Lecture 6. Hellenistic and Judaic-Hellenistic thought (original) (raw)
2013
From the Oxford Handbook of the State in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean (P. Bang, W. Scheidel eds), 2013.
Rise and Decline of the Roman Civilization
Rise and Decline of the Roman Civilization. (2012). Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 3(9), 179. https://www.richtmann.org/journal/index.php/mjss/article/view/11300, 0
Rome expanded across the Mediterranean and grew into a huge, diverse empire. By the end of the fourth century B.C.E. Rome was already the dominant power on the Italian Peninsula. For five centuries thereafter Rome's power steadily increased. Rome's destruction of the powerful North African City of Carthage united the entire Mediterranean world and made the Mediterranean itself a "Roman Lake". Rome began as a small city state in Italy. The Romans were an Indo-European people who settled along the Tiber River in small villages. Their neighbors, the Etruscans, ruled much of central Italy, including Rome. After the Romans threw out the hated Etruscan king in 509 B.C., they resolved never to be ruled by a monarch again. Instead they set up a republic, a government in which officials are chosen by the people. At first, the most powerful people in government were Patricians, or members of the landholding upper class. Eventually, commoners, or Plebeians were also elected to the Roman Senate. Military victories put the Romans in control of busy trade routes. Incredible riches flooded into Rome faced and this causes a series of civil wars. Eventually, a powerful Roman general named Augustus restored order. Under Augustus, who ruled from 31 B.C to A.D.14, the 500 year old republic came to an end. A new age dawned-the age of the Roman Empire. Augustus laid the foundation for a stable government and undertook economic reforms. The 200 years span that began with Augustus ended with emperor Marcus Aurelius. It is Known as the Pax Romana, or "Roman Peace". During the time, Roman emperors brought peace, order, unity and prosperity to the lands under their control. Rome acted as a bridge between the east and the west by borrowing and transforming Greek and Hellenistic achievements to produce Greco-Roman Civilization. The Romans greatly admired Greek culture. They took Greek ideas and adapted them in their own ways. Roman sculptors, for instance, used the Greek idea of realism to reveal an individual's character in each stone portrait. Probably the greatest legacy of Rome was its commitment to the rule of law and to justice. These shape western civilization today. After the death of the emperor Marcus Aurelius in A.D.180, turmoil rocked the Roman Empire split into two parts, east and west, each with its own ruler in the west. The foreign invaders marched into Italy and, in 476, took over Rome itself. But the Roman Empire did not disappear from the map. The eastern Roman Empire prospered under the emperor Constantine. In time, the eastern Roman Empire became known as Byzantium. It lasted for another 1,000 years. The article discussed on overall Roman Civilization-the rise and fall of Roman Empire with its political changes and the prosperity of Romans during their rule.
Empire and Political Cultures in the Roman World
2018
Toward a Roman Dialect of Empire Anatomies of Roman Imperial Government This, then, is the lay of the different parts of our inhabited world; but since the Romans occupy the best and the best-known portions of it, having surpassed all former rulers of whom we have record, it is worthwhile, even though briefly, to add the following account of them. .. Of this whole country that is subject to the Romans, some is indeed ruled by kings, but the Romans retain the other part, calling it "provincial" (eparchian), and send governors (hēgemonas) and collectors of tribute (phorologous). But there are also some free cities, some of which came over to the Romans at the outset as friends, whereas others were set free by them as a mark of honour. There are also some potentates and phylarchs and priests subject to them. Now these live in accordance with certain ancestral laws. But the provinces have been divided in different ways at different times, though at the present time they are as Augustus Caesar (Kaisar ho Sebastos) arranged them; for when his native land committed to him the foremost place of authority and he became established as lord for life of war and peace, he divided the whole land into two parts, and assigned one portion to himself and one to the people. Strabo, Geography , , -, Loeb tr. H. L. Jones with minor adaptations There are many ways of starting a conversation about empire and political cultures in the Roman world. Modern accounts of the Roman empire have traditionally begun where the early Imperial geographer, Strabo, writing between the s and the s with a perspective that zooms impressively between the global and the highly particular, ends his panoramic account of a Roman world newly centered on monarchy. Modern usage makes the fact that the Romans possessed an empire before they had emperors seem counter-intuitive. As a compromise, I capitalize Empire and Imperial when referring specifically to the period from January , when Augustus was granted this honorific name by the Roman senate. When referring either to the empire of the Republican period and its condition ("imperial"), or to empire spanning the Republican period and the world of emperors, I do not capitalize these terms.
