The winter solstice shaped Rome and its landscape from the ancestral cult of Saturnus as primordial god of the Roman territory before the city's founding to its use by Augustus as one of the signs of ...his multiple celestial and solar connections. The important feasts around this date are well known and, in this paper, we propose to demonstrate how some significant public monuments, possibly from the origins of Rome and certainly from during Augustus's reign, are oriented towards the winter solstice sunrise or sunset. To demonstrate the importance and truly cultural sense of these observations we show how the solstitial orientation is dominant in the cities founded or significantly rebuilt under Augustus. The winter solstice appears then as a powerful and stable cultural marker that traverses the history of the city of Rome, links Augustus with the origins of the city as a kind of new founder - as was already known through other evidence - and connects any provincial cities with Rome to show the depth of their commitment to her as a part of a common world view.
Growing scientific evidence from modern climate science is loaded with implications for the environmental history of the Roman Empire and its successor societies. The written and archaeological ...evidence, although richer than commonly realized, is unevenly distributed over time and space. A first synthesis of what the written records and multiple natural archives (multi-proxy data) indicate about climate change and variability across western Eurasia from c. 100 B.C. to 800 A.D. confirms that the Roman Empire rose during a period of stable and favorable climatic conditions, which deteriorated during the Empire's thirdcentury crisis. A second, briefer period of favorable conditions coincided with the Empire's recovery in the fourth century; regional differences in climate conditions parallel the diverging fates of the eastern and western Empires in subsequent centuries. Climate conditions beyond the Empire's boundaries also played an important role by affecting food production in the Nile valley, and by encouraging two major migrations and invasions of pastoral peoples from Central Asia.
Europe Without America Rhode, Benjamin
Survival (London),
04/2024, Letnik:
66, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This essay examines the historically anomalous nature of the contemporary US-led European security order in the context of other distinctive aspects of European history. These include the absence of ...a long-lasting hegemon since the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe's rise and global dominance, and its instigation of the two world wars which brought its own destruction. The essay argues that America's role as effectively a non-territorial hegemon allowed Europe largely to reconcile the 'impossible trinity' of unity, security and liberty which had previously eluded it. However, this anomalous and relatively happy period could soon end if, due to US internal political dynamics or a need to strategically prioritise East Asia, the American Leviathan withdraws from its function as Europe's security provider.
Early in the twentieth century a new character type emerged in the crime novels of American writers such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler: the “hard-boiled” detective, most famously ...exemplified by Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon. Unlike the analytical detectives of nineteenth-century fiction, such as Edgar Allan Poe’s Inspector Dupin, the new detectives encountered cases not as intricate logical puzzles but as stark challenges of manhood. In the stories of these characters and their criminal opposites, John T. Irwin explores the tension within ideas of American masculinity between subordination and independence and, for the man who becomes “his own boss,” the conflict between professional codes and personal desires. He shows how, within different works of hard-boiled fiction, the professional either overcomes the personal or is overcome by it, ending in ruinous relationships or in solitary integrity, and how within the genre all notions of manly independence are ultimately revealed to be illusions subordinate to fate itself.
Tracing the stylistic development of the genre, Irwin demonstrates the particular influence of the novel of manners, especially the writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald. He goes on to argue that, from the time of World War II, when hard-boiled fiction began to appear on the screen in film noir just as women entered the workforce in large numbers, many of its themes came to extend to female empowerment. Finally, he discusses how these themes persist in contemporary dramatic series on television, representing the conflicted lives of Americans into the twenty-first century.
