Roman Elite Research Articles

Life and Death of Singles in Dutch Cities, 1850-1940

Our study entails a quantitative analysis of the life courses of permanent celibates in Dutch cities. We make use of a large database with randomly selected life courses (Historical Sample of the Netherlands), which covers the entire country in the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. The database allows us to look at the family backgrounds, households, and mortality of urban singles. Singles were characterized by a prolonged stay in the parental house, which was related to the survival of both parents. Becoming single was more likely in Roman Catholic and elite families. In cities, skewed marriage markets contributed to women remaining unmarried. However, the well-known concentration of lifelong spinsters in cities was mainly caused by the clustering of social groups in which female celibacy was more common than in others, as well as by sex-specific migration to cities. Although they lived with their parents well past adolescence, in later life, urban celibate men and women did not depend on family. Women lived in a same-sex household more often than men. In old age, most celibates lived by themselves, but their “solitude” did not necessarily imply they were doing worse than others; at least, it was not reflected in higher mortality rates.

Latin Literature

Latin Literature

Tacitus' Dialogus de Oratoribus : A Roman Elite's View of the Past and the Present in the Debate on the Decline of Oratory

Tacitus' Dialogus de Oratoribus : A Roman Elite's View of the Past and the Present in the Debate on the Decline of Oratory

Biografistyczne doświadczenia starożytników (na marginesie konferencji „Marek Antoniuszhistoria i tradycja”, Lublin 08-09.12.2014r.)

The aim of the article is to present some reflections on the place, condition, role and importancy of biography in Polish research on Antiquity. The theoretical approach is based on a confrontation of the achievements of the modern biographies of eminent persons of the ancient world with the latest trends in biography writing. Such a verification proved that “ancient” biographies can be seen as a part of the wider trends within the modern biography writing. The only novelty is a collective biography – collective, that is created by a number of authors (that guarantees interdisciplinary and versatile interpretation), and collective, that is dealing with a collective hero (e. g. Roman elites).

Sending a boy to do a man’s job: Hegemonic masculinity and the ‘boy’ Jesus in the <i>Infancy Gospel of Thomas</i>

SStudies of masculinity have shown that masculinity is a socially acknowledged gender status. Rather than automatically attaining such a status simply through physical maturation, boys must ‘earn’ such status by matching the social conventions associated with masculinity. Boys earn such status through ‘doing gender’, that is, acting in ways that are assessed by others as meeting gendered norms. Failure to meet these norms can result in suggestions that boys are unmanly. For elite Romans, masculinity was attained through the domination of others, including spouse, children and enemies. Though Jesus is presented as a child in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, his actions lend themselves to interpretation in terms of expectations for elite Roman males. In this text, Jesus is described as behaving in ways normally associated with hegemonic masculinity in the Roman world. He is able to defeat opponents in violent ways through the power of his word, he is able to teach his teachers, and he is able to provide for his family. Throughout the text, Jesus is described more in terms of an adult male than a child.

