fans knew him, Ping Bodie-a good bat and solid outfielder for the White Sox and Yankees. Pezzolo's transformation to Bodie, as Baldassaro suggests, indicates both a desire to assimilate and a fear of provoking a less than welcoming response. For parents of aspiring players like Pezzolo, baseball initially appeared to be not only a childish pursuit but a threat to remove sons from close-knit Italian families, often gathered in isolated and insular enclaves, fearful of the suspicions and prejudices of established groups that constituted the American mainstream. Though fear quickly subsided when parents saw how lucrative the game could be, Baldassaro effectively conveys why ambivalence might be more pronounced in an ethnic group that by 1920 was subject to restrictive federal immigration laws. With quotas in place, few sons of Italian immigrants entered the game in the 1920s, though the decade saw the emergence of the game's first star of Italian descent: Tony Lazzeri. Lazzeri's success was twofold, likely inspiring younger Italian Americans to take up the game, while giving all of them a reason to embrace baseball-as is evident in coverage of the Yankee slugger's exploits in Il Progresso, the leading Italian-language newspaper of the time. Lazzeri proved the precursor to the large number of Italian Americans entering the game in the 1930s. Baldassaro counts over fifty, including stars such as the DiMaggio brothers and Ernie Lombardi. While the press, on the one hand, seemed to welcome these players, as they arrived en masse they were often constructed in stereotypes as invading Roman legions, just as Tony Lazzeri had earlier been dubbed "The Walloping Wop" and depicted as drawing strength from ingesting large quantities of spaghetti. Such rhetoric seems [End Page 141] outrageous by today's politically correct standards, and...

The Battle of Vercellae and the Alteration of the Heavy Javelin (Pilum) by Gaius Marius – 101 BC

Gaius Marius (157-86 BC) is widely known as one of the most innovative commanders of the Roman military. In 101 BC Marius implemented an alteration to the design of the heavy legionary javelin (pilum). However, unlike Marius' previous reforms, this modification of an elemental aspect of the Roman legions was not adopted as a standard military practice. An examination of the evidence relating to the reform and of the events surrounding the time of its implementation demonstrates that the benefit of the modification was different from that currently accepted by scholars. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that the reason why this reform failed to be adopted by the legions was not that it provided no clear tactical advantage on the battlefield, but was due to the course of Roman political and military history immediately after it had first been implemented.

Beyond the Cheated Eye: Dickinson's Lyric Sociality

Ryan Cull, "Beyond the Cheated Eye: Dickinson's Lyric Sociality" (pp. 38–64) During the past generation, Dickinson scholarship has shown how historicist and printculture methodologies can illuminate the social nexus of even a notoriously reticent figure. It has also had a broader impact on how we think about lyric poetry in general. For Emily Dickinson's experiments with dual authorship, hybrid-collage forms, and the blurring of stylistic and formal lines between poem and letter indicate the social embeddedness of what critics often still consider a private genre. This essay blends these two lines of thought in order to consider the lyric (and here, especially, Dickinson's lyrics) not only as a socio-historically embedded form but also as a form that may have application to our theorizing of the social. The essay argues that in a sequence of poems and letters in the period from 1862 to 1863 Dickinson identifies a possessiveness at the heart of the lyrical subjectivity that poisons social relations and stands as the most pervasive legacy of Romanticism. The essay then shows how Dickinson criticism, which can serve as a microcosm of critical trends in general, critiques but never casts aside this post-Romantic subjectivity that still limits our social theorizing. Then it shows how Dickinson seeks to do just this, to present within her lyrics an alternative poetic subjectivity that makes possible a revolutionary, pacifistic (though not passive) form of social relation.