El Imperio romano se transformó radicalmente en el modo de interpretarse mental, imaginativa y discursivamente entre los siglos III y V de nuestra era, gracias al influjo de la vida cristiana ...propuesta por la Iglesia. Las sociedades occidentales que heredaron y asumieron esa transformación han sufrido, a su vez, en los últimos siglos (XVIXXI) otra radical transformación en el modo de interpretarse desde su imaginario social, debido a la pérdida de influencia social de la Iglesia. En el primer caso se trata de un proceso de de-secularización, en el segundo de secularización. La presente investigación propone una reflexión sobre este hecho desde dos conceptos claves: vida cristiana y secularización. Vida cristiana es aquella en la que se toman decisiones fundadas en la revelación cristiana orientada a la unión transformante en Dios por amor; implica un sentido trascendente, metahistórico y escatológico de la existencia. Secularización es el proceso que ha llevado a la desaparición progresiva de la vida cristiana en el imaginario social de las sociedades de antigua tradición cristiana. Así, la temática propuesta se desarrolla en cuatro partes: (1) presentación de la religión romana y (2) cómo el cristianismo la de-secularizó, para después (3) abordar el proceso de secularización actual y (4) su influjo en la vida cristiana.
We are continuing our series of studies regarding the maps of Roman Dacia with this short note regarding the representation of Dacia on a map published by Grigore Tocilescu in his book Fouilles et ...recherches archéologiques en Roumanie: communications faites à l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres de Paris, 1892-1899, Bucarest, 1900. The map illustrates the level of knowledge concerning the main elements of the topography of Dacia, including the roads and the forts
ROMAN DACIA IN THE DIGITAL ERA Szabó, Csaba
Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology,
01/2020, Letnik:
7, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The study of Roman Dacia in the last two centuries produced thousands of articles, studies, monographs and proceedings and revealed at least 3800 archaeological sites from the short period of ...existence of the province between 106-270 AD. The large quantity of material evidence – epigraphic, figurative, ceramic, architectural and numismatic – is constantly growing due to the numerous rescue excavations in the last two decades. The emergence of digital humanities and the possibilities of digital era created new perspectives in cataloguing, collecting and presenting archaeological big data. The article presents some of the major results of digital humanities focusing on the digitization of the materiality of Roman Dacia.
The conventional view of inflation in the Roman world, based on evidence from Roman Egypt, is that prices were steady from the middle of the first century AD until around AD 274, other than a ...doubling of prices between AD 160 and 190. By a quantitative treatment of the data for all available prices, and indicators of prices, this paper shows that this picture is broadly correct for wheat, but that prices for other goods increased throughout the period from AD 160 to 270. This pattern suggests that there were two co-existing market sectors. One for wheat, where prices appear to have been impacted by state action, and another where other commodities were left to find their own market level within a relatively free market.
Vatican II Mayunda Mbuinga, Willy-Pierre
2024
eBook
Odprti dostop
Le Concile Vatican II appartient-il à un passé révolu? Ou fait-il tellement partie de la vie de l’Église que nous ne sommes plus conscients qu’il reste «une boussole fiable» pour nous orienter ...aujourd’hui?Alors que le pape François propose de courageuses réformes et la voie nouvelle de la synodalité, Vatican II refait surface de façon surprenante, offrant les ressources de ses reformulations doctrinales et l’exemple de la responsabilité de ses acteurs. L’ouvrage montre comment la longue histoire où s’inscrit Vatican II, de sa préparation à sa célébration et sa réception, est toujours ouverte. Il nous pousse à valoriser l’héritage conciliaire en fidélité à l’Évangile du Christ et à l’Esprit Saint, pour progresser en Église vers un monde plus fraternel.
A Literary History of Medicine by the Syrian physician Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah (d. 1270) is the earliest comprehensive history of medicine. It contains biographies of over 432 physicians, ranging from the ...ancient Greeks to the author’s contemporaries, describing their training and practice, often as court physicians, and listing their medical works; all this interlaced with poems and anecdotes. These volumes present the first complete and annotated translation along with a new edition of the Arabic text showing the stages in which the author composed the work. Introductory essays provide important background. The reader will find on these pages an Islamic society that worked closely with Christians and Jews, deeply committed to advancing knowledge and applying it to health and wellbeing.
PDF