Faustina I and II: Imperial Women of the Golden Age by Barbara K. Levick

246 BOOK REVIEWS * * * * * FaustinaIandII:ImperialWomenoftheGoldenAge. ByBARBARAK.LEVICK.Oxford WomeninAntiquity.OxfordandNewYork:OxfordUniversityPress,Date.Pp.xi + 248. Hardcover, $65.00. ISBN 978-0-19-537941-9. ThetwoFaustinaswerethemostprominentwomenoftheRomanEmpireforthe forty years of the combined reigns of their husbands, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. In her Introduction,Levick outlinesthe methodologyshe will use in the absenceofdefinite,reliablebiographicalinformation:shewillsituatetheFaustinas in the context of women in Roman history, as links between powerful, prominent families, and in a few occasions, as interveners in events. Levick will also contrast theFaustinaswiththeir predecessors,includingthetransgressiveimperialwomen such as Agrippina the Younger and with modest and discreet imperial wives such as the Matidiae. The many survivingcoins, statues,and inscriptionsenable Levick toelicitinsightintotheempresses’publicstatusaroundtheempireandtheirmodelingofconjugal Concordia. In Chapter 1 (“Sources”) Levick admits that we do not have much definite information on the Faustinas, such astheir datesofbirth and death. Levick points out that we have no second century biographers of either the Faustinas or their husbands (which might give some information on the two women) and only one historian,Dio,while theHistoriaAugustahasitsownproblemsasa reliable source. Chapter 2 (“The Empresses and Women’s Power”) discusses what is meant by“women’s‘power’”in theimperialcontext. The Faustinasare likelytohavehad no more education than other elite women, and like them were subject to their husbands. Theydid, however,have wealth,which theycould manage themselves, and the influence that wealth, and marriage to an emperor, brought. One of the more interesting sections in this chapter is Levick’s analysis of what qualified a woman to be an empress, or rather the wife of a man that could be selected as an emperor’s successor. While Levick analyzes the empresses’ dependency upon theirhusbandsandtheirvulnerability,shealsoemphasizestheirabilitytoactindependentlyoftheir husbandsand the distinctionsand public honorstheymight be awarded (e.g. “Augusta”), including, in the case of Faustina II, “the right to coin”, though itis unclearwhat thatrightmighthave meant. How Faustina I and her husband came to be the imperial couple Levick reviews in Chapter 3 (“The Succession to Hadrian”), which focuses primarily upon BOOK REVIEWS 247 Antoninus Pius and Hadrian’s succession plans and sets the scene for the next chapter. Chapter 4 (“The Faustinas as Empresses, 138–175”) discusses whether thenewtitles“Pius,Pia”giventoAntoninusandFaustinaIareindicativeofatrend to monarchy, and how the Faustinas functioned as advisors to their men and, in the case of Faustina II, what role she played in marrying her daughter Lucilla to AugustusL.Verus. Levickcoversthescandals,politicalinterference,andthemany adulteries attributed to Faustina II, and the “mystery” behind her sudden death at age forty-five. One important aspectof Antonine imperial life and politics was their theatricality , which Levick points out was “a vital part of the imperial family’s public face anditsconstructionasadurabledynasty”,andthusChapter5(“PublicandPrivate in the Dynasty”) takesup how the two women were presented as modelsand ideals for Roman society. Levick reviews the changing portraits of the empresses, their various public activities and public progresses, before taking up the question how the two women helped Pius create whathe hoped would be a stable dynasty. She reviews the information on the “Faustinian Girls”, the private (including sexual ) lives of the emperors and their wives, and the numerous progeny of Faustina II and the questionsoftheir birth order. Chapter6(“TheDeifiedFaustinas:Association,Assimilation,andConsecration ”)contraststhemwiththeirdefiedpredecessorsandsurveystheirassimilation to various deities and the ceremony of their consecration. Levick, however, focuses only on how the Greek east handled their divinization; it would be useful if shehaddonethesamewiththeLatinwesttodeterminewhat,ifany,differencesin reception there were between the two cultural halves of the empire. The final chapter, “Faustina’s Children and the End of the Antonines”, reviews how CommoduscametopowerandwhathappenedtohissistersLucilla ,Fadilla,Cornificia, andVibia,and(ratheroddlyinmymind,butnonethelessofsomeinterest)towhat extent the name Faustinus/Faustina survived among the Roman elite, later saints, and into later times. Levick helpfully provides a “Who’s Who” of the multitude of names mentioned in the chapters; stemmata of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, the Annii and Ummidii Quadrati, and Ceionii and L. Verus; and a chronology beginning with Augustus ’ reign and ending with the reign of Philip the Arabian. In addition to the Notesthereisa PersonsIndex (verymuch needed asa separateindex givenall the names mentioned) and a detailed SubjectIndex. 248 BOOK REVIEWS Levicksucceedsindemonstratingthat,despiteomissionsandthestereotypes of gender in our sources, it is possible to delineate in broad terms the significance of these two women in imperial politics and life. Unfortunately she does not discusshow theyaffectedorcomplicatedtheroleofempressfor their successor,Julia Domna,which isa...

Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity by Lauren Caldwell

196 PHOENIX verbal reuse does not necessarily have to go back to the original context in the imitated text. Taking examples from Paulinus and Claudian, Pelttari concludes that they are not competing with Vergil in the same way as earlier poets did, nor in the same ways as Vergil himself engaged in aemulatio with his models. All of this adds up to a strikingly bold and original contribution to debates about the nature of late antique intertextuality and indeed to the larger question of the history of Latin poetic intertextuality . I am not sure that I am convinced by all of what Pelttari has to say. It is most surprising to see no reference whatsoever to G. N. Knauer’s fundamental work on Vergil and Homer, still by far the best study of an intertextual relationship involving a Latin poet.3 Nor am I convinced that Pelttari’s take on nonreferential allusion does justice to some of the things I see going on in the text of Claudian, for example, whose techniques seem to me to be closer to those of Vergil, Ovid, and Lucan than Pelttari allows. This book will clearly provoke discussion and disagreement, but one of its achievements is to have shown just how much work still needs to be done on the intertextual practices of the still underestimated poets of late antiquity. Pelttari deserves our admiration and our thanks for a difficult job well done. University of Geneva Damien Nelis Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity. By Lauren Caldwell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2015. Pp. vi, 188. Regrettably we have comparatively little information on elite Roman girlhood, the focus of Caldwell’s study. By carefully surveying an extensive range of sources (including medical texts, controversiae, and juristic commentaries, as well as, to some extent, visual evidence), Caldwell reconstructs the circumscribed life that formed the background of the educated, often very wealthy, and somewhat autonomous matrona of elite Roman society. This book should be widely read by scholars and undergraduates in classical and gender studies. In her Introduction, Caldwell positions this volume as distinct from earlier investigations , which discuss the unmarried elite girl either as part of “a broader topic such as women’s education, women’s health, marriage, or the demarcation of various life-states” or in terms of the marriage ritual and bridal costume (8). Caldwell clarifies that she will “concentrate mainly on girlhood among the families who were the focus of the Augustan legislation” (6), because it is for these girls that we have the most evidence and they were the ones who were most affected by the pattern of early marriage in their early to mid-teens. Subsequent chapters explore various concerns, including “fertility, sexual purity, modesty, education, dowry, and politics” (7), that underlay this pattern and informed Roman social and legal institutions. Though Caldwell cautions the reader that the sources, written by men and primarily for men, present mainly the male view of girlhood, which in certain areas is not only ambiguous but also incomplete and even sketchy, she presents a nuanced picture and raises interesting questions about the aspects for which evidence is missing. In Chapter One, “Formal Education and Socialization in Virtue,” Caldwell focuses on how young girls were guided in their development and preparation for wifehood. She 3 G. N. Knauer, Die Aeneis und Homer (Göttingen 1964). BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 197 argues that girls were expected to internalize the necessity of protecting their virginity through modest behavior, but also that they were urged to be courageous in doing so through such exempla as the story of Cloelia. Caldwell points to a group of funerary reliefs and statues of young daughters of wealthy freedmen which depict the girls as a young Amazonian Diana; while these mythological figures are virginal, Caldwell introduces an additional interpretation, suggesting that, although young, the girl is configured as protecting her virtue by cultivating aggression. Caldwell also notes here that ancient attitudes to the education of girls varied: while Juvenal and other writers such as Valerius Maximus express negative judgments, many girls who died young are praised, often lavishly, for their learning in their epitaphs. Caldwell cites Pliny the Younger, who couches his...