Quid Tacitus . . . ? The Germania and the Study of Anglo-Saxon England

The construction of the Germanic comitatus by Cornelius Tacitus in one of his early works, the Germania, offers scholars of Anglo-Saxon England an easy shorthand way to discuss the heroic code as it appears in an assortment of late Old English texts, notably including Beowulf and the Battle of Maldon. This convenient shorthand has been much used, beginning in the nineteenth century with such scholars of history as John Richard Green and John Mitchell Kemble, and largely continuing in a straight line — although with some changes in emphasis and occasional concerns about relevance - to the present day. This dependence, or at the very least this call to a Roman history to provide a sense of longitude and certainty to the construction of Anglo-Saxon heroic behaviour, offers scholars a kind of chronological certainty in their consideration of the Germanic tribes and their behaviours when they first migrated to England. Tacitus could demonstrate the fixed and longstanding construction of heroism and of the cultural mores of Germanic society. The Germania could function as a touchstone text, a way to indicate the longevity of the notion of a fiercely individual, frequently violent, and fiercely loyal tribesman serving a chosen lord. To some extent, this use of Tacitus derives from the clarity and elegance with which the late Roman historian expressed himself, making it easy for scholars to comprehend and to quote his historiography of the Germanic tribes. However, it might also be argued that the call to Tacitus reflects a more profound desire to establish Anglo-Saxon social behaviour as part of a longstanding and rich tradition, as reflecting a personal integrity which reaches back to the Germanic tribes ranged against the Roman legions, and defeating them. Here, I will argue, first, that Tacitus wrote the Germania for very specific reasons which should not be ignored when this ethnographic treatise is considered and should occasion some pause when scholars wish to consider it as a ‘true’ representation of Germanic behaviour. Second, I will suggest that some of the ways in which Tacitus is bandied about in modern Anglo-Saxon scholarship require some modification — both because they derive from a historiographic and ethnographic approach which scholars in other fields no longer use and because they offer too simplistic an interpretation of both Tacitus and Germanic social behaviour as it came to function in Anglo-Saxon England. The argument that Tacitus still provides the best short introduction to the presentation of lof ‘fame’ and to the role of the heorðgeneatas‘hearth-companions’ in Old English texts may have its shortcomings. I want, therefore, to look again at the late Roman context of the Germania, the evidence for its transmission and possible influence on Anglo-Saxon texts, and its modern history as the basic historiographic reference in the nineteenth century for how Anglo-Saxon society functioned. Moreover, there has developed in the last twenty years a bifurcation in approach, in which historians no longer seem to consider Tacitus’s Germania as central to their conception of Anglo-Saxon governance structures, but some literary analysts continue to produce a Tacitean master narrative for Old English heroic behaviour. Teasing out the details of this approach to Tacitus may offer some new insight as to how— and how carefully— Anglo-Saxon scholars should use references to the Germania when thinking about Anglo-Saxon culture. Finally, I want to consider whether general introductions to the field should continue to use this shorthand as a way of explicating heroic behaviour. Tacitus may offer a convenient option for comparative purposes, and anchors Old English behaviour in its Germanic origins — or does he?

Quid Tacitus . . . ? The Germania and the Study of Anglo-Saxon England

The construction of the Germanic comitatus by Cornelius Tacitus in one of his early works, the Germania, offers scholars of Anglo-Saxon England an easy shorthand way to discuss the heroic code as it appears in an assortment of late Old English texts, notably including Beowulf and the Battle of Maldon. This convenient shorthand has been much used, beginning in the nineteenth century with such scholars of history as John Richard Green and John Mitchell Kemble, and largely continuing in a straight line — although with some changes in emphasis and occasional concerns about relevance — to the present day. This dependence, or at the very least this call to a Roman history to provide a sense of longitude and certainty to the construction of AngloSaxon heroic behaviour, offers scholars a kind of chronological certainty in their consideration of the Germanic tribes and their behaviours when they first migrated to England. Tacitus could demonstrate the fixed and longstanding construction of heroism and of the cultural mores of Germanic society. The Germania could function as a touchstone text, a way to indicate the longevity of the notion of a fiercely individual, frequently violent, and fiercely loyal tribesman serving a chosen lord. To some extent, this use of Tacitus derives from the clarity and elegance with which the late Roman historian expressed himself, making it easy for scholars to comprehend and to quote his historiography of the Germanic tribes. However, it might also be argued that the call to Tacitus reflects a more profound desire to establish Anglo-Saxon social behaviour as part of a longstanding and rich tradition, as reflecting a personal integrity which reaches back to the Germanic tribes ranged against the Roman legions, and defeating them. Here, I will argue, first, that Tacitus wrote the Germania for very

