Roman Italy Research Articles

Children and childhood in Roman Italy

Introduction 1. REPRESENTATIONS PART 2. THE LIFE COURSE 2. Welcoming a New Child 3. Rearing 4. Ages and Stages 5. Education 6. Relationships 7. Public Life 8. Death, Burial, and Commemoration Chronological Guide Glossary

Bread and Circuses: Euergetism and Municipal Patronage in Roman Italy (review)

Bread and Circuses: Euergetism and Municipal Patronage in Roman Italy (review)

Rome Scholarships: The osteological evidence for animal breeds in Roman Italy

Rome Scholarships: The osteological evidence for animal breeds in Roman Italy

The Epigraphic Landscape of Roman Italy. By Alison E. Cooley. The Afterlife of Inscriptions: Reusing, Rediscovering, Reinventing and Revitalizing Ancient Inscriptions. By Alison E. Cooley.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsThe Epigraphic Landscape of Roman Italy. By Alison E. Cooley. The Afterlife of Inscriptions: Reusing, Rediscovering, Reinventing and Revitalizing Ancient Inscriptions. By Alison E. Cooley.T. Keith DixT. Keith Dix Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 107, Number 1January 2003 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Views: 2Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/AJS40026588 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright © 2003 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Greek Grammarians and Roman Society during the Early Empire: Statius' Father and his Contemporaries

Statius' Silvae 5.3 is a poem written in honor of the poet's dead father. In the course of the poem, Statius recounts his father's life and achievements. Prominent among these accomplishments are the years the elder Statius spent as a teacher of Greek poetry—a grammarian—in Naples. Statius tells us which Greek poets his father taught and to whom. The content and audience of Statius' father's instruction form the basis of this paper. A number of the Greek poets taught by Statius' father are not obvious candidates for inclusion in a course of instruction in Greek poetry. Lycophron, Corinna or Epicharmus, for instance, are not commonly found in other accounts of Greek education in Roman Italy during the early empire. The elder Statius' pedagogical activity has thus been viewed as a Neapolitan peculiarity. Yet, I argue, the same authors taught by Statius' father were the focus of grammarians who were working in Rome itself. The curriculum of Statius' father is thus representative of Greek intellectual activity in early imperial Rome. The pedagogical activity of Statius senior is relevant to Roman intellectual history in a second way. His students consisted of aristocrats from around the Bay of Naples and southern Italy. Some of these students were likely Roman. So too the students of the Greek grammarians working in Rome likely encountered young Romans. How did the study of some mainstream and some recondite Greek poets fit into the élite discourse of the early empire? I argue that knowledge of the poets taught by the elder Statius was geared towards marking off the élite from the non-élite. Students of grammarians such as Statius' father were given the tools to engage in aristocratic discourse, which constituted a claim for prestige and honor in early imperial Rome.

Deux assainissements avec amphores à Mayence (Germanie supérieure)

A large amount of intact amphorae have been found in two sites of Mainz : at Hopfengarten, the 12 vessels were of Pelichet 46 type and among the 138 amphorae at Dimesser Ort, a majority came from the Iberian Peninsula, for the transport of fish sauce and olives. Nine of them at Hopfengarten bear painted inscriptions, some being identical and suggesting they came from the same shipment. They were recovered some 150 m south-west of the Flavian port at Kappelhof. Previously the large number of complete amphorae from Dimesser Ort was interpreted as evidence for the early Roman port of Mogontiacum (Mainz) being situated here. But a renewed study of the background showed that they were part of a drainage system dating from the last third of the 1st century to the first half of the 2nd century AD. This kind of drainage, unknown further north in the Empire, was certainly imported from Roman Italy and Gaul.

M. Torelli, Tota Italia. Essays in the Cultural Formation of Roman Italy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. Pp. xv + 191, 66 pls, 70 figs. ISBN 0-19-814393-1. £65.00.

The aim of the book is to present the path the Romans followed in shaping the culture of the ruling classes of the Allies between the years of the conquest in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC and the age of Augustus, when a unified culture of Italy emerges as a pillar of imperial power. Taking an anthropological approach, Mario Torelli places special emphasis on the religious values and cult traditions that developed during the archaic period and the early attempts to colonize Latium, and which were subsequently spread by the Romans throughout Italy by means of Latin colonies. Formal temples of Latin (or, in south Italy, Greek) tradition enjoyed a special prestige among the Italic tribes and played a fundamental role in the construction of the urban ideal, one of the main principles of cultural transformation. The book also puts under scrutiny the survival of indigenous peoples in particular areas, such as Daunia and Lucania, and great attention is given to the evidence provided by such ethnic groups of resistance and counter-acculturation in Etruria, Lucania, and elsewhere in Italy.

