Roman World Research Articles

Experiencing the divine? Museum presentations of religion in Roman Britain

Religious practice in the Roman world involved diverse rituals and knowledge. Scholarly studies of ancient religion increasingly emphasise the experiential aspects of these practices, highlighting multisensory and embodied approaches to material culture and the dynamic construction of religious experiences and identities. In contrast, museum displays typically frame religious material culture around its iconographic or epigraphic significance. The author analyses 23 UK museum displays to assess how religion in Roman Britain is presented and discusses how museums might use research on ‘lived ancient religion’ to offer more varied and engaging narratives of religious practices that challenge visitors’ perceptions of the period.

Caesar Rules: The Emperor in the Changing Roman World (c.50 BC–AD 565), written by Olivier Hekster

Caesar Rules: The Emperor in the Changing Roman World (c.50 BC–AD 565), written by Olivier Hekster

The costs of transporting goods by different modes: A case study of pottery movement in late Roman Britain

There is a long-standing view that, in the Roman world, transport by sea and river was very much cheaper than by land. Previous analyses of transport costs have relied primarily on a few surviving historical records, notably the Edict on Maximum Prices issued by Diocletian in 301 CE. Here we outline an alternative method for deriving relative costs of transportation by different modes using materials recovered in archaeological excavations. We apply this to the distribution of Late Romano-British pottery (c. 250–400 CE) to calculate the cost ratios of transportation by road, river and sea to rural settlements and towns in lowland Britannia. The analysis suggests a best fit cost ratio of road to rivers and sea of 1:3:4 (i.e. transport by road was three times as costly as by river and four times that by sea), with 95% confidence interval of roads to rivers 1:1–5 and roads to sea of 1:1–9. These values are broadly consistent with transport cost ratios of 1:4:8 in England in the first half of the fourteenth century, when the country's transport network had reached a degree of integration comparable with late Roman Britain.

Revisiting Gubbio: Settlement Patterns and Ritual from the Middle Palaeolithic to the Roman Era

The Gubbio Revisited project, initiated to reinterpret the archaeological evidence collected during the 1980s Gubbio Project, primarily by a conversion from a paper to a digital record, has revealed significant insights into the evolving settlement patterns and religious expression in the Gubbio valley in Central Italy. This reanalysis of the survey evidence underscores the rhythms of settlement and ritual practice from the Neolithic through the Bronze and Iron Ages, into Roman times. Key excavations in the 1980s at Monte Ingino, Monte Ansciano, San Marco Romano, and San Marco Neolitico added details not only of settlement activity but also of embedded ritual, evidenced by material culture including pottery, faunal remains, and votive offerings. The foundation myth of indigenous religious practices, even amidst Roman influence, is documented through the Iguvine Tables alongside the introduction of new cults, showcasing a blend of local and imperial religiosity, a common feature in the Roman world. This research enriches the understanding of Gubbio’s historical and cultural landscape, emphasizing the demographic rhythms of the valley alongside the integral role of ritual in its societal evolution.

“Architecture, construction system and functioning of the roman saltworks of O Areal (Vigo-Galicia-Spain). A reference in the investigation of salt production in the roman world”

These Roman saltworks are located in the city of Vigo, in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, and they were part of a large industrial complex, dedicated to the production of sauces and salted fish. To this day, they are the best-preserved solar evaporation marine saltworks evidences in the Roman world, making it possible to know the entire production cycleBased on ceramic contexts and C14 data, we have concluded a period of use around the 1st-3rd c. AD, which falls completely within what is known as the Warm Roman Period.The architecture of the salt complex is articulated through different types of ponds, of various dimensions and construction characteristics. They use different materials for their construction: stone, ceramics, silt, clay, wood or sand. Its characteristics and dimensions are in accordance with its function within the salt production cycle: decanters, evaporators and crystallizers. Other architectural elements complete the ensemble and help to understand its functioning in detail.Knowledge of the architecture, constructive techniques and morphology of these saltworks has made it possible to identify others even when excavated on small surfaces, thanks to the archaeological indicators that the study of these salt pans allows us to define.

Rings of power: a legal history of the engagement ring in early twentieth-century Australia

This article explores the gendered regulation of courtship by providing a legal history of the engagement ring across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Bringing the relationship between love, law, material culture and gender into dialogue, I use actions for breach of promise of marriage to trace the life path of the ring from the private world of romance to the moral theatre of law, examining how the ring functioned as tangible proof of contract, as a constraint on women’s sexuality, as a legitimation of their sexual identities, and as compensation for economic losses suffered in consequences of a broken engagement. Rather than a top-down analysis of how the state orders intimate life, this is a study of the vernacular life of law: of why people began imbuing rings with legal significance and how courts came to accept their reasoning.

