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Calendar of Roman Events
Introduction Steve Worboys and I began this calendar in 1980 or 1981 when we discovered that the exact dates of many events survive from Roman antiquity, the most famous being the ides of March murder of Caesar. Flipping through a few books on Roman history revealed a handful of dates, and we believed that to fill every day of the year would certainly be impossible. From 1981 until 1989 I kept the calendar, adding dates as I ran across them. In 1989 I typed the list into the computer and we began again to plunder books and journals for dates, this time recording sources. Since then I have worked and reworked the Calendar, revising old entries and adding many, many more. The Roman Calendar The calendar was reformed twice, once by Caesar in 46 BC and later by Augustus in 8 BC. Each of these reforms is described in A. K. Michels’ book The Calendar of the Roman Republic. In an ordinary pre-Julian year, the number of days in each month was as follows: 29 January 31 May 29 September 28 February 29 June 31 October 31 March 31 Quintilis (July) 29 November 29 April 29 Sextilis (August) 29 December. The Romans did not number the days of the months consecutively. They reckoned backwards from three fixed points: The kalends, the nones, and the ides. The kalends is the first day of the month. For months with 31 days the nones fall on the 7th and the ides the 15th. For other months the nones fall on the 5th and the ides on the 13th. -
The Rhetoric(S) of St. Augustine's Confessions
University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Communication Scholarship Communication 2008 The Rhetoric(s) of St. Augustine's Confessions James M. Farrell University of New Hampshire, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/comm_facpub Part of the Christianity Commons, Classical Literature and Philology Commons, Ethics in Religion Commons, History of Christianity Commons, Medieval History Commons, Medieval Studies Commons, and the Rhetoric Commons Recommended Citation James M. Farrell, "The Rhetoric(s) of St. Augustine's Confessions," Augustinian Studies 39:2 (2008), 265-291. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Communication at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Communication Scholarship by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Rhetoric(s) of St. Augustine’s Confessions. James M. Farrell University of New Hampshire Much of the scholarship on Augustine’s Confessions has consigned the discipline of rhetoric to the margins. Rhetoric was Augustine’s “major” in school, and his bread and bacon as a young adult. But in turning to God in the garden at Milan, Augustine also turned away from his profession. Rightly so, the accomplishment of Augustine’s conversion is viewed as a positive development. But the conversion story also structures the whole narrative of the Confessions and thus rhetoric is implicated in that narrative. It is the story of “Latin rhetorician turned Christian bishop.”1 Augustine’s intellectual and disciplinary evolution is mapped over a story of spiritual ascent. -
Roman Domestic Religion : a Study of the Roman Lararia
ROMAN DOMESTIC RELIGION : A STUDY OF THE ROMAN LARARIA by David Gerald Orr Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland in partial fulfillment of the requirements fo r the degree of Master of Arts 1969 .':J • APPROVAL SHEET Title of Thesis: Roman Domestic Religion: A Study of the Roman Lararia Name of Candidate: David Gerald Orr Master of Arts, 1969 Thesis and Abstract Approved: UJ~ ~ J~· Wilhelmina F. {Ashemski Professor History Department Date Approved: '-»( 7 ~ 'ii, Ii (, J ABSTRACT Title of Thesis: Roman Domestic Religion: A Study of the Roman Lararia David Gerald Orr, Master of Arts, 1969 Thesis directed by: Wilhelmina F. Jashemski, Professor This study summarizes the existing information on the Roman domestic cult and illustrates it by a study of the arch eological evidence. The household shrines (lararia) of Pompeii are discussed in detail. Lararia from other parts of the Roman world are also studied. The domestic worship of the Lares, Vesta, and the Penates, is discussed and their evolution is described. The Lares, protective spirits of the household, were originally rural deities. However, the word Lares was used in many dif ferent connotations apart from domestic religion. Vesta was closely associated with the family hearth and was an ancient agrarian deity. The Penates, whose origins are largely un known, were probably the guardian spirits of the household storeroom. All of the above elements of Roman domestic worship are present in the lararia of Pompeii. The Genius was the living force of a man and was an important element in domestic religion. -
Superstition, Anticlericalism, and Cicero's De Divinatione in Enlightenment England, C.1700-1730