High on the Hog: Linking Zooarchaeological, Literary, and Artistic Data for Pig Breeds in Roman Italy

High on the Hog: Linking Zooarchaeological, Literary, and Artistic Data for Pig Breeds in Roman Italy

Tota Italia: Essays in the Cultural Formation of Roman Italy. By Mario Torelli.

<i>Tota Italia: Essays in the Cultural Formation of Roman Italy</i>. By Mario Torelli.

Review Article: Socially Responsible Books on Roman ArchitectureThe Urban Image of Augustan Rome. Diane FavroRoman Architecture and Society. James C. Anderson Jr.Piscinae: Artificial Fishponds in Roman Italy. James Higginbotham

Previous articleNext article No AccessReview Article: Socially Responsible Books on Roman Architecture The Urban Image of Augustan Rome. Diane Favro Roman Architecture and Society. James C. Anderson Jr. Piscinae: Artificial Fishponds in Roman Italy. James Higginbotham Eleanor Winsor LeachEleanor Winsor Leach Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Classical Philology Volume 95, Number 1Jan., 2000 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/449474 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 2000 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Hugh Last Award: Land transport in Roman Italy

Hugh Last Award: Land transport in Roman Italy

Was Rome a Polis?

The absorption of the Greek world into the Roman empire created intellectual problems on several levels. In the first instance, Greek confidence in the superiority of Hellenic culture made explanations for the swiftness of Roman conquest all the more necessary. In accounting for Rome's success, Greeks focused on the structure and character of the Roman state, on Roman attitudes towards citizenship, and on the nature of the Roman constitution. Greeks initially attempted to understand Roman institutions and beliefs by assimilating them to paradigms within Hellenistic political thought. On the one hand, this process tended to obscure substantial differences between Greek and Roman political theory. At the same time, appreciation of Rome's relations with Italy created a means through which Greeks could imagine their own integration into the Roman community. Among the conceptual models available to Greeks of this age, only the polis provided a paradigm for a collectivity in which individuals had equal rights and toward which they directed their patriotic sentiments. That Roman Italy was not a polis did not force the coinage of new terminology: the polis formed a conceptual boundary that Hellenistic political philosophy never truly escaped. Repeated construals of Roman ideas and institutions on analogy with polis-based models ultimately forced a shift in the semantic fields of Greek political terminology and altered Greeks' conceptual archetype of the political collectivity. This process provided a framework within which Greeks could justify their wholesale participation in imperial culture and political life: they could, on these terms, argue that the gradual evolution of the world toward a single, unified empire actualized man's natural tendency to center his life around a single polis.

The Roman Family in Italy: Status, Sentiment, Space

Introduction Roman Kinship: Structure and Sentiment Legal Stumbling-Blocks for Lower-Class Families in Rome Children of Junian Latins Rome and the Outside World: Senatorial Families and the World They Lived In Sons, Slaves and Christians Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Elderly Members of the Roman Family Conflict in the Roman Family Interpreting Epithets in Roman Epitaphs The Iconography of Roman Childhood Iconography: Another Perspective Roman Familial Structures: A Regional Approach Perceptions of Domestic Space in Roman Italy Repopulating the Roman House Artefact Distribution and Spatial Function in Pompeian Houses

The Slave Population of Roman Italy. Speculation and Constraints

The Slave Population of Roman Italy. Speculation and Constraints

Tam Firmum Municipium: The Romanization of Volaterrae and its Cultural Implications

