Roman Civil War Research Articles

Three apologues and <em>In Cath Catharda</em>

Three poems, of each of which an apologue based on an account of the Roman Civil War (49 45 B.C.) forms a part, have recently been published in ABM. This paper offers an edition of the three apologues, with translation and notes, and a discussion of them in the context of the poems in which they occur and with reference to seven other apologues based on the same war which have been listed by Liam P. O Caithnia (1984, 125 7).

The house of Tarkondimotos: a late Hellenistic dynasty between Rome and the East

AbstractDespite its regional hegemony over eastern Kilikia and a prominent role in three Roman civil wars, the house of Tarkondimotos has maintained little more than a shadowy existence on the fringe of historical accounts of the first centuries BC to AD. This paper collates the biographical and relational data of all known or conjectured members of the Tarkondimotid dynasty and its court, and places them within a historical context.

A Commentary on Lucan, De Bello Civili IV: Introduction, Edition, and Translation (review)

Reviewed by: A Commentary on Lucan, De Bello Civili IV: Introduction, Edition, and Translation Martin T. Dinter Paolo Asso. A Commentary on Lucan, De Bello Civili IV: Introduction, Edition, and Translation. Texte und Kommentar, 33. Berlin: de Grutyer, 2010. Pp. x, 333. $184.00. ISBN 978-3-11-020385-1. Those working on Lucan nowadays live in happy times and are blessed with an annual stream of secondary literature and commentaries. Lucan needs no apology any more. The last few years alone have yielded Monica Matthew’s 2008 commentary on the über-storm scene in Lucan BC 5.476–721, and Paul Roche’s 2009 full commentary on BC 1. Now we have Paolo Asso’s full commentary on BC 4, published almost simultaneously with Paolo Esposito’s 2009 Italian counterpart (Naples). I shall, however, not compare these two commentaries here, but rather concentrate on the merits of Asso’s book alone. The fourth book of Lucan’s epic on the Roman civil war between Caesar and Pompey contains many of the epic’s most famous scenes: the Battle of Ilerda (vv. 1–401), which sees the besieged Pompeians under Afranius endure thirst and gain Caesar’s pardon; the common suicide of Volteius and his men on their raft (402–581); and the so-called Curio episode set in Africa (581–824), embedded in which we find the myth of the fight between Hercules and Antaeus (661–714). Asso treats us to thirty-six pages of introduction, followed by the Latin text with translation (38–97) and a substantial commentary (100–293). The introduction starts off with a biographical sketch of Lucan’s life drawn from the ancient source material and addresses the question whether Lucan should, could, or ought to be read as a freedom writer once his falling out with Nero had occurred. This section assembles much useful and often scattered material for the convenience of the reader, but needs to be read with the caveat in mind that it is also possible to approach Lucan’s oeuvre without subscribing to a biographical reading. In the same way in which the “myth” of Nero the Tyrant has been created by the ancient sources, these might well have modeled Lucan’s life as counterpart to Nero’s. This quibble, however, should not distract from the merits of Asso’s volume and the importance of allowing the reader to make up his or her own mind. After all, Bellum Civile 4 could well have been the first book written after Nero and Lucan fell out, as some ancient sources imply in their report that before his ban Lucan had already published three books of his epic. The remainder of Asso’s introduction deals with Lucan’s place as Virgil’s epic successor and positions book 4 in the wider structure and content of the Bellum Civile before embarking on a survey of the diction, syntax, meter, and rhetorical devices employed by Lucan. The commentary itself is neatly subdivided into three parts according to the narrative structure of Bellum Civile 4 outlined above, each of which is prefaced by a short summary and in the case of the Battle of Ilerda with dates and chapter references to Caesar’s own account in book 1 of his Commentaria de bello civili. Asso proceeds line by line and provides rich material on lexical, metrical, and syntactical levels as well as a wealth of background information on Lucan’s often tricky geographical, military, or even athletic [End Page 555] matters, as in the case of the wrestling match between Hercules and the giant Antaeus. The latter episode deserves to be singled out for particular praise, as Asso here leaves no stone unturned to provide information ranging from Hercules’ Roman cult titles to a potted history of wrestling in Greece and Rome. Throughout, single lines are frequently illuminated by exhaustive comments. A further strength of Asso’s work is his command of the material and his ability to combine insights from Anglophone and Italian scholarship for a wider audience. Even occasional, and given the enormous amount of referencing forgivable slips—we find both Roland Mayer and Meyer on 20 and Endt 1905 certainly wrote about...