Legiones rebeldes y su destrucción premeditada: el caso de Tétrico, emperador gálico, comparado en las fuentes

En este artículo se presenta el caso de las legiones romanas en el Imperio Gálico, el estado paralelo occidental durante la Anarquía Militar del siglo III ; tras asesinar a varios altos funcionarios y emperadores estas tropas habían llegado a un punto de indisciplina tal que el propio Tétrico decidió traicionar a su ejército para que fuese destruido y rendirse, buscando su salvación en la clemencia de Aureliano. Se analiza aquí ese episodio histórico y es comparado con otros dos casos similares, relacionados con la usurpación de Magnencio en Occidente y la conquista bizantina de África en tiempos de Justiniano.

Journeys of a Pathogen

Microbiology Leprosy is caused by Mycobacterium leprae , which infects the neurons and mucosa of humans. Strikingly, its genome has decayed extensively, which probably accounts for its slow rate of growth; global variation between strains is limited to four SNP clusters, each having a distinctive geographical prevalence that reflects past human migrations. Monot et al. have sequenced M. leprae strains from Brazil, Thailand, and the United States, and made comparisons with archaeological samples. Genotyping the pathogen can be used to pinpoint a person's origins quite precisely. For example, samples from an Egyptian burial revealed that the corpse had been infected with a European strain of leprosy and was more probably a Roman legionary than an African. Their updated map of leprosy strains supports the out-of-Africa theory for modern humans and indicates that leprosy crossed to Asia twice: once via a southern route into India and through Indonesia to the Philippines, and also via a northern route along the Silk Road in countercurrent fashion to the Black Death. Subsequently, leprosy arrived in South America via European immigrants rather than by pre-Columbian colonization via the Bering Strait. Nat. Genet. 41 , 10.1038/ng.477 (2009).

Roman Horse Found in Germany

![Figure][1] CREDIT: GERMAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE Archaeologists in Germany have found a life-sized, bronze, Roman horse's head at the bottom of a well. It's the first such find in Germany and may be one of the world's best-preserved Roman bronzes, scientists say. The sculpture, part of a statue believed to be of the Roman emperor Augustus, was found at Waldgirmes, the remains of a Roman town. The cast-bronze head, 50 centimeters long, is covered in gold leaf and weighs 25 kilograms. At a press conference in Frankfurt last week, Friedrich Luth of the German Archaeological Institute said archaeologists found the horse's head while excavating an 11-meter-deep, wood-reinforced well shaft. Tree-ring dating placed the well's construction at about 9 B.C.E. It appears that the Romans had grand plans for Waldgirmes, which may have been intended as the capital of what they called Germania Magna . There are fragments from five statues in the town, and Luth says the sophisticated craftsmanship of the horse head indicates that it was made in Italy. Excavations at Waldgirmes, which started in 1993, are convincing archaeologists that the Romans had a more extensive presence in ancient Germany than historians had thought. “The Romans must have felt so safe, they planted a new town in this wild Germanic forest,” says Sebastian Sommer, chief archaeologist of Bavaria. That safety was short-lived. In 9 C.E., German tribesmen vanquished the Roman legions. Luth believes Waldgirmes was abandoned at about the same time. [1]: pending:yes

The cohortes Augustae Cyrenaicae

The auxiliary regiments of the Imperial Roman army were as vital to the defensive and offensive capabilities of the Roman Empire as the better-known Roman legions. Initially raised on an ethnic basis through the levy from among Rome’s subject peoples, and then maintained at or near their full strength by conscription and voluntary recruitment, these units of auxilia were often deployed far from their original ‘home’. As such, by analysing where these units were recruited and in what numbers, and then studying their subsequent history and deployment, it is possible to begin an assessment of their full value to Rome and to better comprehend overall developments in Roman strategic thinking. This paper contributes to such an appraisal by reviewing the evidence for the history and deployment of the three cohortes Augustae Cyrenaicae, among the least well-known auxiliary units in the entire Roman army.