East, K.A. (2018) Deconstructing Divination: Superstition, Anticlericalism, and Cicero's De Divinatione in Enlightenment England, c.1700-1730. In: Richard Evans (ed.) Prophets and Profits: Ancient Divination and Its Reception. Abingdon: Routledge, pp.183-198. Copyright: This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Prophets and Profits: Ancient Divination and Its Reception on 05/09/2017, available online: https://www.routledge.com/Prophets-and- Profits-Ancient-Divination-and-Its-Reception/Evans/p/book/9781138290150 Date deposited: 05/04/2017 Embargo release date: 05 March 2019 Newcastle University ePrints - eprint.ncl.ac.uk DECONSTRUCTING DIVINATION: SUPERSTITION, ANTICLERICALISM, AND CICERO’S DE DIVINATIONE IN ENLIGHTENMENT ENGLAND, C. 1700-1730 Katherine A. East Abstract In the complex inter-confessional exchanges which defined Enlightenment England the accusation of ‘superstition’ became a powerful weapon to wield, and few wielded it more extensively and controversially than those radical figures waging war on the power of the clergy. As treatises proliferated which condemned miracles, prophecies, and sacerdotal authority as superstitions with no place in a true religion, one text in particular was regularly invoked in support: the second book of Cicero’s theological dialogue De Divinatione, in which, in response to his brother’s defence of divination in the first book, Cicero deconstructed the proffered examples of divinatory activity, the oracles and dreams, with rational argument. This chapter will examine how Cicero’s attack on superstitio in De Divinatione was adapted and deployed by three anticlerical writers: John Toland, Anthony Collins, and Matthew Tindal. In the work of these men ancient perceptions of divination and its place in religion and society can be found informing Enlightenment efforts to challenge the customary authority of the Church. -
Religio and Religiones in Roman Thinking
Les Études Classiques 75 (2007), p. 67-78. RELIGIO AND RELIGIONES IN ROMAN THINKING Despite the continuity of the term, the concept of “religion” as used in the history of religion and contemporary political discussion, is not identi- cal with the concept implied in the Latin word religio 1. To explore the conceptual differences, I will analyse the meaning and maybe the history of the meaning of different terms that might pertain to our concept of “religion” as far as the Roman empire is concerned. The body of texts thus analysed is limited and restricted to Latin texts, as I am interested in the main lines of thought that determined political and juridical and religious action on a larger scale. 1. Cicero Of all words, that might denote something like “religion”, religio, ob- viously, had the most consequential history. The word (and hence religio- sus) is present from Plautus onwards (Asinaria 781, Curculio 350, Mercator 881), clearly implying religious language, from a direct rela- tionship towards a deity till rather general scruple. The word is frequent in Cicero, in speeches as well as in philosophical texts. Exceptional are the speeches against Verres, collector of statues and unrestrained violator of human and divine property, that use the term and its adjective more than one hundred times. The much shorter speeches “On his house” and “On the answer of the haruspices” show between fifty and sixty occurrences, in similar order the philosophical treaty “On the Nature of the Gods” and De legibus with its second book concentrated on what we term religion — already the selection demonstrate the conceptual link between religio and religion. -
Deifying the People in Cicero's Post Reditum Ad Quirites
Deifying the People in Cicero’s Post Reditum ad Quirites In his speech to a popular assembly upon his return from exile in 57 B.C., Cicero appears to break with the prevailing religious ideology by assigning divine status to both the gods and the Roman people. While his rhetoric seems at times to rise to a sacrilegious pitch (esp. Red. Pop. 5, 18, 25), a careful reading of the speech shows that the Roman people retain their traditional position in the Republic’s cosmic-political hierarchy: though sovereign in political matters, the people’s good standing (dignitas) ultimately depends on the favor of the gods. Though some have pointed to the use of religion in Cicero’s speech Post Reditum ad Quirites as evidence of a pious ethos (Nicholson 1992, 104; Mack 1937, 43), the recurring theme of the populus divinus calls this into question, at least in relation to the gods. The orator pledges to show the same sort of pietas to the Roman people as the most devout men (sanctissimi homines) toward the gods, and he declares that the people’s numen shall be for him “as weighty and sacred as that of the immortal gods” (aeque mihi grave et sanctum ac deorum immortalium, 18). One scholar has characterized these lines as simply preposterous (Cole 2013, 70). Indeed, the dominant religious ideology of the time assumed a “terrifying difference in power between gods and mortals” (Ando 2008, xvii) and held that the welfare of the Roman people depended on right relations with the gods (on this ideology in Cicero’s works: Short 2012, 261-303). -
Publications (Professor Rhiannon Ash) 'A Stylish Exit: Marcus Terentius' Swan-Song (Tacitus, Annals 6.8), Curtius Rufus
