Roman Culture Research Articles

Religious Moderation in Constantinople in the Resolution of Political Conflicts in the 14th Century

The Islamic conquest of Constantinople in the 14th century is a captivating historical episode in history that continues to intrigue historians. It stands out due to the involvement of two major world religions - Islam and Christianity. Furthermore, this conquest marked the end of the Roman civilization. One notable aspect of this conquest was the harmonious relationship between Muslims and Christians, which persisted before and after the event. This study aims to explore the implementation of religious moderation in Constantinople to resolve political conflicts. Adopting a historical methodology, the research collects data through extensive documentation and literature studies, employing a socio-political approach. The findings highlight that religious moderation played a crucial role in conflict resolution during the 14th century in Constantinople. The concept of religious moderation was not only applied before the conquest, but also after it. Before the conquest, the value of moderation was demonstrated through peaceful negotiations between the Islamic kingdom and the Catholic prelate in Rome. Several treaties were agreed upon, emphasizing the importance of faith and peaceful dialogue over resorting to military confrontation. Following the conquest, Sultan Muhammad al-Fatih exemplified religious moderation by engaging in negotiations with the inhabitants of Hagia Sophia. They agreed an agreement allowing Christians to continue practicing their faith despite being under Islamic rule. Additionally, al-Fatih displayed respectful treatment towards the prelate and Christian warlords, further exemplifying the value of moderation. The findings of this study shed light on the significance of religious moderation in resolving conflicts and offer a fascinating insight into the history of Constantinople during this period

Jews in Republican Rome: The literary sources

There is considerable literary evidence that gives us some insight into the Jewish culture in the city of Rome from different perspectives after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. Yet, there are few primary accounts of Jews in the city of Rome during the 1st century BCE. In this article it is argued that there was already a significant Jewish population in Rome during the middle of the 1st century BCE and it already had a noted influence on daily life in the capital city. In the wake of the Roman Republic’s imperialistic successes, the city saw an influx of foreign peoples and cultures, including Jews, and they were mentioned in the literature of the time. The little that was written about Jews during this time pertain to those aspects of their culture and religion that appeared peculiar to the Romans, especially in the so-called higher genres of philosophical treatises or history. Yet, we also have texts describing everyday live in Republican Rome – lyric and elegiac poetry. These, too, feature references to Jewish culture. Although Roman poetry is never explicitly interested in Jews or Jewish people, it did paint a picture of Rome at street-level, so to speak, through the eyes of a literate citizen and this picture sometimes included Jews. In this article this type of evidence available to us will be reconsidered to fill in the gap in our historical knowledge.Contribution: This article presents an interpretation of Jews and Jewish practices mentioned during the 1st century BCE in Roman poetry. The poetry of Tibullus, Horace and Ovid, written from a Roman perspective, have been contextualised in their literary traditions and informed by the established philosophical opinions of the time from Cicero, Varro and Lucretius. The result is a useful discussion of how extensive and how reliable these sources are for the understanding of Jewish culture in Rome during the 1st century BCE.

Exploring Digital Means to Engage Visitors with Roman Culture: Virtual Reality vs. Tangible Interaction

To effectively communicate the archaeological remains of the distant past is a challenge: Little may be left to see, and the culture may be very different to comprehend. This article compares two technological approaches to communicating Roman archaeology in museums: virtual reality and tangible interaction. Although very different in rationale, design, and implementation, the two explorative studies have the same aim of engaging visitors with important exhibits. The challenge is to effectively communicate the exhibit's original and cultural context. In “Views of the Past,” virtual reality was used to support an environmental narrative experience where fragments of history are found scattered in the 3D reconstructed forum of Augustus in Rome. In “My Roman Pantheon,” a tangible interactive installation, visitors act as Romans living along Hadrian's Wall making offerings to the deities of the Roman pantheon to secure their protection. In both explorative studies the combination of the features (virtual reality + narratives, tangible + acting) make visitors feel “cultural presence,” where the perception of a place is combined with the awareness of the culture and an understanding of the past. Although they work on very different sensorial reaction (sight for virtual reality, touch for tangible interaction), both are promising mechanisms to design effective visitors’ experiences for challenging cultural heritage settings.