‘Critically disruptive’ museum interpretation as a methodology for challenging popular perceptions of Roman Britain

ABSTRACT Scholarly perceptions of Roman Britain and the wider Roman world have changed significantly in recent years, increasingly exploring more nuanced understandings of lived experiences and cultural interactions. Yet, despite the influence the ancient world continues to exert on modern identities and political discourse, it is debatable to what extent these academic shifts have influenced public perceptions. Museums have a central role to play in challenging outdated presumptions of Rome as a homogenised and civilising cultural force, and this article argues for the application of ‘critically disruptive’ interpretative methodologies to achieve this ambition. Case studies of creative prose, poetry and interactivity are explored for the opportunities they offer to reinvigorate museum narratives of Roman Britain.

Italy and the East Roman World in the Medieval Mediterranean. Empires, Cities and Elites 476–1204, Papers in Honour of Thomas S. Brown. Edited by Thomas J.MacMaster and Nicholas S.M.Matheou. Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies. Milton and New York: Routledge. 2021. xvii+381 pp. + 22 ill. £116. ISBN 978 1 138 09131 3 (hardback).

Italy and the East Roman World in the Medieval Mediterranean. Empires, Cities and Elites 476–1204, Papers in Honour of Thomas S. Brown. Edited by Thomas J.MacMaster and Nicholas S.M.Matheou. Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies. Milton and New York: Routledge. 2021. xvii+381 pp. + 22 ill. £116. ISBN 978 1 138 09131 3 (hardback).

Magistrates' early returns to Rome ex provincia between the Middle Republic and the Gracchan age

AbstractThe issue of magistrates who came back to Rome provides a perspective to deal with the topic of home returns in the Roman world. This paper focuses on magistrates' homecomings which occurred earlier than expected. To this end, a lexical enquiry on Latin locutions (provincia decedere, revocari ad urbem, redire Romam ex provincia), in a chronological span between the 1st Punic War and the Gracchan Age until the eve of the tribunate of Gaius Gracchus (264–124 BC), will be conducted.

“Returning Home in the Greek and Roman World”

“Returning Home in the Greek and Roman World”

Rethinking Pliny’s “Sicilian Crocus”: Ecophysiology, Environment, and Classical Texts

Classical scholars have long held that the saffron in widespread use throughout the ancient Mediterranean was Crocus sativus (Iridaceae), a sterile triploid descendant of the wild Crocus cartwrightianus, and indeed use of Crocus sativus in antiquity has been extensively borne out both by iconographic and phylogenetic studies. Two principal scholars of the Roman world, Dioscorides the physician and Pliny the natural historian, disagreed radically over the virtues and commercial value of saffron crocus from Sicily, with one praising its quality, and the other excoriating it. This study draws on ecophysiology, classical texts, environmental archeology, and phytochemistry to explain this disagreement and its implications. It explores the potential impact of microclimate on crocus cultivation in the ancient Mediterranean and proposes a new species identification for Sicilian crocus: Crocus longiflorus. The identification of Crocus longiflorus as “Sicilian saffron” offers an important corrective to the assumption that Crocus sativus was the sole crocus species of commercial value in the ancient Mediterranean and renews attention to the economic potential and utility of an indigenous southern Italian species overlooked in classical and later scholarship.

Mad about the “Boys”? Desire, Revulsion, and (Mis)Recognition in Varro’s Eumenides

ABSTRACT: In the surviving literature of the Roman Republic, the galli are near-universal objects of repulsion, with their gender presentation being constantly derided. The fragments of Varro’s Eumenides , however, offer an opportunity to consider repulsion alongside desire and how the two are often closer than we think. I begin this essay by contextualizing the galli within Roman society and broader trans history; I then employ a trans narratological reading to consider how the narrator attempts to construct different positive images of the galli and how they in turn refuse his categorizations regardless. As the genre of this text is satire, we might initially understand the galli as targets of mockery for Varro; however, the fragmentation of the text, alongside the narrator’s consciously unstable viewpoint, allow this group the opportunity to step outside of the conventional depiction of them, and even construct themselves beyond the normative bounds expected of them, by the narrator or the audience. Reading the galli through a lens of desire allows us to recognize the multiplicity of emotional responses that they would have elicited in the Roman world and expand our understanding beyond the reductive image usually presented by their authors. As well as opening up new lines of conversation around the galli themselves, this essay also offers a broader opportunity to consider how trans experiences can be narrated, even at the expense of the narrator, the author, or their own wider society.

