Severan Culture

Severan Culture PDF

Author: Simon Swain

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007-10-04

Total Pages: 50

ISBN-13: 0521859824

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book surveys the Severan period's many developments in literature, philosophy, religion, art, archaeology and culture.

The Ludi Saeculares of Septimius Severus

The Ludi Saeculares of Septimius Severus PDF

Author: Jussi Rantala

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-02-24

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1351970399

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This is the first monograph to examine in detail the Ludi Saeculares (Secular Games) of Septimius Severus and argues that the games represented a radical shift from Antonine imperial ideology. To garner popular support and to legitimise his power, Severus conducted an intensive propaganda campaign, but how did he use the ludi to strengthen his power, and what were the messages he conveyed through them? The central theme is ritual, and the idea of ritual as a process that builds collective identity. The games symbolised the new Severan political and social vision and they embodied the idea of Roman identity and the image of Roman society which the emperor wished to promote. The programme of the games was recorded in a stone inscription and this text is analysed in detail, translated into English and contextualised in the socio-political aims of Septimius Severus.

Under Divine Auspices

Under Divine Auspices PDF

Author: Clare Rowan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1107020123

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Exploration of the role played by deities in the negotiation of imperial power under the Severan dynasty (AD 193-235).

Man and Animal in Severan Rome

Man and Animal in Severan Rome PDF

Author: Steven D. Smith

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-07-24

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1139992465

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Roman sophist Claudius Aelianus, born in Praeneste in the late second century CE, spent his career cultivating a Greek literary persona. Aelian was a highly regarded writer during his own lifetime, and his literary compilations would be influential for a thousand years and more in the Roman world. This book argues that the De natura animalium, a miscellaneous treasury of animal lore and Aelian's greatest work, is a sophisticated literary critique of Severan Rome. Aelian's fascination with animals reflects the cultural issues of his day: philosophy, religion, the exoticism of Egypt and India, sex, gender, and imperial politics. This study also considers how Aelian's interests in the De natura animalium are echoed in his other works, the Rustic Letters and the Varia Historia. Himself a prominent figure of mainstream Roman Hellenism, Aelian refined his literary aesthetic to produce a reading of nature that is both moral and provocative.

Emperor Alexander Severus

Emperor Alexander Severus PDF

Author: John S. McHugh

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2017-06-30

Total Pages: 503

ISBN-13: 1473845823

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Alexander Severus' is full of controversy and contradictions. He came to the throne through the brutal murder of his cousin, Elagabalus, and was ultimately assassinated himself. The years between were filled with regular uprisings and rebellions, court intrigue (the Praetorian Guard slew their commander at the Emperor's feet) and foreign invasion. Yet the ancient sources generally present his reign as a golden age of just government, prosperity and religious tolerance Not yet fourteen when he became emperor, Alexander was dominated by his mother, Julia Mammaea and advisors like the historian, Cassius Dio. In the military field, he successfully checked the aggressive Sassanid Persians but some sources see his Persian campaign as a costly failure marked by mutiny and reverses that weakened the army. When Germanic and Sarmatian tribes crossed the Rhine and Danube frontiers in 234, Alexander took the field against them but when he attempted to negotiate to buy time, his soldiers perceived him as weak, assassinated him and replaced him with the soldier Maximinus Thrax. John McHugh reassesses this fascinating emperor in detail.

World Architecture and Society [2 volumes]

World Architecture and Society [2 volumes] PDF

Author: Peter Louis Bonfitto

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2021-12-06

Total Pages: 968

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This two-volume encyclopedia covers buildings and sites of global significance from prehistoric times to the present day, providing students with an essential understanding of architectural development and its impact on human societies. This two-volume encyclopedia provides an in-depth look at buildings and sites of global significance throughout history. The volumes are separated into four regional sections: 1) the Americas, 2) Europe, 3) Africa and the Middle East, and 4) Asia and the Pacific. Four regional essays investigate the broader stylistic and historical contexts that describe the development of architecture through time and across the globe. Entries explore the unique importance of buildings and sites, including the megalithic wonder of Stonehenge and the imposing complex of Angkor Wat. Entries on Spanish colonial missions in the Americas and the medieval Islamic universities of the Sahara connect to broader building traditions. Other entries highlight remarkable stories of architectural achievement and memory, like those of Tuskegee University, a site hand-built by former slaves, or the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, which was built at the site of the atomic detonation. Each entry focuses on the architectural but includes strong consideration of the social impact, importance, and significance each structure has had in the past and in the present.

Saints

Saints PDF

Author: Françoise Meltzer

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2011-12

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 0226519929

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

While the modern world has largely dismissed the figure of the saint as a throwback, we remain fascinated by excess, marginality, transgression, and porous subjectivity—categories that define the saint. In this collection, Françoise Meltzer and Jas Elsner bring together top scholars from across the humanities to reconsider our denial of saintliness and examine how modernity returns to the lure of saintly grace, energy, and charisma. Addressing such problems as how saints are made, the use of saints by political and secular orders, and how holiness is personified, Saints takes us on a photo tour of Graceland and the cult of Elvis and explores the changing political takes on Joan of Arc in France. It shows us the self-fashioning of culture through the reevaluation of saints in late-antique Judaism and Counter-Reformation Rome, and it questions the political intent of underlying claims to spiritual attainment of a Muslim sheikh in Morocco and of Sephardism in Israel. Populated with the likes of Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, and Padre Pio, this book is a fascinating inquiry into the status of saints in the modern world.

Cultural Crossroads in the Ancient Novel

Cultural Crossroads in the Ancient Novel PDF

Author: Marília P. Futre Pinheiro

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-12-04

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 1501504029

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The protagonists of the ancient novels wandered or were carried off to distant lands, from Italy in the west to Persia in the east and Ethiopia in the south; the authors themselves came, or pretended to come, from remote places such as Aphrodisia and Phoenicia; and the novelistic form had antecedents in a host of classical genres. These intersections are explored in this volume. Papers in the first section discuss “mapping the world in the novels.” The second part looks at the dialogical imagination, and the conversation between fiction and history in the novels. Section 3 looks at the way ancient fiction has been transmitted and received. Space, as the locus of cultural interaction and exchange, is the topic of the fourth part. The fifth and final section is devoted to character and emotion, and how these are perceived or constructed in ancient fiction. Overall, a rich picture is offered of the many spatial and cultural dimensions in a variety of ancient fictional genres.

Political Autobiographies and Memoirs in Antiquity

Political Autobiographies and Memoirs in Antiquity PDF

Author: Gabriele Marasco

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-11-24

Total Pages: 473

ISBN-13: 9004214658

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Ancient autobiography has been the object of several studies and meetings. However, these have focused chiefly on the philosophical and literary aspects. This book aims to examine the development of political autobiography and memoirs in the Greek and Roman world, stressing, instead, the relation of a single work with the traditions of the genre and also the influence of the respective aims of the authors on the composition of autobiographies. At times these works were written as a means of propaganda in a political struggle, or to defend a past action, and often to furnish material to historians. Nonetheless, they still preserve the personal viewpoint and voice of the protagonists in all their vividness, even if distorted by the aim of defending their record. Political Autobiographies and Memoirs in Antiquity will be a highly valuable and useful reference tool for both scholars and students of Greek and Roman history and literature.