Tragedy in the Aftermath of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: France’s First Phedre and the Hope for Peace

BEFORE the bloody Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre claimed thousands or tens of thousands of lives on August 24, 1572, France's first major tragedian, Robert Garnier, had published Porcie (1568), the first part of a trilogy detailing the Roman civil wars in evident echo of the current disputes between Catholics and Protestants. The second two parts of the trilogy--Cornelie (1574) and Marc Antoine (1578)--were published after the massacre and continued to offer indirect reflection upon the causes and consequences of the current chaos. (1) Published before and after the massacre, the trilogy depicts a country polluted by religious discord and political turmoil. The purpose of the present article is to study the curious interruption of the trilogy that coincided with the massacre. In the aftermath of the bloodiest event in the wars, Garnier published another, seemingly unrelated and apparently timeless and apolitical, tragedy: Hippolyte (1573). (2) The text, in fact, was actually published twice that first year. (3) Why? What made it so appropriate? And is the play really as disconnected from history as is generally thought? Garnier's decision to publish Hippolyte in 1573 is initially all the more surprising given that other French tragedians seemingly responded to the massacre in very direct ways, raising the issue of the limits of the reason of State, directly referencing the fifth war of religion, or offering unrestrained praise of the murder of the Protestant leader, Coligny. (4) Might it be possible, I ask in what follows, to reconnect France's first play about Phedre and her stepson to the massacre? 1. FROM TRISTES JEUX TO D'AUTRES JEUX A number of clues as to how Hippolyte opens out onto the historical moment of production can be located in the letters and praise poems that precede the play. Although Hippolyte can seem like a pause or rupture in Garnier's response to civil strife, such was not the opinion advanced by Pierre Amy in a Latin poem included in the original 1573 edition. There, Amy explicitly connects Hippolyte to the cycle of Roman plays about civil war. Porcie, notes Amy, was so moving that nostra obstupuit scena (our [French] stage was astonished)--before the 1568 tragedy, France had never known cothurni [...] magniloqui (the great eloquence of Athenian tragedy [in reference to the buskins, i.e. boots worn by Athenian actors]) (Hippolyte 55). Yet, he continues, Hippolyte will be even greater, such that Invidi major Graecis se comparat (greater will be the rivalry with the Greek muses). In this first instance, Amy compares the two plays purely on their esthetic merit. In a second moment, however, he asserts that the praise he offers Garnier is not just his own, but that of the French nation: the French are now again ready to face death for the wellbeing of the nation (pro re communi); all of France (nobis nostrisque) offer Garnier praise for his play. The stakes are clearly national. Porcie's relationship to France's suffering is here appropriated for Hippolyte. It is however not Amy but the great cousin of Pierre de Ronsard, Nicolas--he signs merely N.D.R.--who offers the most promising model for understanding how Hippolyte might relate to the massacre. Written in the second person (Tu) and naming its addressee a total of three times (France), Nicolas de Ronsard's sonnet, offered to Garnier, connects Hippolyte to the nation via the figure of apostrophe. Most importantly, the poem calls for peace: Ma France, je te pry, laisse ton propre flanc. But the poem is not just a call for peace--it is also a call for replacing fighting in the streets with something else: Tu devrois arracher de tes poings outrageux / Les glaives, et, paisible, a d'autres jeux t'ebatre. And the other games that the sonnet's author has in mind are theatrical. The connection becomes clearer when we recall that the sonnet begins by referring to France metaphorically as a theater: Tu sers trop longuement au monde de theatre, / France. …

CAESAR CHREMATOPOIOS

This article argues that a significant element of the rhetorical contest in the Roman civil war was the struggle to define Julius Caesar’s use of financial resources. In his writings, Caesar presents himself as acting out of generosity and frugality, while other sources show his adversaries drawing attention to his confiscations to represent him as greedy and appetitive. These were two sides of the same coin, as Caesar’s choice to act with civic generosity in wartime required confiscations that became a political liability. Yet the ideal of the generous man, built up by elites in their own self-interest, gave little purchase for criticism of the true sources of wealth used for gifts and favors. Caesar used this rhetorical opportunity to give himself a significant advantage in the civil war.