A cracked mirror? - forming the ideal ruler in Epirus and Nicaea in the first half of the 13th century

During the first half of the 13th century both Byzantine Empire and the image of its ideal ruler had to undergo a transformation. By applying mostly the narratological analysis to the parenetic texts written in the two successor states of the Empire, the paper sheds light on the dynamic ?negotiations? within the Roman elites of the place that the Emperor should have inside the symbolic order, and suggests a possible model of approach to other Byzantine texts and periods.

Speaking as Greeks, speaking over Greeks: Orality and its problems in Roman translation

This article explores the cultural and social background of oral and textual translation in Rome to discuss the profound effects that oral forms of translation, along with oral performance, had on ancient Roman translation. It examines the significance of speaking and writing “proper” Greek among the Roman elite, the anxieties that provoked in Rome, and the reasons why Roman texts elide the help of Greeks in their translations, even though the lack of dictionaries and other aids meant that their help was necessary. It also discusses the role of orality in Cicero's translations and, in particular, in his On the Best Type of Orator, and in Pliny the Younger's and Catullus' writings on translation.

Bridging the Cultural Divide: Libanius, Ellebichus, and Letters to “Barbarian” Generals

Roman elite society was changing rapidly in the late fourth century. Increasingly, military men of foreign origin acquired positions of power. Despite differences in education and background, members of the civilian and “barbarian” military elite managed to bridge this often stark cultural divide by exchanging letters, a key practice of traditional aristocratic, status–based culture. This study focuses on the friendship of Libanius and Ellebichus, magister militum of the East, as found in the letters and orations of Libanius composed between 385 and 390. As one of the few well–documented relationships between an educated civilian and a “barbarian” general, their friendship offers insight into the broader pattern of letter exchanges between these seemingly disparate groups. Libanius clearly valued this relationship, as did Ellebichus, who requested orations from the famous rhetor. Libanius’s letters conformed to generic conventions and maintained the semblance of a shared cultural background. When the relationship broke down, Libanius could criticize his friend’s foreign origin only in an oration, not a letter. Whatever the true feelings of the correspondents, the very act of exchanging letters helped unite the Roman Empire and, in effect, carefully mitigated the differences in culture, education, and power between the civilian and “barbarian” military elite.

Fronto: selected letters

M. Cornelius Fronto was a Roman senator from North Africa, and the foremost Latin orator and legal advocate of the mid-second century A.D. Fronto’s talent and fame led to his appointment as tutor to Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, the adoptive sons of the emperor Antoninus Pius, in the late 130s A.D.Fronto’s extant correspondence, discovered in the early nineteenth century, consists of around two hundred letters extending over a period of more than twenty-five years, from the late 130s to the mid-160s A.D. In this period, Fronto educated Marcus and Verus in the art of Latin rhetoric, and watched with pride as his illustrious pupils matured and ascended the throne. The correspondence includes letters Fronto exchanged with Marcus and Verus, their father Antoninus Pius, leading senators, and other influential figures at court.This collection features new English translations and commentaries on fifty-four letters from Fronto’s correspondence. The letters have been selected for the insights they provide into the political and social history of the Roman empire in the second century A.D., with particular emphasis on court politics and intrigue, the Parthian War, and family relationships among members of the Roman elite. The letters have been arranged in approximate chronological order, enabling the reader to take a journey through Fronto’s life over a quarter of a century.The introduction discusses Fronto’s life and career, Roman letter writing, the history and character of Fronto’s correspondence, and the relationship between Fronto and Marcus Aurelius. It also includes brief biographies of key individuals and family trees. The translation of fifty-four letters with contextual editorial introductions and notes is divided into the following sections: Educating Caesar; Fronto and Herodes; Fronto the Consul; Family Affairs; Politics and Patronage; The Reign of Marcus and Verus; Fronto, Verus and the Parthian War; and Fronto’s Grief.