Publications (Professor Rhiannon Ash) ‘A Stylish Exit: Marcus Terentius’ Swan-Song (Tacitus, Annals 6.8), Curtius Rufus, and Virgil’, Classical Quarterly 71 (2021). ‘Un-Parallel Lives? The Younger Quintus and Marcus Cicero in Cicero’s Letters’, Hermathena 202 (2021). ‘The Staging of Death: Tacitus’ Agrippina the Younger and the Dramatic Turn’, in A. Damtoft Poulsen and A. Jönsson, Usages of the Past in Roman Historiography (Brill 2021), 197-224. ‘Ciuilis rabies usque in exitium (Histories 3.80.2): Tacitus and the Evolving Trope of Republican Civil War during the Principate’, in C. Lange and F.J. Vervaet (eds), The Historiography of Late Republican Civil War (Brill 2019), 351-75. ‘Paradoxography and Marvels in Post-Domitianic Literature: “An Extraordinary Affair, Even in the Hearing!”’, in A. König and C. Whitton (eds.) Roman Literature under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian: Literary Interactions, AD 96–138. (Cambridge University Press 2018). Tacitus Annals 15 (Cambridge University Press 2018) Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics commentary. ‘Rhetoric and Roman Historiography’, in M. MacDonald (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies (Oxford University Press 2017), 195-204. ‘The Biter Bit? Sejanus and Tiberius in Tacitus’ Annals, Omnibus 74 (2017). ‘Tacitus and the Poets: In Nemora et Lucos ... Secedendum est (Dialogus 9.6)?’, in P. Mitsis and I. Ziogas (eds), Wordplay and Powerplay in Latin Poetry (De Gruyter 2016), 13-35. ‘Drip-Feed Invective: Pliny, Self-Fashioning, and the Regulus Letters’, in A. Marmodoro and J. Hill (eds), The Author's Voice in Classical Antiquity (Oxford University Press 2016), 207-32. ‘Never Say Die! Assassinating Emperors in Suetonius Lives of the Caesars’, in K. -
THE CURTII RUFI AGAIN by J. E. Atkinson (University of Cape Town
THE CURTII RUFI AGAIN by J. E. Atkinson (University of Cape Town) A. CURTIUS RUFUS' CONSULSHIP Dr. Vogel-Weidemann's note on the consular Curtius Rufus 1 requires com ment in the light of Barbieri's article inEpigraphica 29, '67. The Rufus who was the colleague of M. Pompeius Silvanus in June 45 was not Curti us Rufus, but A. Antonius Rufus, and their consulships ran through till at least 3rd October. 2 The Curtius Rufus who advanced to a governorship in Germania Superior perhaps as early as 46, 3 and then went on to the governorship of Mrica, must have been consul after 38, since, as Degrassi indicates, 4 the consular lists appear to be complete for the period 23 to 38. The terminus ante quem is determined by the command in Germany, and 46 itself is excluded as the consular list again appears to be complete. It is quite possible that it is our subject who is attested in the consular pair 'L. Oppio, Curtio R[uf]o' in the period 8th to 14th October of an unrecorded year. 6 If this pair in fact belongs after 38 we can narrow down the possibilities: October 39 is virtually excluded by Dio's account of Gains' intervention in September of that year; 6 October 42 is excluded as we already have a consul ordinarius in Caecina Largus; 7 45 is unlikely as Antonius Rufus and Pompeius Silvanus were still in office on 3rd October, and their dates now exclude 44, for we have to assign to the period 22nd September to 25th October 44 Cn. -
Religio Medici
This is (more or less) a facsimile version of the 1645 edition of Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici. Page and line breaks follow that edition exactly. Some changes have been made to the text: long esses are now short (I don’t own a proper typeface); a few typos have been corrected; some text has been changed to accord with the errata of the 1643 edition; a missing marginal note has been supplied; and pages misnumbered have been corrected. All these corrections and changes are noted as footnotes. Incorrect section numbers have not been changed. Some variant readings have been noted, where they’re of general interest; this is not, nor is it intended to be, even a precursor of a critical edition. Superscript of the form “K100” refer the reader to Keck’s Annotations on Religio Medici, giving their numbers as they are currently numbered on my web site (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/relmed/annotations.html). In editions following 1645, these notes accom- panied Religio Medici and were referred to in the text by bracketing the text being annotated; for example, the annotation I have numbered K2 appears thus: *There are many things delivered Rhetorically]. This is obviously not practical when the notes do not accompany the printed edition. James Eason ([email protected]) 2001 To such as have, or shall peruse the Observations upon a for- mer corrupt Copy of this Book. Here are some men that Politian speaks of, Cui quam recta ma- nus, tam fuit & facilis: and it seems the Author to the Obser- vations upon this book, would arrogate as much to -
The Blood of the Martyrs: the Attitudes of Pagan Emperors and Crowds Towards Christians, from Nero to Julian