Katherine Philips as Political Playwright: "The Songs Between the Acts" in Pompey

On 10 February 1663, Katherine Philips's translation of Pierre Corneilles La Mort de Pompee, with five songs she wrote to link the acts, was performed in Dublin. Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, facilitated the play's professional production at the new Smock Alley Theatre, helping with funds for expensive costumes and professional singers from the cathedral. By April, John Crooke had published the text of Philips's translation in Dublin; he published another edition in London later that year. (1) In addition to having the play performed and printed, Philips arranged for a presentation manuscript of the play to be sent to the Duchess of York, wife of King Charles's heir, James, and she later arranged for a copy to be sent to the king. Philips's deliberate dissemination of the play to three audiences--Dublin playgoers, print readers, and also a London court readership--suggests that she had particular public and political aims in translating the play. The lavish production of Pompey in Dublin was the first play by a woman to be performed on a British commercial stage and was in the vanguard of Restoration drama. Pompey was Philips's first dramatic translation. (2) She was already known, as Orinda, for her lyric poetry, which circulated primarily in manuscript. In letters she wrote to Sir Charles Cotterell during the period of translation, published in 1705 as Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus, Philips does not explicitly state her reasons for choosing this particular play, (3) but two key elements of the plot of Pompey engaged contemporary English and Irish political concerns in the early years of the Restoration. After the Battle of Pharsalus in the Roman civil wars, the virtuous Pompey is betrayed by Ptolemy and beheaded, and Cleopatra, returned from exile, is crowned at the end of the play. The execution of King Charles I in 1649 is certainly evoked in the play's sympathetic treatment of the murdered Pompey, and the restoration of Cleopatra's right to a usurped throne might also be read as an analogy of the recent restoration of monarchy. These events in Pompey brought to mind the traumatic events of the recent civil wars in England and Ireland from the perspective of the even more recent, and still precarious, restoration of monarchy and court. So relevant seemed the story to contemporary political events that a group including Edmund Waller was also simultaneously translating Corneille's play in London. (4) Having been sent a number of prologues and epilogues for the production, Philips chose a prologue by the Earl of Roscommon (letter 25, 119-20). The prologue begins: The mighty Rivals, whose destructive Rage Did the whole World in engage: Are now agreed, and make it both their Choice To have their Fates determin'd by your Voice. (5) This celebration of an end to Civil Armes asks the audience, later addressed as Catos to judge the Rivals. The prologue explicitly positions the play as political, and encourages the audience to interpret analogically. The Epilogue by Sir Edward Dering, apparently anticipating contested interpretations, begins Pleas'd or displeas'd, censure as you think fit, / The Action, Plot, the Language or the Wit. The epilogue later emphasizes that the language is chast and harmless is the sense (11. 1-2, 7). The defensiveness of the last statement may be an attempt to shape responses to a political play by a woman, but also suggests an awareness that the political implications of the play might not be totally harmless. As a whole, Philips's Pompey does not present a simple Royalist allegory of regicide and restoration, but suggests a more complex political analysis of British history and politics. The analogical relations between certain Roman and English characters and events which seem striking at first glance are less than straightforward when considered in detail. Philips's songs further complicate political readings of the play by evoking dramatic irony, by suggesting motivation that is not explicit in the play proper, and by adding characters to the entr'acte scenes. …

Pharsalia: An Environmental Biography of a Southern Plantation, 1780–1880 , and: Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South (review)

Pharsalia: An Biography of a Southern Plantation, 1780-1880. By Lynn A. Nelson. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007. Pp. 295. Cloth, $39.95.)Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South. By Anthony E. Kaye. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Pp. 376. Cloth, $34.95.)Reviewed by John P. McCarthyThese two books are both about place: specific places of the mind and on the landscape that were in one case the creation of an elite planter family and in the other the creation of enslaved Africans. In the vast enterprise that is the historical analysis of the plantation these volumes offer fresh perspectives and delve into previously underutilized source material. As an archaeologist and architectural historian whose research is nearly always tied to a specific place, I found both to be welcome additions to a literature whose scale of analysis is often difficult to relate to my research.Lynn A. Nelson's Pharsalia: An Biography of a Southern Plantation focuses on a Nelson County, Virginia, plantation named for Lucan's epic poetic history of the Roman civil wars in which Caesar defeated Pompey and doomed the Roman Republic. In this inaugural volume in the University of Georgia Press series Environmental History and the American South, Nelson, associate professor of history at Middle Tennessee State University, tells the story of the struggle for agrarian independence that characterized the efforts of successive generations of planters on this property in the nineteenth century. In Nelson's view, this foreshadowed the fate of southern agriculture and sheds light on the failures of conservation efforts in the region into the twentieth century. Nelson productively mined the rich trove of papers of the Massie family, the builders and nineteenth-century owners of Pharsalia. While it is widely accepted that ill-considered farming practices were largely responsible for the soil depletion that contributed so heavily to the poverty of the rural Nelson's analysis points to the overpowering challenges facing those who attempted to pursue soilconservation practices.Nelson makes careful use of the plantation's extensive records to situate its agroecology in shifting contexts. He sees the farm as involving not just a landscape or a geographical setting but as a set of ecological relationships that evolve over time as a result of shifting human power and intentions. The political and social dynamics of a republican frontier, antebellum capital markets, the Civil War, and reconstruction of commodity and labor relations each inspired planters to shape land use in an attempt to achieve outcomes consistent with the ideological goals of the contemporary political economy. But in each case, efforts to construct a profitable and sustainable agriculture were defeated by natural and market forces beyond the planter's control.The Republican ideology of agrarian independence and mastery over land and labor supported both migration to new lands in the West and intensified production of previously settled regions. The Massies, owners of Pharsalia, remained in Virginia and adopted farming practices that promised to renew exhausted soils, maximize the labor of their slaves, and maintain the family's independence. Following the latest agriculture advice, the Massies manured fields and rotated crops to restore lost productivity. But these efforts proved unsatisfactory, and by the 1840s the Massies turned to capital investment to import resources to intensify production. Improved seed, imported blooded livestock, and new technology raised yields and increased labor efficiency to the extent that when founding patriarch William Massie died in 1862, he was a wealthy man. His widow continued the intensive farming practices established before the war and adapted the new free-labor system to the plantation's needs. But in the end, pests and weeds and soil depletion could not be conquered, and Pharsalia could not support the aristocratic ambitions of the family. …