Book Review: Writing on the Wall: Social Media—The First 2,000 Years, by Tom Standage

Writing on the Wall: Social Media-The First 2,000 Years. Tom Standage. York: Bloomsbury, 2013. 265 pp. $26 hbk.In today's rapidly changing media world, is easy to be enamored by new technolo- gies and marvel at new platforms for sharing information. Digital natives, in particu- lar, cannot imagine life without Internet access or Facebook at their fingertips. Others decry the Internet's pervasiveness, fearing the decline of civilized society due to over- dependence on the web and social media.Tom Standage's Writing on the Wall puts social media in context. Although the media's reach is unprecedented, Standage describes its foundation as anything but new. The idea of sharing social information dates as least to Cicero, when the Roman elite used papyrus rolls and messengers as their Facebook walls or Twitter feeds, he reports.Debates over social media's impact on society, demands for its regulation, and even its ability to effect change are also rooted in tradition. Just as Plato worried that the written word would harm intellectual life, today some argue that the ability to just Google it is a dangerous crutch. Soon, critics contend, there will be no need to learn or remember much of anything.Such context makes Standage's book a fascinating read.Standage, the digital editor at The Economist, sets the stage with data on the rapid growth of social networks on the web. About 1.4 billion people were sharing informa- tion on social networks when the book was published, and the numbers continue to grow. The fascination with sharing is simply a part of human nature, Standage sug- gests. Today's Facebook users, for example, share news they think their friends will like. They comment on news from their friends. Both activities are much like those of Cicero and his pals who had scribes copy letters to send to friends outside Rome.The role of social media in the Arab Spring uprisings is well documented. But social media's role in revolutions is not all that new, as Standage's chapter on Martin Luther points out. The priest's in-your-face pamphlets were reprinted and shared among like-minded reformers, going viral in today's parlance. Although Luther may not have intended schism, the widespread sharing of his works was key to his fame and influence. New forms of media do not trigger revolutions by themselves, but they make easier for would-be revolutionaries to coordinate their action, synchronize opinion, and rally others to their cause, Standage writes. …

Les armes d’Achille : prolongement de la mémoire héroïque ?

Achilles’s weapons : a prolongation of the memory of the hero ? Achilles’ fame, archetypal hero of the Greek mythology, is closely linked to its fabulous weapons. Don of the gods, they are the keystone of the heroic identity value for the members of the Greek and Roman elite. The written sources and the figurative directory which put forward these fabulous objects, convey the transmission of the memory of a legendary past on which the Greek and Roman societies lean. The two figurative episodes of the legend which represent weapons on the paintings of Pompeii’s houses are Thetis in forges of Hephaestus and the Discovery to Scyros. This article insists on the reception and symbolism of the Achilles’s weapons, then on the role of the symbolism of the shield in the universe of Roman creation of the first century A. D.

Too Kindred by Half: Half-Siblings in Elite Families of the Mid- and Late Roman Republic

My essay examines some ancient evidence for the treatment of half-siblings, and for interactions among half-siblings, in several elite families of the mid- to late Roman Republic. I observe that our ancient Greek and Roman sources on these families at times acknowledge half-sibling relationships, and occasionally testify that parents treated their offspring from different marriages differently. But I argue that these sources make, and that elite Roman families of this era ultimately made, little distinction between half-siblings and fullsiblings. I will focus on several selected families from the second and first centuries bce, whose interpersonal interactions attract notice from a variety of ancient Greek and Roman writers. My concluding discussion will consider the limitations and strengths of this, selective and anecdotal, body of evidence, most of it much later than the events it purports to describe: for investigating halfsiblings in elite republican Roman families, as well as for illuminating “the ancient Roman family” itself. I will ponder, too, how this evidence problematizes scholarly efforts to view the ancient Roman family as typifying a larger, trans-historical Mediterranean pattern. Finally, I will reflect on how and why elite Republican Roman familial dynamics involving the treatment of half-siblings complicate our understanding of elite Roman kinship, and underscore the socially contingent nature of kinship generally.