An Analysis of the Multiple Meanings of Art during the Renaissance

During the Renaissance, the revival of ancient Roman culture was of great practical significance. The Renaissance was a cultural movement that emphasized humanism, the revival of classical culture, and artistic innovation, seeking to transcend the Dark Ages of the Middle Ages and restore the glory of ancient culture and art. By re-learning and borrowing from ancient Roman culture, Renaissance artists attempted to re-explore the natural, religious, political, and social issues of mankind through the aesthetic expression and social function of art. This paper analyses the practical significance of reviving ancient Roman culture through the study of the background of the Renaissance era. Taking Leonardo da Vinci's work "Mona Lisa" as an example, starting from the painting technique of "Mona Lisa", explores the artist's understanding and expression of art, as well as the meaning behind the artwork. The purpose of this paper is to explore the aesthetic expression as well as the social function of "art" during the Renaissance, using "art" as a clue. And finally, conclude that Renaissance art had a profound influence on the development of later generations and became an important milestone in the history of Western art.

INFLUENCE OF CULTURAL TOURISM IN THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL GROWTH IN LEBANON

Lebanon enjoys a geographical location, a rich, and distinctive cultural history, attracting tourists from different regions around the world. Lebanon’s cultural heritage is reflected in the archaeological sites that reflect the Phoenician, Greek, and Roman civilizations, among others. Lebanon has an ancient history that left its mark on its culture, and cultural tourism in Lebanon can help it rise from the economic and social crises that it has suffered from since the fall of 2019. Cultural tourism is an important product in the international tourism market, it is a tourist activity that allows the visitor to learn and discover cultural aspects material and non-material including arts and architecture historical and cultural heritage food heritage literature, and music industries festivals, and museums, and exhibitions and national parks and wildlife reserves and religious places and temples and churches. Cultural tourism contributes to enhancing the identities of communities, enhancing communication between cultures, preserving the heritage and culture of the region, as well as contributing to the development of multiple economic sectors, such as agriculture,handicrafts, and creative industries, and leads to diversifying the local economy and reducing its dependence on other sources of income. This research paper aims to answer the following question: How can cultural tourism contribute to the economic and social recovery of Lebanon? By answering this question, this paperwill delve into researching the solutions that the Lebanese state must take to enhance cultural tourism in Lebanon

Mithras exhibited. Perspectives of sensory museology in Mithraic contexts

The material evidence of the Roman cult of Mithras is one of the most visible and best-preserved heritage of Roman religion from the period of the 2nd- 4th century AD. There are several in situ and reconstructed mithraea in European archaeological parks and museums, where the memory of the cult and its worshippers are evoked. The paper examines some of the most well-known case studies of the Mithraic sanctuaries, focusing on in situ archaeological sites, reconstructed mithraea and museal spaces from Romania, where new, sensorial methods can be used.

BYRONISM AND GEORGESANDISM IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY AS SOCIOCULTURAL MYTHS OF ROMANTICISM: A TYPOLOGY OF DISTINCTIVITY