The sum of all victories? Reassessing a Sinopean victory catalogue (IK Sinope 105)

Abstract This study reassesses an inscribed victory catalogue from Sinope (IK Sinope 105) that is often discussed in scholarship concerning agonistic culture in the Roman world. One particularly curious element of this inscription is the empty nature of the penultimate line, which bears only the numerals rho-nu. In the existing scholarship, this is usually interpreted as the sum of all the athlete’s victories. This paper challenges the orthodox interpretation, using a combination of David French’s squeezes housed at the British Institute at Ankara, supported by autopsy and recent photographs of the stone itself. It goes on to reconsider the practice of summing athletic victories in honorific inscriptions more generally, examining a specially compiled dossier of 207 inscriptions of comparable date to IK Sinope 105, and concluding that the practice was relatively rare. Finally, this paper considers other possible interpretations of the rho-nu in IK Sinope 105, among which is the suggestion that rho-nu could be a chronographic feature. While the interpretation of the rho-nu in IK Sinope 105 remains open, the combination of a close analysis of the stone with a wider contextual consideration of the genre demonstrates how much more remains to be said about even a well-known and often cited inscription.

On Vaulting: Heron’s Manuals and Their Role in Roman Dome Design

The subject of domes in the Roman world is complex and can be studied from different perspectives. In this paper we focus on the relationship between Heron of Alexandria's manuals and the vaulting systems of the Hadrianic age. Our aim is to compare a selection of formulae from the critical edition by Johan Ludvig Heiberg with a series of buildings recently documented using photogrammetric and laser scanner technologies. The collection of writings Heronis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt omnia (mainly books IV and V) presents an interesting set of formulae for calculating vaults and domes: volumes and areas of niches, spherical segments, lunettes, as well as empirical strategies for calculating complex shapes. This approach, which integrates practical knowledge with Vitruvian graphic schemes, allows us to clarify the work of the ancient architect and consequently to investigate the architectural problem within the more general framework of archaeology with new conceptual tools.

Asclepieia in ancient Greece: pilgrimage and healing destinations, the forerunner of medical tourism.

Asclepios, the first physician-demigod in Greek mythology, was born in Thessaly of the God Apollo and Coronis, a mortal mother. Asclepieia were healing sanctuaries dedicated to Asclepios. Asclepieia were located throughout the Eastern Mediterranean area, in ancient Greece and the Roman world. Travelers from all over the Mediterranean area seeking healing made pilgrimages to the Asclepieia, the early forerunner of "medical tourism".

Children’s Lives and Agency in the Agonistic First Century and New Testament Studies

hile theoretical approaches attempt to map ancient childhood, the material and incidental nature of children’s lives in all their varieties and differences, are crucial for understanding ancient childhood. Recent investigations into children in their living environments have shown attention to their clothing, childhood care, social relations, leisure and play, health and disability, upbringing and schooling, and their experiences of death. Children’s lives and activities were framed also by the agonistic nature of first-century society, makingthem susceptible to structural violence in various ways. The purpose of the paper is to track and trace children’s experience and in particular their agency in the ancient Roman world that were often hostile to little lives and bodies, and to consider the value of such studies for the interpretation of the New Testament.

Teething Problems: Pierced tooth amulets and sensing pain in the Roman archaeological record

References in ancient literary texts refer to the use of pierced teeth as amulets used for the prevention and reduction of teething pains in infants. In this paper, I explore some of the sensory aspects of this phenomenon by centralising pain as a sensory experience. I draw on a dataset of these objects from Roman Britain in order to contextualise the types and use of these objects within the Roman world. These two facets, linking the sensory experiences of teething pain to real, material objects, allows for a discussion of the lived and embodied experience of wearing this amulet in the ancient world, through which a greater appreciation of its sensory importance is gained. 

