The Roman Calendar from Numa to Constantine

The Roman Calendar from Numa to Constantine PDF Author: Jörg Rüpke
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 9781444396522
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book provides a definitive account of the history of the Roman calendar, offering new reconstructions of its development that demand serious revisions to previous accounts. Examines the critical stages of the technical, political, and religious history of the Roman calendar Provides a comprehensive historical and social contextualization of ancient calendars and chronicles Highlights the unique characteristics which are still visible in the most dominant modern global calendar

The Roman Calendar from Numa to Constantine

The Roman Calendar from Numa to Constantine PDF Author: Jörg Rüpke
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 9781444396522
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book provides a definitive account of the history of the Roman calendar, offering new reconstructions of its development that demand serious revisions to previous accounts. Examines the critical stages of the technical, political, and religious history of the Roman calendar Provides a comprehensive historical and social contextualization of ancient calendars and chronicles Highlights the unique characteristics which are still visible in the most dominant modern global calendar

Zodiac Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Reception

Zodiac Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Their Reception PDF Author: Helen R. Jacobus
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004284060
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 555

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Book Description
The ancient mathematical basis of the Aramaic calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls is analysed in this investigation. Helen R. Jacobus re-examines an Aramaic zodiac calendar with a thunder divination text (4Q318) and the calendar from the Aramaic Astronomical Book (4Q208 - 4Q209), all from Qumran. Jacobus demonstrates that 4Q318 is an ancestor of the Jewish calendar today and that it helps us to understand 4Q208 - 4Q209. She argues that these calendars were taught in antiquity as angelic knowledge described in 1 Enoch and the Book of Jubilees. The study also encompasses Babylonian, Hellenistic, Byzantine astronomy and astrology, and classical and Jewish writings. Finally, a medieval Hebrew zodiac calendar related to 4Q318 with an astrological text is published here for the first time.

The Ordered Day

The Ordered Day PDF Author: James Ker
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421445182
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
Traces how the day has served as a key organizing concept in Roman culture—and beyond. How did ancient Romans keep track of time? What constituted a day in ancient Rome was not the same twenty-four hours we know today. In The Ordered Day, James Ker traces how the day served as a key organizing concept, both in antiquity and in modern receptions of ancient Rome. Romans used the story of how the day emerged as a unit of sociocultural time to give order to their own civic and imperial history. Ancient literary descriptions of people's daily routines articulated distinctive forms of life within the social order. And in the imperial period and beyond, outsiders—such as early Christians in their monastic rules and modern antiquarians in books on daily life—ordered their knowledge of Roman life through reworking the day as a heuristic framework. Scholarly interest in Roman time has recently moved from the larger unit of the year and calendar to smaller units of time, especially in the study of sundials and other timekeeping technologies of the ancient Mediterranean. Through extensive analysis of ancient literary texts and material culture as well as modern daily life handbooks, Ker demonstrates the privileged role that "small time" played, and continues to play, in Roman literary and cultural history. Ker argues that the ordering of the day provided the basis for the organizing of history, society, and modern knowledge about ancient Rome. For readers curious about daily life in ancient Rome as well as for students and scholars of Roman history and Latin literature, The Ordered Day provides an accessible and fascinating account of the makings of the Roman day and its relationship to modern time structures.

Migration, Mobility and Place in Ancient Italy

Migration, Mobility and Place in Ancient Italy PDF Author: Elena Isayev
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107130611
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 553

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Book Description
This book examines the nature of human mobility, attitudes to it, and constructions of place over the last millennium BC in Rome and Italy. It demonstrates that there were high rates of mobility, challenging the perception of sites and communities as static and ethnically oriented entities.

Appropriation as Practice of Memory

Appropriation as Practice of Memory PDF Author: Dimiter Daphinoff
Publisher: Böhlau Köln
ISBN: 341253143X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
This volume explores how narratives and iconographic codes in literature, art, music, material culture and social, political, and economic discourses were appropriated and thereby – sometimes radically – transformed by religious agents, and how religious narrations, discourses and iconographic practices were reimagined and used (up to radical deconstruction) in non-religious contexts as well as in different or transformed religious contexts. Religious appropriation is thereby conceived as practice of memory, drawing on reused – and creating transformed – narrative and visual spaces of imagination. The dimension of memory will contribute to a more differentiated typology of practices of appropriation, their forms, functions and functionalisation. Agency and power relations will be important factors in the individual contributions of this trans-disciplinary volume that links approaches from memory studies, religious history, literary studies, and art history.