: The article analyzes the features of Byronism and Georgesandism as sociocultural myths that arose in the post-revolutionary era and embodied the totality of socio-aesthetic gender representations. On the basis of the historical-typological approach, taking into account the trends of modern comparative studies, the origins of the gender opposition of male and female — the Hero and the Heroine — are regarded in the poetics of personified myths — Byronism and Georgesandism, which acquired an all-European scale in European culture of the first half of the 19th century. At the Enlightenment stage of mastering the specifics of the intimate and the public, the development of the ideas of civil society, the destruction of the paradigms of mental and universal laws of aesthetics, in public life and literature of the 18th century there was an increase in the gender consciousness of society. In the article it is correlated with the French tradition — the sentimentalist novel by J.-J. Rousseau Julia, or the new Eloise and the romantic concepts of the hero and the heroine in the works of Germain de Stael, where the conflict, antithesis, dichotomy of the feminine and the masculine began to be artistically meaningful from the standpoint of social and psychological egalitarianism. It is proved that Byronism and Georgesandism were complementary and oppositional to each other as socio-aesthetic currents, systems, paradigms, myths, in which variously interpreted skepticism and the individualistic concept of the Hero, the poet, are opposed to optimism and utopia, the feminine myth of the Heroine — in the works and biography of George Sand. The gender originality of typologically related romantic value ideas is considered: aspiration for the absolute, spiritual maximalism with a clear priority of the male myth in the image of Byron and his work — and the female, socialistically marked in George Sand. Biographical and biographically related material, the work of each in the first half of the century formed the basis of sociocultural and romantic symbolizations that characterize and form the gender specificity of the text of romantic culture.

Ceauşescu, Barthes and a Few Boring Hippies: May and August 1968 in Romania

ABSTRACT This article offers an overview of the Romanian echoes of the French social turbulence of May 68. It also explains the conservatism of Romanian cultural and political institutions at that moment. The article addresses the question of why Nicolae Ceaușescu’s nationalist communist regime prevented Romanian May 68 upheavals from taking place. It argues that the events of May 1968 cannot be separated from August 1968 (the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia) and from the two previous decades of Soviet control over Romanian culture. In such a context, nationalism was perceived as an emancipation compared to the previous Stalinist era, and any favourable echo of the French 1968 social movements would have challenged it. The article argues that the view of Romania’s 1968 that emerges in periodicals challenges the perspective that May 68 represented youthful revolt against capitalist systems. Instead, a more nuanced picture is required, one that is specific to Romania at that time.

Rome Awards: Maria Mancini and the development of female equestrian culture in Rome, 1661–72

Rome Awards: Maria Mancini and the development of female equestrian culture in Rome, 1661–72

It Seemed Like Such a Good Idea at the Time … - Expected and Unexpected Consequences when Athens & Other Major Greek City States Leveraged Philip V to Draw Rome into the Eastern Mediterranean

The grand theme of the "liberation of Greece" is peculiar in the second and first centuries B.C. by being proclaimed more often by outsiders than by Greeks, and far more often by outsiders than by Athenians. The Athens that ultimately became wholly Roman after the disastrous hostage crisis provoked by Mithridatic forces on the Acropolis in the 80's started down that road by joining with a few other Greek city states to call in Roman aid against Philip V of Macedon in the 190's, and did so, arguably, believing it could leverage a projection of force by a war-weary Roman Republic to make itself again political master of the Greek mainland. To attract Roman aid against the raids of Philip V's Macedon, Athens and its allies had to make both a case that Macedon posed a genuine threat to the eastern Mediterranean (and to Rome, in the aftermath of its war against Hannibal, and Philip's apparent offer to support that war), and the case that it was a key strategic asset for Rome not only in defeating Philip, but also for stabilizing Greece. To play this hand effectively, Athens not only mobilized its legendary propaganda skills, but also worked public feeling hard in its own streets to make Rome feel welcome, and to make Roman intervention feel natural and attractive at home. By playing this hand, Athens also provoked reprisals from Philip, the damage to Athens' physical heritage foreshadowing more extreme destruction a century later when the city would be caught between the insurgents of Mithridates and the renegade Roman forces of Sulla. The Athenian public became, as a result, even more ready to 'be Roman.' At the time, the intent of Athenian politicians to create a specially protected micro-empire for the city on the Greek mainland appeared achievable, but the Roman response, as so often, moved in unexpected directions, and pulled Athens inexorably into the future empire of Rome. Athens’ secondary intention: to become the default educator of the whole ruling culture in Rome’s next generations (it believed it was reaching this goal with the Hellenistic east) would require secondary tactics – including a demonstration using a staged lawsuit in Rome. This study intends to examine the earliest stages of the piecemeal, and only partially intentional, first step of Romanizing in Athens – I addressed a later stage in my study of the Mithridatic hostage crisis on the Acropolis.