The Blood of the Martyrs: The Attitudes of Pagan Emperors and Crowds Towards Christians, From Nero to Julian Domenico Miletti Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies in fulfillment of the requirements for the Master’s degree in Classical Studies Department of Classics and Religious Studies Faculty of Arts and Sciences University of Ottawa © Domenico Miletti, Ottawa, Canada, 2016 Abstract This MA thesis will discuss the reception of common, non-scholarly polytheists (pagans) to the persecution of Christians from the early empire until the Great Persecution (303-313, 322-324). Though modern scholars have addressed this issue and asserted that there was a change in attitude, many have not developed this into anything more than a passing statement. When chronologically analyzing the Christian acts, passions, letters, and speeches recounting the deaths of martyrs deemed historically authentic, and accounting for the literary and biblical topoi, we can demonstrate that the position of non-Christians changed. The methodology of this thesis will chronologically assess the martyr acts, passions, speeches, and letters which are historically accurate after literary and biblical topoi are addressed. These sources are available in the appendix. Throughout this analysis, we will see two currents. The primary current will seek to discern the change in pagan reception of anti-Christian persecution, while the second current will draw attention to the Roman concept of religio and superstitio, both important in understanding civic religion which upheld the pax deorum and defined loyalty to the Roman order through material sacrifices and closely connected to one's citizenship. Religio commonly denoted proper ritual practices, while superstitio defined irregular forms of worship which may endanger the state. -
Constantine: the Legal Recognition of Christianity and Its Antecedents El Reconocimiento Legal Del Cristianismo Y Sus Antecedentes
Constantine: the Legal Recognition of Christianity and its Antecedents El reconocimiento legal del cristianismo y sus antecedentes Ilaria L.E. RAMELLI Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Largo A. Gemelli 1, Gregorianum 3rd floor, 20123 Milan, Italy Durham University, UK / [email protected] [email protected] Abstract: As Gallien seems to have done before him, but Resumen: Ya antes de Constantino hubo intentos de invali- with a partial and temporary effect, and as Hadrian, Seve- dar los efectos del senatus consultum (35 D.C.) sobre la ilicitud rus Alexander, and Elagabalus may have intended to do, del cristianismo, como parece haber hecho Galieno, aunque Constantine reversed the effects of a senatus consultum con un efecto parcial y temporal, y como habían intentado from A.D. 35, transforming Christianity from a superstitio tal vez Adriano, Alejandro Severo y Elagabalus. Pero quien illicita to a religio licita in the empire. I study the implica- realmente invirtió los efectos de esa decisión senatorial fue tions of that senatus consultum, which is attested not only Constantino, al transformar el cristianismo de una religio illi- in Tertullian, but also in a Porphyrian passage, besides the cita en una religio licita en el imperio. En el presente artículo Acts of Apollonius. I endeavour to contextualise it in the se estudian las implicaciones de ese senatus consultum, que political and religious framework of the Tiberian age and está atestiguado no sólo en Tertuliano, sino también en un the relationship between Tiberius and the Senate. pasaje de Porfirio, además de las Actas de Apolonio. -
Augustine and Manichaeism: New Discoveries, New Perspectives the Subject ‘Augustine and Manichaeism’ Is a Very Extensive One
Augustine and manichaeism: new discoveries, new perspec- tives H van Oort1 (Universities of Utrecht and Nijmegen, Netherlands) ABSTRACT Augustine and manichaeism: new discoveries, new perspectives The subject ‘Augustine and Manichaeism’ is a very extensive one. In this article the author confines himself to some main lines and argues that the subject is of central importance in the history of Christianity He shows how the theology of the most important Western Church Father was influenced by Manichaeism and suggests that without Manichaeism Western theology cannot really be comprehended. 1 INTRODUCTION: THE THEME The subject ‘Augustine and Manichaeism’ is a very extensive one. We must confine ourselves to some main lines, we may discuss only some details, and we will wind up by drawing the most eye-catching conclusions. It goes without saying that our subject is of central importance in the history of Christianity. It is well known that the life and the work of Augustine of Hippo (354-430), the most influential Father of the Western Church, were inextricably connected with Mani- 2 chaeism . We even venture to say that, without a thorough know- ledge of the ‘Religion of Light’, Augustine’s theology is hardly 1 Honorary Professor, Department of Church History, University of Pretoria. 2 Most important studies until 1970: Alfaric (1919); Buonaiuti (1927:117- 127); Allgeier (1930, 1-13); Adam (1952:385-390; 1969:133-140); Frend (1954: 859-866; 1976); de Menasce (1956:79-93); Adam (1958:1-25); Clarke (1958:133-164); Adam (1965/19702:290-296. A selection of studies since 1970: Decret (1970); Geerlings (1971:45-60; 1972:124-131); Walter (1972); Feldmann (1975); Decret (1978); Koenen (1978:154-195); Feldmann (1980:198-216); Clark (1986:291-349); Oort (1987:137-152; 1989:382-386); Decret (1989:87-97); Chadwick (1990:203-222); Rutzenhöfer (1992:5-72); Lieu (19922:151-191).