M. Annaeus Lucanus: Bellum Civile, Liber IX. Einleitung, Text und Übersetzung , and: M. Annaeus Lucanus: Bellum Civile, Liber IX. Kommentar (review)

Reviewed by: M. Annaeus Lucanus: Bellum Civile, Liber IX. Einleitung, Text und Übersetzung, and: M. Annaeus Lucanus: Bellum Civile, Liber IX. Kommentar Martin T. Dinter and David Sider, Professor Claudia Wick . M. Annaeus Lucanus: Bellum Civile, Liber IX. Einleitung, Text und Übersetzung. Beiträge zur Altertumskunde, 201. Munich: K. G. Saur, 2004. Pp. xiv, 155. €82.00. ISBN 978-3-598-77813-1. Claudia Wick . M. Annaeus Lucanus: Bellum Civile, Liber IX. Kommentar. Beiträge zur Altertumskunde, 202. Munich: K. G. Saur, 2004. Pp. 448. €96.00. ISBN 978-3-598-77814-8. The ninth book of Lucan's epic on the Roman civil war between Caesar and Pompey contains many of the epic's most famous scenes: Pompey's "apotheosis," Cato's march through the Libyan desert featuring the Medusa excursus and the infamous snake catalogue, and finally, Caesar's visit to the ruins of Troy. Since up to now only partial commentaries on book 9 have appeared, Wick's detailed study forms a welcome addition to Lucan scholarship. Besides offering Latin text, German translation, and about forty pages of introduction focusing on the main scene's sources, structure, function, coherence, and personae, for the foreign reader the value of the first volume lies in particular in some fifty pages of immensely detailed indices. A rich index locorum, a select index verborum, and a full subject index provide excellent research tools. In addition, Wick's commentary not only provides a wealth of parallels from Lucan's literary predecessors, it also cites many of his successors, epic and otherwise, thus assembling valuable material on Lucan's Nachleben. Rich in bibliography and learning, Wick's commentary remains conservative both in its approach and interpretation, eschewing postmodern metaliterary scholarly voices. Its main strength lies in the author's experience as researcher for the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, which is manifested in the commentary's focus on lexicography and semantics. Since Lucan's syntax often stretches Latin to its breaking point—the word at war, so to speak—Wick illuminates it with countless enriching discussions of vocabulary and grammar. Lucan's motto could be pinned down as plus quam (BC 1.1), and an obvious desire to outdo his literary fathers permeates the Bellum Civile. Likewise, Wick's commentary suffers from avalanches of material and detail that threaten to bury even the most avid reader with more than what can be reasonably digested. Moreover, Wick's discussions are steeped in Realia—not a bad thing, and much is relevant and interesting—but to what purpose does she treat us to a wealth of herpetological detail when discussing the snake catalogue? When reading such an obviously fictitious battle of soldiers and über-snakes, I for my part am content with being pointed to literary models. Similarly, many of us may have never wondered what kind of apple-farming viper was chatting up Eve in the Garden of Eden. Wick, however, advocates the benefits of drawing parallels with zoology, resulting in an at times idiosyncratic treatment of this passage. Exemplary brief introductions precede the line-by-line discussion of each subsection of book 9. These provide valuable background information and often also address questions of structure and wider design. Wick has to be congratulated for producing such a thorough and rich commentary with such [End Page 253] high standards. Her love for her subject shines through every page and equals her love of detail. In the future, Wick's opus will surely become a point of reference for any serious Lucan scholar. Martin T. Dinter King's College London David Sider, Professor Department of Classics, New York University, 100 Washington Square East, Room 503, New York, NY 10003; e-mail: david.sider@nyu.edu. Copyright © 2008 Classical Association of the Atlantic States

