Staying Roman Conant, Jonathan
04/2012, Letnik:
v.Series Number 82
eBook
What did it mean to be Roman once the Roman Empire had collapsed in the West? Staying Roman examines Roman identities in the region of modern Tunisia and Algeria between the fifth-century Vandal ...conquest and the seventh-century Islamic invasions. Using historical, archaeological and epigraphic evidence, this study argues that the fracturing of the empire's political unity also led to a fracturing of Roman identity along political, cultural and religious lines, as individuals who continued to feel 'Roman' but who were no longer living under imperial rule sought to redefine what it was that connected them to their fellow Romans elsewhere. The resulting definitions of Romanness could overlap, but were not always mutually reinforcing. Significantly, in late antiquity Romanness had a practical value, and could be used in remarkably flexible ways to foster a sense of similarity or difference over space, time and ethnicity, in a wide variety of circumstances.
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.
This volume presents the results of long-term research into occupational epigraphy from the Latin-language provinces of the Roman Empire. It catalogues stone epigraphs of 690 independent ...professionals (excluding state workers, imperial slaves, freedmen and military personnel) providing quantitative as well as qualitative analyses of the raw data.
The combination of portrait statue, monumental support, and public lettering was considered emblematic of Roman public space even in antiquity. This book examines ancient Roman statues and their ...bases, tombs, dedicatory altars, and panels commemorating gifts of civic beneficence made by the Augustales, civic groups composed primarily of wealthy ex-slaves. Margaret L. Laird examines how these monuments functioned as protagonists in their built and social environments by focusing on archaeologically attested commissions made by the Augustales in Roman Italian towns. Integrating methodologies from art history, architectural history, social history, and epigraphy with archaeological and sociological theories of community, she considers how dedications and their accompanying inscriptions created webs of association and transformed places of display into sites of local history. Understanding how these objects functioned in ancient cities, the book argues, illuminates how ordinary Romans combined public lettering, honorific portraits, emperor worship, and civic philanthropy to express their communal identities.
The bleak steppe and rolling highlands of inner Anatolia were one of the most remote and underdeveloped parts of the Roman empire. Still today, for most historians of the Roman world, ancient Phrygia ...largely remains terra incognita. Yet thanks to a startling abundance of Greek and Latin inscriptions on stone, the cultural history of the villages and small towns of Roman Phrygia is known to us in vivid and unexpected detail. Few parts of the Mediterranean world offer so rich a body of evidence for rural society in the Roman Imperial and late antique periods, and for the flourishing of ancient Christianity within this landscape. The eleven essays in this book offer new perspectives on the remarkable culture, lifestyles, art and institutions of the Anatolian uplands in antiquity.
Carving a Professional Identity: The occupational epigraphy of
the Roman Latin West presents the results of long-term
research into the occupational epigraphy from the Latin-language
provinces of the ...Roman Empire. It catalogues stone epigraphs of
independent professionals (thus excluding state workers, imperial
slaves, freedmen and military personnel), comprising some 690
people, providing quantitative as well as qualitative analyses of
the raw data. A glossary translating the occupational titles is
also included. The book reveals a very lively work market, where
specialisation responded to demand and brought social and economic
status to the worker. The coherence of epigraphic habits and
manifestations within a professional group, along with all the
other existing clues for a rather unitary use of symbols, endorse
once more the existence of a Roman provincial, commercial, middle
class.
