Three Centuries Of Greek Culture Under The Roman Empire Homo Romanus Graeca Oratione Ebook

The underlying theme of Three Centuries of Greek Culture under the Roman Empire is the idea that, under Roman rule, Greek culture was still alive and dynamic and continued to exert a degree of cultural domination, either real or apparent. So, we hope to analyse the meanings of concepts such as “Greek” or “Greece” in the Empire. Are we right to assume that there was a clear opposition between Greek and Roman? Or would it be more accurate to speak of a “Graeco-Roman world”? It would certainly be possible to make a list of “elements of identity”, on both sides —Greek and Roman—, but, in this case, where should the borders between identity and community be placed? Three Centuries of Greek Culture under the Roman Empire presents several approaches to the period between the second and fourth centuries AD from a variety of angles, perspectives and disciplines. Until now, this time has usually been considered to be the junction of the decline between the classical world and the emergence of the medieval world; however, this book establishes a basis for considering the Imperial period as a specific stage in cultural, historical and social development with a distinct personality of its own.

Hellenism and Empire explores identity, politics, and culture in the Greek world of the first three centuries AD, the period known as the second sophistic. The sources of this identity were the words and deeds of classical Greece, and the emphasis placed on Greekness and Greek heritage was far greater then than at any other time. Yet this period is often seen as a time of happy consensualism between the Greek and Roman halves of the Roman Empire. The first part of the book shows that Greek identity came before any loyalty to Rome (and was indeed partly a reaction to Rome), while the views of the major authors of the period, which are studied in the second part, confirm and restate the prior claims of Hellenism.

Karl Marx observed that "just when people seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves..., they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service". While the Greek east under Roman rule was not revolutionary, perhaps, in the sense that Marx had in mind, it was engaged in creating something that had not previously existed, in part just through the millennia-long involvement with its own tradition, which was continually being remodelled and readapted. It was an age that was intensely self-conscious about its relation to history, a consciousness that manifested itself not only in Attic purism and a reverence for antique literary models but also in ethnic identities, educational and religious institutions, and political interactions with - and even among - the Romans. In this volume, which represents a selection of the papers presented at the colloquium, "Greeks on Greekness: The Construction and Uses of the Greek Past among Greeks under the Roman Empire," held at the Center for Hellenic Studies on 25-28 August 2001, seven scholars explore some of the forms that this preoccupation with the Greek past assumed under Roman rule. Taken together, the chapters in this volume offer a kaleidoscopic view of how Greeks under the Roman Empire related to their past, indicating the multiple ways in which the classical tradition was problematised, adapted, transformed, and at times rejected. They thus provide a vivid image of a lived relation to tradition, one that was inventive rather than conservative and self-conscious rather than passive. The Greeks under Rome played with their heritage, as they played at being and not being the Greeks they continually studied and remembered.

TransAntiquity explores transgender practices, in particular cross-dressing, and their literary and figurative representations in antiquity. It offers a ground-breaking study of cross-dressing, both the social practice and its conceptualization, and its interaction with normative prescriptions on gender and sexuality in the ancient Mediterranean world. Special attention is paid to the reactions of the societies of the time, the impact transgender practices had on individuals’ symbolic and social capital, as well as the reactions of institutionalized power and the juridical systems. The variety of subjects and approaches demonstrates just how complex and widespread "transgender dynamics" were in antiquity.

Greeks wrote mostly on papyrus, but the Romans wrote solemn religious, public and legal documents on wooden tablets often coated with wax. This book investigates the historical significance of this resonant form of writing; its power to order the human realm and cosmos and to make documents efficacious; its role in court; the uneven spread - an aspect of Romanization - of this Roman form outside Italy, as provincials made different guesses as to what would please their Roman overlords; and its influence on the evolution of Roman law. An historical epoch of Roman legal transactions without writing is revealed as a juristic myth of origins. Roman legal documents on tablets are the ancestors of today's dispositive legal documents - the document as the act itself. In a world where knowledge of the Roman law was scarce - and enforcers scarcer - the Roman law drew its authority from a wider world of belief.

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