The Uneasy Republicanism of Thomas Kyd's Cornelia

The Uneasy Republicanism of Thomas Kyd's Cornelia Curtis Perry This essay attempts to intervene, through a reading of Thomas Kyd's closet drama Cornelia (1594), in a series of ongoing debates about the place of classical republicanism within the political mentality of late Elizabethan England. Though argument concerning this topic has lately come to the fore among literary critics, the questions involved are essentially questions out of intellectual history in that they center on the cross-pollination and mutual interference of ideas. There is no question but that Elizabethan political thought included a number of strands that overlap with what we might intuitively think of as republicanism. These range from the radical, such as imported resistance theories justifying tyrannicide and stressing the limits of royal authority, to the utterly conventional, such as the discourse of native liberties protected by the ancient constitution or concerning the superiority of England's mixed government, in which the monarch ruled in tandem with parliament and common law. The question has been whether or how these possibly disparate strands should be knit together. For associating them and bestowing upon them the umbrella term republicanism creates implications about their cumulative coherence and thus about their significance within English political thought. It is one thing to note that there are a number of quasi-republican ideas in circulation, and another altogether to argue, as Andrew Hadfield has done, in his ambitious 2005 book, Shakespeare and Republicanism, that republicanism "set the political agenda in Shakespeare's England."1 Such questions are of course complicated further by the kinds of data—fictions, poems, plays—that literary critics tend to use as evidence, since the nature of the relationship between the stories people tell one another and their political thought can be difficult in practice to pin down. Cornelia, a play set during the Roman civil wars, against the backdrop of Caesar's victories and the end of the republic, is one of numerous early modern narratives dealing with the rise and fall of the Roman republic. This story was felt to be relevant to the Elizabethan present, obviously, but that in itself does not necessarily mean that English writers or [End Page 535] their audiences saw their own political milieus as republican. Nevertheless, topical fictions, precisely because they are not tied to the specific constitutional terms of contemporary political debate, offer the richest possible data set about the operation within these debates of other historically specific exempla. I want to suggest that Cornelia, though never widely enough read in its own day to be considered representative, can be an especially revelatory document in this regard, offering us an unusually rich and complex snapshot of the way republican motifs operated in relation to other kinds of political thought during the waning years of Elizabeth's reign.2 Kyd translated Cornelia from the French neoclassical play Cornélie by Robert Garnier. In taking up Garnier's work, Kyd—already best known as the author of the Elizabethan blockbuster The Spanish Tragedy (1587)—was imitating the fashionable aristocratic tastes of Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, whose own translation of Garnier's Marc Antoine had been printed in 1592.3 Cornelia was never meant to be performed, so the undertaking marks a striking departure from Kyd's earlier, popular plays. The change of direction almost certainly has to do with Kyd's own straitened circumstances: he adopts a conspicuously elite style of drama in a bid for aristocratic patronage, for he was in desperate need of support when he wrote the play.4 In May 1593, during the course of the same Privy Council investigations that culminated in the murder of his associate Christopher Marlowe, Kyd was found holding "atheistical" papers. He claimed they were Marlowe's, but was imprisoned and probably tortured, and his surviving letters from this period complain of the resulting loss of patronage. Cornelia is dedicated to the Countess of Sussex, Lady Bridget Fitzwalter, whose husband, Robert Radcliffe, the 5th Earl of Sussex, was related to the Sidney family and closely allied with the Earl of Essex.5 Whether this represents a bid on Kyd's part to renew old patronage ties or to find new ones, there...