Roman Civil Jurisdiction, Nezikin, and Rabbinic Professionalization in the Second Century: A Response to Yair Furstenberg

Abstract Yair Furstenberg’s article in this issue, “The Rabbinic Movement from Pharisees to Provincial Jurists” (DOI: 10.1163/15700631-bja10070), ties what he sees as the changing boundaries of torah law at the hands of the Tannaim to changes in the legal landscape of the eastern provinces of the Roman empire in the second century. This brief essay is a response to the article, musing on its implications and raising questions for future research.

Ovid, ‘Metamorphoses’ 5,254–6,2, and the Terms for the Muses in Greek and Roman Culture

Epithets used to describe the Muses are an essential component of metapoetic language, starting as early as the time of Homer and Hesiod. However, it has never been a static phenomenon, as the cultural transformations entailed the changes in the language describing the Muses. Its scope included physical appearance, ancestry, voice/sound, relations with the poet/musician and – a rather important aspect – geographical associations. Revealing traces of this imagery is not an easy task: we lack cult hymns, and in most literary works, we encounter merely 2–3 epithets at the most. In this respect, Ovid is exceptional. In his Metamorphoses (5,254–6,2), in the story of the contest between the Muses of Helicon and the false Pierides, the poet deploys a uniquely rich descriptive terminology concerning the Muses (Mnemonides, Thespiades, Aonides, Emathides, [Pierides], doctae sorores, etc.). In this article, I look at the poet’s choices in this story and analyze the origins, functions and connotations of the epithets and terms he uses.

Trojański palimpsest. Odniesienia intertekstualne w zakończeniu III księgi „Dziejów” Tacyta

The Trojan War or, more precisely, the sacking of Troy, plays an important role in the Roman cultural imagination and the crucial text dealing with these events, Vergil’s Aeneid II, has been used by various authors in various literary genres in order to build associations between their own subject matter and the fates of Priam, Hecuba, Aeneas etc. Thus, for example, the death of Agamemnon in Seneca’s tragedy of the same title bears a similarity to the death of Priam in the Aeneid; the two narratives are examined in the first part of the paper. In the main part of the paper, we move from Seneca to Tacitus; here, after a brief consideration of a passage from the account of the death of Galba (Hist. I 41, 3), there is a detailed discussion of one chapter from the end of Book III of the Histories (84). The chapter describes the Vitellian soldiers’ last stand against the Flavian army in Rome on December 20, AD 69 and Emperor Vitellius’ pathetic demise. The paper’s particular focus is on intertextual references which, so it seems, are introduced by Tacitus into his narrative to make his account of the last stage of the Roman Civil War of AD 68/69 more graphic and memorable; importantly, most of these references evoke the Trojan War and its aftermath. In particular, the following passages are analysed: (1) Tac. Hist. III 84, 2 ~ Verg. Aen. II 501–502; (2) Tac. Hist. III 84, 3 ~ Sall. Cat. 52, 3 + Eur. Hec. 568–570 (cf. Ov. Met. XIII 879–880; Fast. II 833–834); (3) Tac. Hist. III 84, 4 ~ Verg. Aen. II 755; (4) Tac. Hist. III 84, 5 ~ Verg. Aen. II 57–59.

Sisyphus and Wu Gang─Probing into Humanity and Divinity in Ancient Greece and China’s Legends

This article starts with "Sisyphus" and "Wu Gang" in Greek Roman mythology and Chinese mythology, and analyzes the humanistic deity in the two traditional cultures. Firstly, a brief introduction and comparison were made between the two legends, showcasing the different characteristics of humanistic divinity. Among them, Greek mythology emphasizes the value of human beings, while Chinese divinity emphasizes the harmonious coexistence and moral nature of human beings and nature. People's attention and belief in the two gods also reflect two different value orientations. Finally, this paper makes a cross-cultural analysis of the humanistic deities of the two traditional cultures, points out the different value orientations of collectivism in Chinese traditional culture and Humanism in Greek and Roman culture, and emphasizes the importance and value of both in world culture. This article is an in-depth analysis of the differences between Western and Eastern culture, which will help deepen the cultural differences and value orientations of the two traditional cultures.

