Living and Cursing in the Roman West PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Living and Cursing in the Roman West PDF full book. Access full book title Living and Cursing in the Roman West by Stuart McKie. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Stuart McKie
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350103012
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Get Book Here
Book Description
Focusing on the Roman west, this book examines the rituals of cursing, their cultural contexts, and their impact on the lives of those who practised them. A huge number of Roman curse tablets have been discovered, showing their importance for helping ancient people to cope with various aspects of life. Curse tablets have been relatively neglected by archaeologists and historians. This study not only encourages greater understanding of the individual practice of curse rituals but also reveals how these objects can inform ongoing debates surrounding power, agency and social relationships in the Roman provinces. McKie uses new theoretical models to examine the curse tablets and focuses particularly on the concept of 'lived religion'. This framework reconfigures our understanding of religious and magical practices, allowing much greater appreciation of them as creative processes. Our awareness of the lived experiences of individuals is also encouraged by the application of theoretical approaches from sensory and material turns and through the consideration of comparable ritual practices in modern social contexts. These stimulate new questions of the ancient evidence, especially regarding the motives and motivations behind the curses.
Author: Stuart McKie
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350103012
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Get Book Here
Book Description
Focusing on the Roman west, this book examines the rituals of cursing, their cultural contexts, and their impact on the lives of those who practised them. A huge number of Roman curse tablets have been discovered, showing their importance for helping ancient people to cope with various aspects of life. Curse tablets have been relatively neglected by archaeologists and historians. This study not only encourages greater understanding of the individual practice of curse rituals but also reveals how these objects can inform ongoing debates surrounding power, agency and social relationships in the Roman provinces. McKie uses new theoretical models to examine the curse tablets and focuses particularly on the concept of 'lived religion'. This framework reconfigures our understanding of religious and magical practices, allowing much greater appreciation of them as creative processes. Our awareness of the lived experiences of individuals is also encouraged by the application of theoretical approaches from sensory and material turns and through the consideration of comparable ritual practices in modern social contexts. These stimulate new questions of the ancient evidence, especially regarding the motives and motivations behind the curses.
Author: Ursula Rothe
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472571568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book traces the toga's history from its origins in the Etruscan garment known as the tebenna, through its use as an everyday garment in the Republican period to its increasingly exclusive role as a symbol of privilege in the Principate and its decline in use in late antiquity. It aims to shift the scholarly view of the toga from one dominated by its role as a feature of Roman art to one in which it is seen as an everyday object and a highly charged symbol that in its various forms was central to the definition and negotiation of important gender, age and status boundaries, as well as political stances and ideologies. It discusses the toga's significance not just in Rome itself, but also in the provinces, where it reveals ideas about cultural identity, status and the role of the Roman state. The Toga and Roman Identity shows that, by looking in detail at the history of Rome's national garment, we can gain a better understanding of the complexities of Roman identity for different groups in society, as well as what it meant, at any given time, to be 'Roman'.
Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198887531
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 512
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Roger S. O. Tomlin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192888633
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Uley Tablets is the first full publication of the eighty Roman lead writing-tablets found in the excavation of a Romano-British temple in the Cotswolds, the temple of the god Mercury at Uley, Gloucestershire, together with two from the nearby site of Tarlton. Like those found in the hot spring at Bath, they are 'curse tablets', so called because they seek divine intervention against the writer's enemies, who are mostly thieves unknown. They complain of farm animals being stolen or bewitched, even a stolen beehive (the first document of bee-keeping in Britain), the theft of clothing such as gloves, cloaks and gaiters, woman's underwear, the theft of rings and sums of money ranging from two 'mites' to a hundred thousand denarii. In formalised language they ask the god to recover their property and punish the thieves with ill health or the 'greatest death'. These tablets are the richest collection of manuscripts from the countryside of Roman Britain, unique as a written witness to the social and economic history of the province since they were not found in the usual urban or military context. They are a major new source for studying the language, whether written or spoken, of the civil population. The Uley Tablets provide a practical lesson in how to decipher Roman handwriting, and in this volume, they are transcribed and translated with detailed commentary, each inscribed face illustrated with a photograph and line-drawing. These texts are preceded by eleven introductory chapters which outline their context and content, the way in which the god was approached, the language and handwriting employed, and the implications for the study of literacy in Roman Britain. The Uley Tablets offer a vivid contribution to ancient history with a disturbing modern echo.
Author: Konstantinos Arampapaslis
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311142944X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 150
Get Book Here
Book Description
Neronian representations of magic, a practice prevalent in the everyday life of the period and a central topic in its literary production, are characterized by unprecedented accuracy and detail. The similarities of witchcraft depictions in Seneca’s Medea, Lucan’s book 6, and Petronius’ Satyrica with spells of the PGM, the defixiones, as well as with Pliny’s quasi-magical recipes underscore realism as the distinctive trait of Neronian magic scenes which has often been considered the authors’ means to differentiate themselves from their Augustan predecessors. However, such high-degree realism is not merely an ornamental feature but transforms into a tool that influences the reader’s response toward magic, according to each author’s worldview and aims. The cross-generic examination of the motif of magic in the major Neronian authors shows how realism forms a link between reader, contemporary experience, and text that encourages more active participation on the part of the reader. At the same time, images of destruction, the horrific, and the ridiculous further enhance the negative view of magic as an ineffective (Lucan-Petronius) or destructive force (Seneca), simultaneously eliciting the reader’s critical response.