Suicide Bombers, Terror, History, and Religion

There is a tendency to overlook many examples from the West when we discuss suicide and terrorism and to emphasize some examples from the Near East. This is true both in the academic and popular press. I will give examples from each. Very little in recent years has appeared in print concerning the theory of suicide bombing or past research in suicide. Even Durkheim or more recent comprehensive studies by people like Schneidman, Farberow, and Litman (1970) have played minor roles, if any, in the popular discussion. We are often treated to a history of the Assassins, a Middle Eastern sect which came to considerable power in the 12th century, and their leader, Hasan as-Sabah, based almost entirely on the work of Bernard Lewis. More than 630,000 citations on the world-wide web refer to his work or interviews with him regarding suicide bombings and is the primary source for news stories. Despite the definitive tone of his book, Lewis admits the strange fact that, most important single source for Hasan's life is his autobiography...No copy has so far come to light... (his notes, 1980:146). In fact, Lewis cites lsmaili sources captured by the Mongols, but all of which were destroyed or lost. The sect is known only from the reports of its enemies and some few eye witness reports like that of Joinville. None of these original sources (like Joinville's Chronicle) are used, and the followers of Hasan as-Sabah are characterized in usual terms as fanatics, while Joinville presents a picture of reason (certainly in the context of Medieval ideas, like those characterizing the nature of guilt discussed by Foucault 1977) and loyalty common to his time. By putting this information in his notes and not in his text, Lewis produces a less nuanced story, one with greater difference and distinction than the facts provide. One might have expected some more ancient beginning, perhaps Appian's description of the mass suicide of the Xanthians after their defeat by Brutus during the Roman Civil War (42 B.C.), or a comparison with the description by Herodotus of Hallcarnassus of their mass suicide after defeat by the Persians, or earlier when they were the enemies of the Trojans. Their refusal to submit is legendary, and they even resisted Alexander the Great, Appian tells us, when they again refused to surrender, but Arrian argues they did. We sometimes respect those who choose death over slavery, but then, the central issue is the nature of defeat, as Karen Armstrong has cogently discussed in her book Battle for God'. The entire picture of assassination that is related, is made foreign to Europe and the rest of the world in, for example, Karen Andriolo's (2002)recent essay on assassination in the American Anthropologist. If she had looked at the fanatical followers of the Crusades, a more balanced view would have resulted. But then, she is using Lewis, so we can expect this result. A reference to the assassinations in Europe during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, as detailed by Machiavelli in his The History of Florence and Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, would provide a different view. Many of these could be classed as suicidal, and the frequency became so frenzied that the wearing of masks to prevent recognition became common. Andriolo is not alone in this myopic view of suicide and Islam, yet the nature of suicide and its relation to society has been a topic of study by a legion of scholars over the past 200 years. Current research has been driven by the emergency feelings regarding the newly recognized phenomenon of Suicide by Cop. Estimates from the USA indicate that rates of suicide by purposely confronting a peace officer have risen to 10 to 12% of all individuals killed by police in the line of duty, according to Rebecca Stincelli, author of a study of the same name (2004). A number of TV and radio shows, including PBS Wide Angle have taken a more general approach including Tamil Tigers, Viet Minh, and the Turkish PKK, calling them nationalist exceptions to the religious phenomenon of Muslim suicide bombers. …

The Middle East under Rome

* Preface to the English-Language Edition * Acknowledgments * Translators' Note * Introduction 1. The Hellenistic Legacy * The Creation of New States * Syria between Parthians, Romans, and Armenians 2. The End of Seleucid Syria and the First Roman Rule (69--31 B.C.E.) * The Beginnings of Roman Intervention * Pompey and Syria * Syria at the Time of the Roman Civil War 3. From Augustus to Trajan: Creating a Province * The Provincia and Its Governors * The Defenses of Imperial Syria in the First Century * The Client States in the First Century C.E. 4. The Crises in Judaea from Herod to Bar Kokhba * Herod the Great * Herod's Heirs * The Era of Prefects and Procurators * The Revolt of 66--70 and Its Consequences * From the Fall of the Temple to Bar Kokhba 5. From Trajan to the Severi: Conquests and Reorganizations * New Provinces, New Divisions * Defense of the Country and Roman Campaigns 6. Civic Life and Urban Development during the Early Empire * The Spread of the Polis and the Creation of Colonies * The Structure and Organization of Municipal Life * City Profiles 7. Rural Life in the Early Empire * Land Tenure and Land Use * Agricultural Practices and Production * Villages and Village Communities * Nomads 8. The Urban Economy in Roman Syria * Artisans * Money and Customs Duties * Roads and Ports * Local and Foreign Trade 9. Hellenization and Indigenous Cultures * Syrian Hellenism * Indigenous Cultures 10 Pagans, Jews, and Christians in Roman Syria in the Second and Third Centuries * Gods and Pagan Sanctuaries * Rabbinical Judaism * The Beginnings of Christianization 11. A Time of Trials * Edessa, Hatra, and Dura-Europos * Palmyra * Phylarchs and Nomad Chiefs * Conclusion * Abbreviations * Notes * Works Cited * Index