A burial ‘alla cappuccina’ discovered on the north-western outskirts of Victoria, Gozo

As ancient burials constitute the bulk of archaeological evidence in the Maltese islands due to their degree of preservation and survival, the general typology of ancient tombs in these islands is quite well known. However, one type of ancient burial seems to stand out for its uniqueness in the Maltese islands, even though it seems to have been widespread in the Roman world. This is the burial known as ‘alla cappuccina’: a very simple burial that employs slabs or tiles set gable wise to cover the corpse beneath. Surviving documentation provides meagre representation of this burial type in the Maltese islands. So far, it had only been documented once in Gozo with another possible instance from Malta. Another burial of the same kind was discovered in Gozo in 1933. Yet, for some reason, it failed to attract any attention to the effect that it was only unofficially documented by means of a contemporary newspaper article. It is thanks to the latter, however, that the poor corpus of this type of burial in the Maltese islands is being enriched with another, better documented example. The current contribution also seeks to move a step further by putting this burial not only in its regional context, but also within the wider context of the contemporary Mediterranean and Roman world.

Young Romans: Status, Dress, and Gender

The demographics of the Roman world suggest that it was a world full of children. Demographers argue that in order simply to maintain population levels in a period where life expectancy was very short by modern standards, and infant mortality high, a woman should, on average, have six children, on the assumption that not all would live to adulthood. Despite much research in the last fifty years, children still remain partly invisible in the Roman world. This is primarily because they leave little evidence produced by themselves and are seen through the prism of adult eyes. Inevitably, given the nature of the evidence, we know more about the children of the upper classes than the lower, and more about boys than girls. Looking at the clothing of children presents particular difficulties precisely because there were very few garments that were specifically made for them. A comment by a Roman jurist on the nature of clothing in testamentary bequests lists first the clothing for the paterfamilias (togas, tunics, cloaks), then defines children’s clothing as: “clothes used only for this purpose, such as togae praetextae, coats, chlamydes and cloaks which we provide for our sons” (Digest 34.2.23.2). The list for sons essentially replicated the list of their father’s garments, and this idea of the child dressed in standard adult garments sized down for them is evidenced in much of the surviving iconography. The Roman wardrobe reflected that of most pre-industrial societies, in that, for most people, possessing more than one change of clothes would be a luxury. Everyday dress consisted of a tunic, which could be covered by a cloak or mantle; this outfit was worn by everyone, wealthy or poor, free or unfree, adult or child. Ancient authors were not particularly interested in their children’s clothing practices. The one exception to this would be the laying aside of the toga praetexta (the toga of childhood) and the assumption of the toga virilis (toga of manhood) as part of the transition to adulthood for male Roman citizens. Artistic representations from the private sphere or from funerary contexts are more rewarding for examining children’s clothing. Ordinary children and images of childhood are not frequent motifs in Roman public art. It is more useful to turn to private memorials, where clothed children of different ages are depicted in a range of contexts. A child could be a symbol of status; a freeborn son, in particular, would be a prestigious addition to a family. The higher social worth of boys compared to girls had an impact on their upbringing, education, and wider life experience. Another sign of the gendered view of children is that in artistic representations, boys are more commonly depicted than girls. From the first century BC, when the habit of erecting memorials became more socially diffused, children were more often included in the visual vocabulary. At first, they are normally seen included in family groups, but by the first century AD, children became subjects in their own right: on reliefs, funerary altars, and sarcophagi. In spite of memorials being related to a deceased person or persons, children were depicted as alive and healthy, and such images constitute an important source for how Roman children of various ages and social classes would have been dressed.

Hellenization of the monumental landscape of the Meroitic kingdom under Natakamani and Amanitore: cultural and historic context

The Meroitic Kush was the largest state on the southern borders of the Roman world. It reached its highest development by the 1st century AD under the rule of Natakamani and Amanitore whose extraordinary building activity attracted many scholars. Withing the framework of a large-scale program of renewing the monumental landscape of their state, the co-rulers erected, rebuilt, and restored cult and palace complexes throughout the country from Amara in the north to Naqa in the south. A characteristic feature of this activity was a wide use of Hellenizing motifs in both architecture and iconography. However, Hellenization did not affect all royal monuments: it was limited to palace complexes and temples of local Kushite gods, predominantly Apedemak, located on main trade routes passing from the inner Africa to the Mediterranean. The paper attempts to explain the reasons for such a striking but, to all appearances, carefully planned phenomenon. The author argues that Natakamani and Amanitore were willing to strengthen their own position within the country and beyond by emphasizing their independence from the northern neighbor through Egyptianization instead of Romanization. The latter could be an attempt to establish themselves as heirs of the Ptolemaic state using Ptolemaic iconography (primarily Dionysiac and solar), Egyptian language, and construction or restoration of the temples of Amun. The case of the Meroitic kingdom under Natakamani and Amanitore may be extremely useful for understanding cultural and historical processes that took place on the outskirts of the Hellenistic and then Roman worlds.