Group items tagged

ancient Syracuse in Sicily

ancient Syracuse in Sicily

This account of viticulture in Italy during the period from the Punic Wars to the crisis of the third century AD is written in the conviction that the 'economic' history of the ancient world will remain unacceptably impoverished if it is written in isolation from the social and cultural history of the same period. The orthodoxy which sees a revolution in Italian agriculture in the age of Cato the Censor and a crisis in the time of the emperor Trajan seems to me to be an example of this. It is based on a traditional and limited selection of evidence, and is unable to answer many questions which are increasingly being asked about production and exchange in the ancient world, questions about the social background and cultural preferences which underlie production strategies and the evolution of demand. I hope that this study may show some other possibilities, which have still been only partly explored by researchers, of illuminating the changing patterns of Roman agriculture and trade, through the use of comparative evidence and the re-examination of the relevant literary texts for data that are more than simply 'economic' in the most restricted sense.

Links to ancient texts having to do with Syracuse history

A website on ancient Sicily

A section of a website on ancient Sicily

Novel about the Tribune Saturninus written by Raffaello Giovagnoli, in the 19th century.  Raffaello Giovagnoli was an early historian of the Rissorgemento and also wrote straight histories about ancient Rome. This novel about Saturninus was popular in Italy at the time of publication. 

Short note of on the history of Syracuse

Help needed for creating a sort of "google map" of the ancient world.  

Novel about the Tribune Saturninus written by Raffaello Giovagnoli, in the 19th century.  Raffaello Giovagnoli was an early historian of the Rissorgemento and also wrote straight histories about ancient Rome. This novel about Saturninus was popular in Italy at the time of publication

Daniel De Leon's pamphlet on Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus and other tribunes in ancient Rome. De Leon was a leading U.S. socialist and Marxist in the late 19th and early 20th century. His focus is mostly on class struggle in in the Roman Republic. His points are polemical with constant comparison and contrast to contemporary class struggle and politics.

Daniel De Leon's pamphlet on Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus and other tribunes in ancient Rome. De Leon was a leading U.S. socialist and Marxist in the late 19th and early 20th century. His focus is mostly on class struggle in in the Roman Republic. His points are polemical with constant comparison and contrast to contemporary class struggle and politics.

Daniel De Leon's pamphlet on Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus and other tribunes in ancient Rome. De Leon was a leading U.S. socialist and Marxist in the late 19th and early 20th century. His focus is mostly on class struggle in in the Roman Republic. His points are polemical with constant comparison and contrast to contemporary class struggle and politics.

Daniel De Leon's pamphlet on Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus and other tribunes in ancient Rome. De Leon was a leading U.S. socialist and Marxist in the late 19th and early 20th century. His focus is mostly on class struggle in in the Roman Republic. His points are polemical with constant comparison and contrast to contemporary class struggle and politics.

Description of the Subura from "A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome."

Introduction: The political 'fall' of the Roman Empire (from 410 C.E.) has long been regarded as one of the pivotal events in world history. Ever since Edward Gibbon completed his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1788, there has been considerable debate on the causes for this 'event'. It must be stressed, first, that though there was a real decline of the political power and unity of the Western Roman Empire, the cultural heritage of the empire would persist in the West through the middle ages and in an altered form into the modern period. The eastern portion of the empire continued as the relatively Byzantine Empire, which was eventually conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 C.E.. Second, it is wiser to speak of causes rather than any single cause; a series of interlocked conditions and their effects led to a radical change in the political condition of Europe during the 5th century. As noted by Michael Grant:

The government that led Rome's rise to world power in the middle and late Republic was founded on aristocratic competition. What drew men to the struggle was the prospect of personal honor and political authority.[1] Entry into the highest stratum of Roman society came with victory at the polls: for most of the history of the Republic those who won a curule magistracy could expect enrollment in the senate at the next census, but even before that date they enjoyed a senator's prerogatives. They perhaps also earned a place among the nobilitas and passed this distinction on to their sons.[2] Furthermore, winning public office was inseparably bound up with the moral imperatives of aristocratic status. Virtus,gloria,dignitas, and a constellation of associated ideals represented the highest aspirations of aristocratic endeavor, and although in the abstract the qualities these words defined were capable of various manifestations, only rarely and awkwardly in fact could they be revealed apart from service to the state. Hence the vital importance of winning public office and thereby gaining the chance to display them: the moral superiority that their possession implied, quite as much as membership in the senate or noble birth, enabled individuals to