The Faces of the Other: Religious Rivalry and Ethnic Encounters in the Later Roman World ed. by Maijastina Kahlos (review)

Reviewed by: The Faces of the Other: Religious Rivalry and Ethnic Encounters in the Later Roman Worlded. by Maijastina Kahlos David James Griffiths Kahlos, Maijastina, ed., The Faces of the Other: Religious Rivalry and Ethnic Encounters in the Later Roman World( Cursor Mundi, 10), Turnhout, Brepols, 2012; hardback; pp. viii, 324; R.R.P. €80.00; ISBN 9782503539997. The concept of ‘Othering’ is particularly useful and interesting across the late Roman period, when, as Maijastina Kahlos’s Introduction suggests, ideas of identity were themselves so mutable. Kahlos describes the process of Othering as defining ourselves in the negative. By saying our opponents are weak, for instance, we imply that we are strong, and so come to know ourselves through the contrast. But still, those who were ‘true’ can claim the rhetorical high ground by pointing at the Other, at the flaws of the outsider, and in doing so, reduce the diversity among an external group to a faceless band of homogenised barbarians, pagans, or atheists, not only unknowable but not even worth attempting to know. The late Roman world especially was one of incredible political and cultural flux and Kahlos highlights the ways in which the flexibility of Othering was itself key to its success – it did not really matter who ‘us’ were, as long as ‘us’ was not like ‘them’. Each paper in the collection is fairly meaty: the shortest are just under twenty pages and the longest around forty. Divided into two parts, the first half of the collection considers religious difference, while the second looks [End Page 225]at ethnic. Unfortunately, the most verbose paper starts off the collection: a close reading of Paul by Anders Klostergaard Petersen, which examines Othering in ii Corinthians and only manages to produce one concrete case. Perhaps the case study approach was not as fruitful as intended and something more contextual could have been used to identify Othering in Paul and other early apostolic writings. Despite this paper, however, this is overall a very interesting collection of essays. The paper by Marika Rauhala on the Cult of Cybele and its changing depictions by Romans and Christians is a good reminder of how appeals to masculinity (the cult involved ritual castration) complicated just how ‘Roman’ its antecedence and prestige was. In this case, the Others were the castrated priests, rejected by the pagan Roman elite while their goddess was embraced. The depiction of Cybele even changed as pagan apologists sought to reaffirm the need for ritual under a growing Christian majority. Similarly, solid papers by Päivi Vähäkangas and Kahlos examine the ways in which, through rhetorical effects and binary comparisons, Christians depicted heretics and pagans as an unformed mass. It is clear that Othering occurred, even though the Christian mainstream was still undefined. It was easier to work out what they were not (‘immoral’, ‘stupid’, ‘barbarous’, ‘provincial’, etc.), although Kahlos also observes how the figure of the good Pagan could be used as a moral incentive to spur Christian adoption of moral norms. Othering could be used reflectively rather than negatively: the constructed figure of the Other invites questions as to how and why it was constructed, not whether it had any basis in reality. Anders-Christian Jacobsen’s article on ‘Images of the Other in Tertullian’ is most comprehensive, although it, like the Kahlos article, exhibits a tendency to veer into lists of examples from primary sources. What keeps both scholars focused is the clear theoretical framework from the Introduction, a framework that underpins and brings together the whole collection robustly. Turning to the second part, Antti Lampinen ably demonstrates the ways in which Gauls were constructed as a barbarous, ferocious Other, and how the same traits were then transferred to Germans. The images persisted, however, as Gaul broke into rebellion and dissent in the third century. The use of the same imagery to describe both Gauls and Germans reaffirms both the use of Othering as a purely cultural device of rhetoric and stigma – everyone outside was Other in all the same ways, the same non-Roman ways – and hints perhaps at lingering social stratification well after the integration of Gaul into the Empire proper. Benjamin Issac...