Author: Sarah Nooter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350377449
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Get Book Here
Book Description
The term "radical formalism" refers to strategies aimed at defamiliarising and revitalising conventional modes of formalistic reading and theorising form. These strategies disrupt and unsettle established norms while incorporating a metadiscursive awareness of their broader political implications. This volume presents a radical reconceptualisation of literary works from Greek and Roman antiquity. Engaging in an ongoing dialogue with critical theory and postcritique, as well as drawing inspiration from traditions rooted in Black art, poetry and philosophy-both directly and indirectly connected to the classical tradition-the essays in this collection explore subversions of canonical norms and resistances to the hegemony of textual order. This collection not only provides new, provocative insights into a corpus of texts that has exerted a lasting impact on modern literature and philosophy, but also challenges current interpretive methods, recasting the very practice of reading in relation to form, poetics, language, sound, temporalities and textuality.
Author: Jessica Lamont
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197517781
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433
Get Book Here
Book Description
"In In Blood and Ashes: Curse Tablets and Binding Spells in Ancient Greece, Jessica Lamont provides the first historical study of the development and dissemination of ritualized curse practice in the ancient Greek world, alongside that of binding spells, incantations, and other private rites. Documenting the cultural pressures that drove the practice of ancient Greek magic, this book reveals the ways in which individuals worked to negotiate with the world (here in the literal sense) "underground"-conjuring the powers of the Underworld, and calling upon the dead to assist the living. The study of such rituals expands our understanding of daily life in ancient communities, providing rare insights into how individuals were making sense of the world and coping with conflict, vulnerability, competition, anxiety, desire, and loss. Curse tablets in particular document persons who often slip through the cracks of traditional histories, enabling us to approach antiquity through a broader lens: here are the cooks, tavern keepers, garland weavers, helmsmen, craftspersons, and barbers. Bringing together epigraphic, historical, literary, archaeological, and material evidence, Lamont reads between the traditional narratives of Archaic, Classical, and early Hellenistic Greece, drawing out new voices, and presenting new histories to consider. These texts and objects offer glimpses into the public and private lives of individuals from c.500 BCE through Late Antiquity, illuminating the interplay of ritual and conflict-management strategies among citizens and slaves, men and women, pagans and Christians. Filled with new material and insights, Lamont's volume offers a fresh perspective on ancient Greek social history and religion from c.750-250 BCE, one that highlights the role played by ritual in negotiating life's uncertainties"--
Author: Mary Harlow
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441174028
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Get Book Here
Book Description
This volume seeks to explain developments within the structure of the family in antiquity, in particular in the later Roman Empire and late antiquity. Contributions extend the traditional chronological focus on the Roman family to include the transformation of familial structures in the newly formed kingdoms of late antiquity in Europe, thus allowing a greater historical perspective and establishing a new paradigm for the study of the Roman family. Drawing on the latest research by leading scholars in the field the book includes new approaches to the life course and the family in the Byzantine empire, family relationships in the dynasty of Constantine the Great, death, burial and commemoration of newborn children in Roman Italy, and widows and familial networks in Roman Egypt. In short, this volume seeks to establish a new agenda for the understanding of the Roman family and its transformation in late antiquity.
Author: Adam Parker
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1785708848
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 145
Get Book Here
Book Description
This second volume in the new TRAC Themes in Roman Archaeology series seeks to push the research agendas of materiality and lived experience further into the study of Roman magic, a field that has, until recently, lacked object-focused analysis. Building on the pioneering studies in Boschung and Bremmer's (2015) Materiality of Magic, the editors of the present volume have collected contributions that showcase the value of richly-detailed, context-specific explorations of the magical practices of the Roman world. By concentrating primarily on the Imperial period and the western provinces, the various contributions demonstrate very clearly the exceptional range of influences and possibilities open to individuals who sought to use magical rituals to affect their lives in these specific contexts – something that would have been largely impossible in earlier periods of antiquity. Contributions are presented from a range of museum professionals, commercial archaeologists, university academics and postgraduate students, making a compelling case for strengthening lines of communication between these related areas of expertise.
Author: Neil Christie
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN: 9781849663373
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
The decline of the Roman Empire has been a subject of fascination and debate for centuries. In this original new work, Neil Christie draws on numerous sources, interweaving the latest archaeological evidence, to reconstruct the period's landscape and events. In the process, he rethinks some of historians' most widely held and long-established views: Was the Empire's disintegration caused primarily by external or internal factors? Why did the Eternal City of Old Rome collapse in the West, while the 'New Rome' of Constantinople endured in the East? What was destroyed and what remained of Roman culture after successive invasions by Vandals, Goths, Huns and other 'barbarians', and what was the impact of the new Christian religion? As Christie expertly demonstrates, the archaeology of the late Roman period reveals intriguing answers to these and other questions. Taking an innovative, interdisciplinary approach that combines traditional historical methods and a unique familiarity with the Empire's physical remnants, he uncovers new aspects of Rome's military struggles, its shifting geography, and the everyday lives of its subjects. Written in a clear, accessible style, The Fall of the Western Roman Empire is a perfect introduction for newcomers to the subject, and essential reading for undergraduate students and specialists in archaeology and ancient history.