A Question of Identity

A Question of Identity PDF Author: Dikla Rivlin Katz
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110615444
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
‘‘‘Who am I?’ and ‘Who are we?’ are the existential, foundational questions in our lives. In our modern world, there is no construct more influential than ‘identity’ – whether as individuals or as groups. The concept of group identity is the focal point of a research group named “A Question of Identity” at the Mandel Scholion Interdisciplinary Research Center in the Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The papers collected in this volume represent the proceedings of a January 2017 conference organized by the research group which dealt with identity formation in six contextual settings: Ethno-religious identities in light of the archaeological record; Second Temple period textual records on Diaspora Judaism; Jews and Christians in Sasanian Persia; minorities in the Persian achaemenid period; Inter-ethnic dialogue in pre-1948 Palestine; and redefinitions of Christian Identity in the Early Modern period.

Rome, Polybius, and the East

Rome, Polybius, and the East PDF Author: Peter Derow
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199640904
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This volume offers a collection of seventeen of the more important papers written by the late Peter Derow during the course of his career. With a detailed introduction by the editors, it is essential reading for anyone interested in Roman imperialism or Polybius, and Rome's rise to Mediterranean power.

A Place at the Altar

A Place at the Altar PDF Author: Meghan J. DiLuzio
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069120232X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
A Place at the Altar illuminates a previously underappreciated dimension of religion in ancient Rome: the role of priestesses in civic cult. Demonstrating that priestesses had a central place in public rituals and institutions, Meghan DiLuzio emphasizes the complex, gender-inclusive nature of Roman priesthood. In ancient Rome, priestly service was a cooperative endeavor, requiring men and women, husbands and wives, and elite Romans and slaves to work together to manage the community's relationship with its gods. Like their male colleagues, priestesses offered sacrifices on behalf of the Roman people, and prayed for the community’s well-being. As they carried out their ritual obligations, they were assisted by female cult personnel, many of them slave women. DiLuzio explores the central role of the Vestal Virgins and shows that they occupied just one type of priestly office open to women. Some priestesses, including the flaminica Dialis, the regina sacrorum, and the wives of the curial priests, served as part of priestly couples. Others, such as the priestesses of Ceres and Fortuna Muliebris, were largely autonomous. A Place at the Altar offers a fresh understanding of how the women of ancient Rome played a leading role in public cult.

The Origin of Empire

The Origin of Empire PDF Author: David Potter
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674240235
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Beginning with the Roman army’s first foray beyond its borders and concluding with the death of Hadrian in 138 CE, this panoramic history of the early Roman Empire recounts the wars, leaders, and social transformations that lay the foundations of imperial success. Between 264 BCE, when the Roman army crossed into Sicily, and the death of Hadrian nearly three hundred years later, Rome became one of the most successful multicultural empires in history. In this vivid guide to a fascinating period, David Potter explores the transformations that occurred along the way, as Rome went from republic to mercenary state to bureaucratic empire, from that initial step across the Straits of Messina to the peak of territorial expansion. Rome was shaped by endless political and diplomatic jockeying. As other Italian city-states relinquished sovereignty in exchange for an ironclad guarantee of protection, Rome did not simply dominate its potential rivals—it absorbed them by selectively offering citizenship and constructing a tiered membership scheme that allowed Roman citizens to maintain political control without excluding noncitizens from the state’s success. Potter attributes the empire’s ethnic harmony to its relative openness. This imperial policy adapted and persisted over centuries of internal discord. The fall of the republican aristocracy led to the growth of mercenary armies and to the creation of a privatized and militarized state that reached full expression under Julius Caesar. Subsequently, Augustus built a mighty bureaucracy, which went on to manage an empire ruled by a series of inattentive, intemperate, and bullying chief executives. As contemporary parallels become hard to ignore, The Origin of Empire makes clear that the Romans still have much to teach us about power, governance, and leadership.

Written Space in the Latin West, 200 BC to AD 300

Written Space in the Latin West, 200 BC to AD 300 PDF Author: Gareth Sears
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441161627
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
This volume explores the creation of 'written spaces' through the accretion of monumental inscriptions and non-official graffiti in the Latin-speaking West between c.200 BC and AD 300. The shift to an epigraphic culture demonstrates new mentalities regarding the use of language, the relationship between local elites and the population, and between local elites and the imperial power. The creation of both official and non-official inscriptions is one of the most recognisable facets of the Roman city. The chapters of this book consider why urban populations created these written spaces and how these spaces in turn affected those urban civilisations. They also examine how these inscriptions interacted to create written spaces that could inculcate a sense of 'Roman-ness' into urban populations whilst also acting as a means of differentiating communities from each other. The volume includes new approaches to the study of political entities, social institutions, graffiti and painting, and the differing trajectories of written spaces in the cities of Roman Africa, Italy, Spain and Gaul.