A Writer Through Proletarian Bulgaria

Abstract The paper focuses on A. E. Bakonski’s “Itinerar bulgar”, a book that offers an insight of the proletkult literary movement in Romanian culture, as well as on the years following the 2nd World War.

On (Not) Reading Inscribed Objects in Latin Comedy

Abstract: This paper examines the performance dynamics of onstage texts in Plautus’ comedies and, in the process, argues that an audience-level viewpoint is essential to understanding Latin stage comedy. Examples of rare epigraphic texts are compared with the more common motif of in-play “perishable texts.” The perishable type were performed by actors as though verbatim and transmit novel information to the audience. In contrast, epigraphic texts are paraphrased and so require specific knowledge. Each kind of text thus does different dramatic work, and the difference originates in the different material “entanglements” of each medium in the lives of ancient Italians. As such, Plautus’ audiences understood comic theater through its extra-textual elements as much as through “the text” as we have it. To understand Roman comedy, scholars must also account for how ancient objects were entangled in Roman culture.

Medieval Manuscripts at Loyola University Chicago

Abstract: This article provides a summary overview of the collection of pre-1600 western European manuscripts in Loyola University Chicago Archives & Special Collections. The collection presently comprises four manuscript codices, at least thirty-eight fragments, and four documents. The codices are a thirteenth-century book of hours from German-speaking lands; a fifteenth-century Dutch prayer book; a preacher's compilation written probably in southern Germany in the 1440s; and two fifteenth-century Italian humanist booklets, bound together since the nineteenth century, transmitting Donatus's commentary on the Eunuchus (incomplete) and an anthology of theological excerpts, respectively. The fragments consist of thirteen leaves from books dismembered by modern booksellers (most are from fifteenth-century books of hours) and a larger number of binding fragments, all but two of which remain in situ. These represent the remains of ten manuscript books: four Latin liturgical books, two texts of Roman civil law, one large-format thirteenth-century Italian Bible, one thirteenth-century copy of Ptolemy's Almagest in the translation of Gerard of Cremona, one late fourteenth-century copy of the Ockhamist Tractatus de principiis theologiae , and one fifteenth-century Dutch book of hours in the translation of Geert Grote. Many of these materials have remained unidentified until now.

Asociația Națională Arădeană pentru Cultura Poporului, parte a societății civile românești din Monarhia Habsburgică (1863-1918)

Within the national cultural and institutional system, the regional cultural associations played a special role: Association for the Culture of the Romanian People from Maramureş (Sighet, February 5, 1861); the Transylvanian Association for Romanian Literature and Culture of the Romanian (ASTRA), founded at Sibiu, on October 23–26/November 4–7, 1861; the Arad National Association for the Culture of the Romanian People (Arad, April 30/May 12, 1863). Due to their regional character, they accelerated the cultural activity on a relatively extended geographical area, also favoring in time the access of village communities to culture act. At the same time, due to the concentration of the political and intellectual elite of all Romanians under foreign domination, they supported and launched extremely fruitful activities for the affirmation of the Romanian national identity. The foundation of regional associations (especially those in Sibiu and Arad, important illuminist, cultural and political centers), embodied the needs of the Romanian elite for developing, in an adequate framework, a major culture, corresponding to the one developed by the scientific institutions of other peoples. Taking into account their purposes and concerns, as well as their organization, the ASTRA and, partially, the Arad National Association, resembled the scientific, academic societies. From another point of view, the foundation of regional associations contributes to the process of institutionalizing Transylvania Romanian culture, on a national basis, which anticipated the expansion of the elements constituting national awareness towards the greater social categories. This process became more and more visible at the middle of the 19th Century, reflecting the dissemination of Romanticism in the local public interest, as well as in that of the whole South-eastern Europe. Regional associations brought to their program diverse cultural objectives, in the Romanticist direction, which amplified the forms of manifesting national sentiment and contributed to the affirmation of Romanian solidarity in general.

