The year 395 marked a turning point in the fortunes of the Roman Empire. The division of the imperial territory into two portions proved to be final and, in the short-term historical perspective, led ...to the downfall of the western part. The article suggests that this event was caused by a deliberate position taken by the ruling elites of the Eastern Roman Empire toward their western counterparts. The main reason for the downfall of the West thus lies in the fact that the eastern government refused to subsidize the western infrastructural and military needs with its money and other resources, which up to that time had been the necessary condition for the maintenance of the Roman civilization in the westernmost part of the Roman Empire—praefectura Galliarum. The eastern ruling class used the unique situation of the virtual absence of the Roman army and its commanders, which had withdrawn for operations in Italy, to establish the rule of a civilian government. The refusal to support the West economically led to the rise of the eastern economy, as well as to the growth in importance of eastern regions such as Syria and Egypt, which were economically the strongest. These conditions, created within the Eastern Empire after the secession of the West, in many respects resembled those of the same territories during the Hellenistic period, with the exception that now they were kept together by the efficient unifying institutions of the Roman state of Late Antiquity.
The use of non-cultivated plants in a daily diet based on local cuisines is potentially of considerable interest to nutritional scientists, because of the plants' role as local products and their ...potential as sources of novel nutraceuticals. In many Mediterranean regions these traditions are at risk of disappearing, hence the urgent need to study such knowledge systems. Accordingly, an ethnobotanical survey was carried out among the 850 inhabitants of the village of Castelmezzano, in central Lucania, which is located in the inland southern Italy. Seventy-five taxa of non-cultivated and semi-cultivated local food plants and mushrooms were documented, and uncommon food uses of a few species were reported for the first time. These include Bellavalia romana, Lepista nebularis and Onopordum illyricum. Most of the recorded non-cultivated food plants and mushrooms are cooked in oil or fat. Very few are consumed raw. This article discusses in detail the traditional culinary uses of these plants, their seasonality, ethnoecology, and their economic and nutritional potentials. The article also demonstrates how food agro-biodiversity is inextricably connected with cultural heritage.
Stochastic matrix projection models are widely used to model age- or stage-structured populations with vital rates that fluctuate randomly over time. Practical applications of these models rest on ...qualitative properties such as the existence of a long term population growth rate, asymptotic log-normality of total population size, and weak ergodicity of population structure. We show here that these properties are shared by a general stochastic integral projection model, by using results in (Eveson in D. Phil. Thesis, University of Sussex, 1991, Eveson in Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. 70, 411-440, 1993) to extend the approach in (Lange and Holmes in J. Appl. Prob. 18, 325-344, 1981). Integral projection models allow individuals to be cross-classified by multiple attributes, either discrete or continuous, and allow the classification to change during the life cycle. These features are present in plant populations with size and age as important predictors of individual fate, populations with a persistent bank of dormant seeds or eggs, and animal species with complex life cycles. We also present a case-study based on a 6-year field study of the Illyrian thistle, Onopordum illyricum, to demonstrate how easily a stochastic integral model can be parameterized from field data and then applied using familiar matrix software and methods. Thistle demography is affected by multiple traits (size, age and a latent "quality" variable), which would be difficult to accommodate in a classical matrix model. We use the model to explore the evolution of size- and age-dependent flowering using an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) approach. We find close agreement between the observed flowering behavior and the predicted ESS from the stochastic model, whereas the ESS predicted from a deterministic version of the model is very different from observed flowering behavior. These results strongly suggest that the flowering strategy in O. illyricum is an adaptation to random between-year variation in vital rates.
During the Roman Civil War that broke out in 49 bc between Julius Caesar and Pompey naval operations played a critical role. In order to confront Pompey's army quickly in the Balkans, a major ...amphibious crossing of the Adriatic was undertaken by Caesar's army. The text of Caesar's Civil War and other sources, including Lucan's epic poem Pharsalia, pose problems for understanding the campaign. This paper identifies and corrects a number of key points from the texts and reconstructs a new narrative that enhances our understanding of events. The most significant problem is the identification of Caesar's landing place for his army with Palaeste, when it can be shown that he probably landed inside the Gulf of Valona.
Phytochemical investigation of the acetone extract of the aerial parts of Onopordum illyricum L. afforded five known sesquiterpenoids: compounds 3 and 4 already isolated from O. illirycum, and ...8α-4′-hydroxymethacryloyloxy-sonchucarpolide (1), 8α-4′-hydroxymethacryloyloxy-4-epi-sonchucarpolide (2) and 8-(4′-hydroxymethacryloyl)-dehydromelitensin (5), not previously detected in this species. Compounds 4 and 5 showed moderate antifeedant activity against larvae of Spodoptera littoralis.
Illyricum, in the western Balkan peninsula, was a strategically important area of the Roman Empire where the process of Roman imperialism began early and lasted for several centuries. Dzino here ...examines Roman political conduct in Illyricum; the development of Illyricum in Roman political discourse; and the beginning of the process that would integrate Illyricum into the Roman Empire and wider networks of the Mediterranean world. In addition, he also explores the different narrative histories, from the romanocentric narrative of power and Roman military conquest, which dominate the available sources, to other, earlier scholarly interpretations of events.
Onopordum illyricum L. is a medicinal plant used in the Mediterranean area as antipyretic for the treatment of respiratory and urinary inflammations and to treat skin ulcers. Repeated chromatographic ...purification of O. illyricum aerial parts led to the isolation of six known sesquiterpenes, which were evaluated for the inhibition of the pro-inflammatory transcription factors NF-κB and STAT3 and for the activation of the transcription factor Nrf2, which regulates the cellular antioxidant response. Structure–activity relationships were interpreted by the NMR-based cysteamine assay. The sesquiterpene lactone vernomelitensin significantly inhibited NF-κB and STAT3, showing also a significant Nrf2 activation. Accordingly, the cysteamine assay selected vernomelitensin as the most reactive of the isolated sesquiterpenes, identifying the α,β-unsaturated aldehyde moiety as responsible for the higher (re)activity.
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The aerial parts of Onopordum illyricum L. (Asteraceae) are eaten raw in salad in the Mediterranean area, representing a food of good nutritional value. Extracts of different parts of this plant have ...been analyzed by HPLC/DAD/ESIMS and the major compounds identified by NMR spectroscopy. Fatty acids, sesquiterpene lactones, triterpenes and polyphenols (flavones and caffeoyl quinic acids) fully describe the plant metabolism during the vegetation year. All the metabolites are non toxic nutrients, and are reported in the literature to possess biological activities positive for health, confirming the beneficial use in the diet of this thistle
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