Contribution of historical and literary works to the understanding of political phenomena

Contribution of historical and literary works to the understanding of political phenomena

Historical atlas of ancient Rome

This work traces the historical, cultural, and political development of the small Iron Age tribe on the banks of the River Tiber who developed into the rulers of an empire that dominated the Western world. The history of this people has been traced, allowing readers a concise insight into the Roman world, including its culture, art, and technology. Maps highlighting the development of Rome, its commerce, military conquests, and its collapse complement the historical narrative. Coverage includes Rome and Italy, the early Roman republic, Hannibal and Portras, the late Roman republic, the fall of the Roman republic, Caesar Augustus, civil war and imperial dreams, Pax Romana, collapse and Christianity, the later emperors, the barbarian invasions, and the fall of Rome.

Adulterations in first century bc: the case of Greek silver drachmae analyzed by X-ray methods

For coins, chemical differences that occur during preparation affect the elemental composition and can be used to identify the producing technologies and workshops and to distinguish between originals and counterfeits. In this study, we focus our attention on some Thassos silver tetradrachmae and on an important number of Apollonia–Dyrrhachium silver drachmae emitted by these Greek cities under Pompejus authority during the First Roman Civil War. All the analyzed coins were found on the territory of present Romania (ancient Dacia). The important presence of Apollonia–Dyrrhachium drachmae here can be explained by the hypothesis that these coins were probably used by Pompejus as payment for Dacian mercenaries. To analyze the elemental composition we used: 241Am gamma source based X-ray fluorescence and in vacuum 3 MeV protons particle induced X-ray emission. The following main categories were found: original coins, local (Barbarian) imitations, debased coins with silver content down to 70%, official (original dies) counterfeits of bronze, official counterfeits of tin, and plated coins—a bronze core covered by a 0.2–0.5 mm silver layer.

Caesar Against Rome: The Great Roman Civil War, by Ramon L. Jiménez

<i>Caesar Against Rome: The Great Roman Civil War</i>, by Ramon L. Jiménez

Caesar against Rome: The Great Roman Civil War

Caesar against Rome: The Great Roman Civil War

L'Influenza Della Farsaglia di Lucano Sull'Epopea Tardo-Umanista Latina in Ungheria; Stephanus Taurinus: Stauromachia

The first humanist Latin epic in Hungary was written by the Transylvanian humanist of Moravian origin, Stephanus Stieroxel (or Taurinus, in his latinized name). The work appeared in 1519 in Vienna, under the title Stauromachia id est Cruciatorum Servile Bellum. The present study reviews the previous interpretations of the epic, which chose as its subject the 1514 peasants' revolt, led by Gyorgy Dosza. Some of the interpretations state that the author's sympathy is expressed towards the noblemen, who fell victim to the riots; some state the opposite: the author stands on the side of the peasants. According to the author of the present study, neither of these views is well founded. He supports his opinion with genre-analysis, showing that the work is an epic-parody, based on the Homeric Batracomyomachia, translated and made widely known by Reuchlin. On the other hand he shows that the author of the epic, following the Erasmian Riccardo Bartholini, condemns both the arrogance of the aristocracy and the cruelty of the peasants: both classes help to destroy the unity of Christian Europe, opening a way to the Islamic conquerors waiting at the borders. This is the reason why the author of the epic chose Lucan's epic on the Roman civil war as his moral guide in his historic pessimism, and adapted the motives of this work according to his own poetic goals. Imitation of Lucan in such format is unprecedented in the whole European Neo-Latin literature.

Barbarians in Gaul, Usurpers in Britain

In the first decade of the fifth century Gaul and Britain, Spain and Italy all suffered from a succession of barbarian invasions and Roman civil wars. We possess not just one but several literary accounts of the crisis, along with chronicles, poetry, and imperial laws that all help to illuminate its course, but the sequence of events bristles with technical difficulties. These have not been satisfactorily resolved in the countless modern narratives of the period, which regularly depend on one another rather than the ancient sources. The most recent treatment of the topic, by John Drinkwater, appeared in the pages of this journal, and represents a tremendous advance on our understanding of the crisis. Drinkwater's analysis clarifies any number of crucial interpretative points, and should be the first port of call for any one interested in the study of the period. Problems nevertheless remain. Drinkwater's episodic treatment of the period encourages a certain obscurity that a more systematic narrative might dispel, and he relies heavily upon badly understood ancient slanders against the regent Stilicho to underpin important parts of his narrative. What follows is in no sense an attack on Drinkwater's magisterial interpretation of usurpation and crisis, which warrants wholehearted endorsement. Instead, I would like to suggest that the welter of modern literature on the crisis has blinded us to how little we actually know about it, and that only by maintaining a rigorous awareness of what actually appears in the primary sources can we hope to enjoy the fruits of more nuanced interpretation.

Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans

Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans, by Peter Richardson. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996. Pp. xxvi + 360. $34.95. Peter Richardson's biographical study of the Great opens with a series of fictional obituaries set in different cities where was known during his lifetime (Rome, Petra, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Yodefat in Galilee) and closes with a similarly fictional list of Herod's achievements, written in the first person. In between, Richardson seeks to provide a coherent assessment (p. 12) of and his reign in a series of alternating chapters: the odd-numbered chapters of the book provide a narrative account of the main events of Herod's public and private lives, while the even-- numbered chapters take up more general topics. The narrative account begins with a description of the events surrounding Herod's death and then returns to the early stages of his career. Richardson provides detailed descriptions of the Herodian family's background in Idumea, Herod's rise to power in Judea, his role in the Roman and Hasmonean civil wars, his reign as king of the Jews, and the ups and downs of his tumultuous life. In chapter 2, the first of the more general chapters, Richardson discusses what he terms family matters-the provisions of Herod's wills, other financial arrangements within the family, marriage and divorce, and so on. Chapter 4 briefly describes the geographical, political, and cultural characteristics of several distinctive regions that bordered, or were incorporated into, Herod's kingdom: the province of Syria, including the semi-independent kingdoms of Commagene, Emesa, Palmyra, and Damascus; the cities of the Decapolis; and the coastal cities that at one time or another belonged to Judea. Chapter 6 provides similar descriptions of the main regions comprising Herod's kingdom at its peak (Galilee; Judea; Samaritis; Gaulanitis, Batanea, Auranitis, and Trachonitis; and Peraea). In chapter 8, Richardson surveys the religious, cultural, commercial, military, and residential buildings erected by in Judea and elsewhere, considers their significance, and explores the question of Herod's motives in undertaking such an ambitious building program. A chapter on Herod and Religion- discusses Herod's dealings with the priestly elite, the significance of his reconstruction of the Temple, his treatment of brigands, and his relationships with members of the main religious parties (Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes). Finally, chapter 12 brings the story of the Herodian into the Christian period. What emerges from Richardson's narrative review of the events of Herod's life and his discussion of more general topics is a portrait of that is considerably richer and more generous than the standard one. The book makes an especially important contribution to the understanding of Herod's religious convictions, broadly conceived. …

The Birth of Literal Algebra

1. MATHEMATICS IN THE FIRST CENTURIES AD. DIOPHANTUS. The Babylonians developed a kind of numerical algebra. Then came Greek geometric algebra. The third-very important-stage of the development of algebra began in the first centuries AD and came to an end at the turn of the 17th century. Its beginning was marked by the introduction of literal symbolism by Diophantus of Alexandria and its end, by the creation of literal calculus in the works of Viete and Descartes. It was then that algebra acquired its own distinctive language, which we use today. The first century BC was a period of Roman conquests and of Roman civil wars. Both took place in the territories of the Hellenistic states and the Roman provinces and were accompanied by physical and economic devastation. One after another, these states lost their independence. The last to fall was Egypt (30 BC). The horrors of war and the loss of faith in a secure tomorrow promoted the spread of religious and mystical teachings and undermined interest in the exact sciences, and in abstract problems in mathematics and astronomy. In Cicero's dialogue On the state one of the participants proposes a discussion of why two Suns were seen in the sky. But the topic is rejected, for even if we acquired profound insight into this matter, we would not become better or happier. In the second half of the first century BC mathematical investigations came to a virtual halt and there was an interruption in the transmission of the scientific tradition. At the beginning of the new era, economic conditions in the Hellenistic countries, now turned Roman provinces, gradually improved, and there was a revival of literature, art, and science. In fact, the 2nd century came to be known as the Greek Renaissance. It was the age of writers such as Plutarch and Lucian and of scholars such as Claudius Ptolemy. Alexandria continued its role as the cultural and scientific center of antiquity and, in this respect, Rome was never its rival. Nor did it ever develop an interest in the depths of Hellenistic science. As noted by Cicero in his Tusculanae disputationes, the Romans, unlike the Greeks, did not appreciate geometry; just as in the case of arithmetic, they stopped at narrow, practical knowledge of this subject.