Dimitrie Onciul (1856-1923)

Dimitrie Onciul was born in 1856 in Straja, in the present day county of Suceava. He attended the Orthodox primary school, the high school and the university (specializing in history and geography) in Chernivtsi. In Vienna he attended the Faculty of Philosophy, specializing in Latin epigraphy, diplomatic, palaeography and sigillography. In 1884, he obtained his PhD in history at the University of Chernivtsi. Since 1885, he has been a secondary professor of history and geography in Chernivtsi. In 1895, Onciu decided to leave Bukovina and go to Romania, the decision being made following the conflict with the school inspector Carl Tumlirz. In Bucharest he knew the full consecration of his activity: He became the holder of the Chair of Old History of Romanians until the End of the 17th Century of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Bucharest (1896–1923) and then dean of this faculty (1919–1923). Since 1900 he has been the director general of the archives, being involved in the organization on a modern basis of this institution, following the model of those from other European centres. As president of the Commission of Historical Monuments (1919) he inaugurated medieval archaeological research, and in 1922 he founded the Heraldic Consultative Commission, of which he was the first president. Dimitrie Onciu’s scientific activity was rewarded by his election, first as a corresponding member (1889) and then as a titular member of the Romanian Academy (1905). He was vice-president (1913–1916) and president (1920–1923) of the Academy, and president of the historical department of the Romanian Academy (1911–1914, 1919–1922). Dimitrie Onciul focused his research mainly on two major themes: ethnogenesis and Romanian continuity in the Carpathian-Danubian-Pontic space and and the way of formation of the Romanian principalities as independent states. Based on the thorough study of historical sources, Dimitrie Onciu’s studies have been pioneering future research. Dimitrie Onciul did not draw up an edition of his writings, most of them, except for a few studies that were printed in the form of extracts, being published in the press of the time. Over time, several editions of the writings of the Bukovinian historian appeared. He was a member or president of cultural societies (“Arboroasa”, “Junimea”, “România Jună”, the Society for Romanian Culture and Literature in Bukovina, “The Romanian School”, the National Orthodox Society of Romanian Women, the League for Cultural Unity of All Romanians), He contributed, through public conferences and university lectures, to the spiritual training of the Great Union generation, being confident in the triumph of the national cause. On March 20, 1923, suffering of a disease he had since childhood, Dimitrie Onciu passed away. He was buried in the Horecea Central Cemetery, in Chernivtsi. He remained in the memory of posterity as a tireless researcher of the history, being considered the one who introduced the concept of „critique” in the Romanian historiography. Along with other great personalities, such as Ioan Bogdan, A. D. Xenopol, Nicolae Iorga or Vasile Pârvan, he made valuable contributions to the progress of Romanian historical science.

I. G. Sbiera și Prima Adunare Poporală din 11/23 iunie 1870

In 1870, I. G. Sbiera, as a professor at the Gymnasium in Chernivtsi, was part of the Bukovinian elite made up of priests, public officials, professors, and theologians, who served to defend the interests of the church and fought for church autonomy. The scholar participated in the First Peopleʼs Assembly for the autonomy of the Orthodox Church in Bukovina held on June 11/23, 1870, in Chernivtsi, together with Gheorghe Hurmuzachi, Artemie Berariu-Ieremievici, Ion Litviniuc, Nicolae Vasilco, Gheorghe Piotrovschi, Grigore Vorobchievici, Ion Mandașevschi, and other prominent personalities from Bukovina. In his speech, I. G. Sbiera presented the history of the church life in Bukovina, spoke about the churchʼs assets and their management in relation to encountered issues, for the immediate benefit of the religious institution and society, as well as the establishment of the Religious Fund. In the same year, Sbiera took care of printing the brochure First Peopleʼs Assembly for the Autonomy of the Orthodox Church in Bukovina, published in Chernivtsi under the auspices of the Society for Romanian Culture and Literature in Bukovina.