Course description: This seminar will examine recent trends in the study of the Hellenistic world. We'll take a broad view, examining material from Spain across to the Indus river valley and Central Asia. We will read the classic accounts of the period, and a good deal of what's new to see how the various sub-fields within Hellenistic History have advanced and to come up with our own set of questions. Our readings for the course will go beyond the traditional historiography, which focuses on Greeks abroad. Rather this seminar will pushes the cultural, temporal and spatial boundaries of the period by treating Central Asia and India, for example, and other ethnic groups who had a different experience of the new states created in the wake of Alexander's campaigns. We will also discuss the nature of the primary sources for each of the topics. You will be expected to explore further in your seminar paper these sources in more depth. The blank SOURCES section for each topic is for YOU to fill in as we go along; what are the key sources, where can you find them, etc.
Conceiving the Empire, 2008
The phenomenal expansion of the Roman Empire in the two centuries from the second Punic War (219-202 bc) to the reign of Augustus (27 bc-ad 14) coincided with the beginnings, development, and (Wrst) Xowering of Roman historical narrative. It is the purpose of this paper to describe, at least for two important periods, the ways in which the respective prose and verse works reXected the political process and to explore the extent to which 'imperial thought' can be apprehended in these texts. 1 The two periods to be dealt with are from the late third to the mid-second century bc, which witnessed the decisive expansion of Roman power to the eastern part of the Mediterranean, and from the mid-Wrst century bc to early Wrst century ad, which saw a renewed dynamism of imperial expansion and a lasting (re)organization of the administrative structures of the empire. They represent the formative phase of literary narrative in Rome and the one richest in works of Roman self-representation. The works of the two periods will be dealt with in the main sections of the paper (2 and 3). As, however, Roman historical consciousness began to take shape prior to the Wrst literary narratives and since its non-and proto-literary forms already reXected Rome's relationship with the 1 'Empire' and 'imperial' are unfortunately ambivalent expressions, referring either to empire as 'Reich' or to empire as 'Kaisertum'. In this paper the two terms are exclusively used in the Wrst sense.
Imperial democracies are rare in history – and Athens was the first, for the Athenian Empire was acquired and consolidated with the ascendancy of the world's first democracy. To speak of an Athenian " empire " is to transfer the Latin term and concept of imperium to the hegemonic rule exercised by the Athenians over other Greeks. With some reservations, the word "empire" may be applied to the rule of the Athenians over the Aegean Sea and coastline during the fifth century. The traditional dates for the Athenian empire run from the formation of the Delian League under the hegemony (hegemonia) of Athens (478) to the Athenian defeat and surrender (404) to her arch-rival and political antithesis, Sparta. These dates also correspond to what would be the first of two centuries of literary and intellectual flourishing, known to posterity as the 'classical' age of ancient Greek history. The vibrant and unique genius of that era – embodied by such fifth-century luminaries as Themistokles, Sophocles, Perikles, Thucydides, Aristophanes, Alkibiades, and Sokrates – engendered accomplishments in politics, drama, and the arts which served as the seminal soil into which fourth-century philosophers and orators – like Xenophon, Plato, Isokrates, Demosthenes, and Aristotle – sank their roots. Surpassed in scope and longevity by the PERSIAN EMPIRE, which Athens had initially sought to oppose and thereby rose to prominence among the Greeks; dwarfed in her conquests by the MACEDONIAN EMPIRE, which brought an end to Athenian freedom and democracy (as well as to the Persian Empire), Athens in the fifth century acquired an empire of unrivaled power and prestige whose lasting effect upon the culture of western civilization can hardly be overestimated – the legacy of the Roman Republic and ROMAN EMPIRE notwithstanding. Literary and material evidence for the Athenian empire is abundant. The penetrating historia, or inquiry, of the great war waged between the Athenians and their allies and a coalition of Peloponnesians led by the Spartans, known as the Peloponnesian War (431-404), written by Thucydides, an Athenian citizen and general, remains the principal source of contemporary literary evidence for the Athenian empire. Additional sources include an extant treatise on the Constitution of the Athenians (attributed to an 'Old Oligarch'), the comedies of Aristophanes, and the Hellenika of Xenophon the Athenian (a continuation of Thucydides' unfinished account of the Peloponnesian War, and a history of Greek affairs down to 362). Fourth-century sources range from philosophers (Plato and Aristotle), to orators (Isokrates and Demosthenes) – to name just a few. Material evidence for reconstructing the history and character of the fifth-century Athenian empire has been brought to light in the last century by work in the fields of archaeology, numismatics, epigraphy, art and architectural history.