The aim of the present paper is to reassess the events connected with the Romanization of the Etruscan metropolis of Volaterrae in the light of recent archaeological findings. The results of the Cecina Valley survey and of other related fieldwork have prompted a full reconsideration of the issue: indeed, they show a very different picture when compared with some of the recent mainstream reconstructions of the making of central Roman Italy; in particular, they are in sharp contrast with what was found in other Tyrrhenian regions, such as Southern Etruria or Campania. In line with these developments, recent local work in various parts of Italy now strongly suggests the need to consider each area, almost each civitas, individually, leaving aside for the moment overarching models based on insufficient data. This appears to resonate with a wider and growing realization that the process of Romanization, all over the Empire, exhibits a very heterogeneous and dialectic character, so much so that the appropriateness of the very term has often been put in question. For this reason, Romanization will be used here only in its weakest sense, simply as a convenient term covering the events involved in the creation of a new and unified political entity, disclaiming any assumptions concerning the acculturation of non-Roman ethnic groups. What is clearly emerging is a need for a new generation of regional studies, with the aim of carefully charting the trajectory of each community towards incorporation in the Roman state and working towards the creation of far more robust and informed syntheses. The present paper strives to make a contribution in this direction.

Tam Firmum Municipium: The Romanization of Volaterrae and its Cultural Implications

The aim of the present paper is to reassess the events connected with the Romanization of the Etruscan metropolis of Volaterrae in the light of recent archaeological findings. The results of the Cecina Valley survey and of other related fieldwork have prompted a full reconsideration of the issue: indeed, they show a very different picture when compared with some of the recent mainstream reconstructions of the making of central Roman Italy; in particular, they are in sharp contrast with what was found in other Tyrrhenian regions, such as Southern Etruria or Campania. In line with these developments, recent local work in various parts of Italy now strongly suggests the need to consider each area, almost each civitas, individually, leaving aside for the moment overarching models based on insufficient data. This appears to resonate with a wider and growing realization that the process of Romanization, all over the Empire, exhibits a very heterogeneous and dialectic character, so much so that the appropriateness of the very term has often been put in question. For this reason, Romanization will be used here only in its weakest sense, simply as a convenient term covering the events involved in the creation of a new and unified political entity, disclaiming any assumptions concerning the acculturation of non-Roman ethnic groups. What is clearly emerging is a need for a new generation of regional studies, with the aim of carefully charting the trajectory of each community towards incorporation in the Roman state and working towards the creation of far more robust and informed syntheses. The present paper strives to make a contribution in this direction.

Piscinae: Artificial Fishponds in Roman Italy. By James Higginbotham.

Pisciculture--the process of raising fish--held a lasting fascination for the people of ancient Rome. Whether bred for household consumption, cultivated for sale at market, or simply kept in confinement for reasons of aesthetic appreciation, fish remained an important commodity and prominent cultural symbol throughout the periods of the Roman Republic and early Empire. Roman pisciculture reached its greatest level of sophistication, though, between the first century b.c. and the first century a.d. with the development of a highly specialized architectural element: the piscina, or artificial fishpond. Based on a thorough examination of the archaeological record and complemented by site plans, maps, and photographs, James Higginbotham's work represents the most comprehensive study of the fishponds of Roman Italy. Higginbotham covers the technical aspects of Roman fishponds--their design, construction, and operation--and places the piscinae within their social, political, and economic context. He argues that in a society fascinated by pisciculture, ownership of a fishpond was a powerful display of wealth and social status and, ultimately, a manifestation of the intense competition between aristocratic Roman families that would eventually lead to civil war. Originally published in 1997. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Urban Society in Roman Italy

Urban Society in Roman Italy

The Archaeology of Central and Southern Roman Italy: Recent Trends and Approaches

The Archaeology of Central and Southern Roman Italy: Recent Trends and Approaches

The Archaeology of Central and Southern Roman Italy: Recent Trends and Approaches

For the historian of the Roman period, the archaeology of Central and Southern Italy raises (and sometimes provides answers to) a fascinating variety of questions. The Pontine plain and the valleys of the Liri and Sacco were the areas first affected by Roman expansion beyond the Latial plain, and it was here that the Romans tested and perfected the techniques of organization and control of territory that were to be used with such success elsewhere in Italy and eventually throughout the Mediterranean: in particular, colonization, municipalization, and the transformation of the rural landscape which accompanied them. This area too saw the development of the villa system of agriculture, which came to be predominant in Central Italy during the first century B.C., and was imitated throughout the Empire; but there were also striking differences between agricultural practices in the plains and in the mountains above. This geographical diversity was paralleled by a complex cultural mix, as aspects of both Greek and Roman culture were adopted by the local populations, who themselves moved around an increasingly unified Italy with greater ease, leading to further cultural transformations.