Porters, Beggars, and Noblemen: The Social Construction of Political Power in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Rome

Employing Norbert Elias’s notion of figuration and referring to models based on the relational nature of power (patron-client, entrepreneur and big-man relationships), this article highlights how the relationship between the elite and the lower classes played a crucial role in the establishment of local power in Rome. The high degree of social mobility amongst the Roman elite made the neighborhood a politically open space: an official list of the aristocracy’s members was not available until the eighteenth century, and the Statute of Rome (1580) simply defined eligible candidates for local offices as “illustrious men of the neighborhood.” In this context, strong territorial connections were key when it came to gaining local power. An interconnected network of relationships linked the lower classes and noble families vertically. Through judicial sources, notarial records, and account books, this article presents the highly personalized nature of exchanges between the elite and the lower classes in addition to the complex web of economic transactions and social relations which was essential to creating a local network of clients.

The betrayal of the satirical text

Literary scholars use various methods to undermine and reject explicit declarations of the Roman verse satire. This paper argues that not only do these scholars develop some strategies to avoid facing uncomfortable messages, but that the satirical text also offers an opportunity to subvert its own utterances. Although the dialogic nature of literature (and language in general) always offers opportunities for subversive interpretations that refuse to accept the proclaimed ideas at face value, the satirical text has a special feature, since it tends to say what it says with some ambiguity. The paper calls this the betrayal of the satirical text, which through the very act of (humorous) textualization opens the gates for opposing or subverting interpretations. The second part of the paper analyses Satires 1.7 by Horace, underscoring how various implications of the poetic discourse create opportunities to undermine the proffered ideas. A text that seems to try to stabilize Roman elite identity may lead to a retracing of the boundaries between Romans and aliens, the elite and the pariahs.

Cicero and Exile: Building a House of Letters

The identity of a Roman elite man was tied to his house. Thus when Cicero went into exile, and his Palatine property was destroyed, his identity was in danger of crumbling. The sense of loss of self is apparent in the early exilic letters: Cicero is disconsolate, particularly because of the specific loss of the house and all that it represented. Over time, however, Cicero becomes less distraught: he adopts a more distanced attitude to the area where his house once stood. This paper argues that Cicero is able to exact a change in attitude in part by constructing a surrogate place for housing his identity, and that one alternate place is in fact the letters themselves.

Roman Elite and Urban Renewal in Italy: The case of Pompeii

Esse artigo busca analisar a construção de uma identidade romana na cidade de Pompeia, a partir do processo de reformas urbanas que se realizou ali, examinando a relação entre os processos de estratificação social e a multiplicidade de ocupações que deixaram vestígios dispares no território urbano.

Dancing with decorum. The eclectic usage of kalathiskos dancers and pyrrhic dancers in Roman visual culture

This article examines two groups of motifs in Roman visual culture: females modelled on kalathiskos dancers, and males modelled on pyrrhic dancers. Eclecticism is emphasized as a strategy which was used to introduce novelties that were appropriate within a Roman cultural context. The figures representing kalathiskos dancers and pyrrhic dancers were both changed in an eclectic manner and this resulted in motifs representing the goddess Victoria, and the curetes respectively. Kalathiskos dancers and eclectic Victoriae occur on many different media at least from the Augustan era and into the 2nd century AD. It is argued here that the establishment of these two motifs in Roman visual culture is closely related to the aesthetics which came to the fore during the reign of Augustus. Thereafter, both kalathiskos dancers and eclectic Victoriae lingered on in the Roman cultural context until many of the material categories on which they were depicted ceased to be produced. Unlike the kalathiskos dancers, the male figures modelled on pyrrhic dancers are so rare within Roman visual culture that we can only assume they were, to some extent, perceived as an inappropriate motif. This can most likely be explained by the negative attitude, amongst the Roman elite, towards male dancing.