Ancient Rome: History and Culture

Short note of on the history of Syracuse

Scholarship on Sulpicius Rufus has long been guided by an old paradigm of prosopography, which dictated that political events in the Roman Republic were based on long term alliances built through kinship ties and mutual ideology. While modern scholarship has changed to view Roman political alliances more fluidly, views of Sulpicius have not changed. Most scholars accept the view that Sulpicius was little more than a lackey of Marius, who switched to Marius' side after a bitter split with his former comrades, the optimates. Sulpicius' tribunate was a time of great change in Rome, at the eve of the Social War and the dawn of a new era of civil wars. Thus it is key to re-evaluate his actions and motives in light of more recent studies that give evidence of independent agency among Roman politicians, and especially among tribunes. Thus, this paper discusses the nature of power politics and the institution of the tribunate in the late Republic as well as argues that Sulpicius Rufus acted as an independent agent who made his own decisions rather than be the tool of another.

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:

Aquae Urbis Romae is an interactive cartographic history of the relationships between hydrological and hydraulic systems and their impact on the urban development of Rome, Italy. Our study begins in 753 BC and will ultimately extend to the present day. Aquae Urbis Romae examines the intersections between natural hydrological elements including springs, rain, streams, marshes, and the Tiber River, and constructed hydraulic elements including aqueducts, fountains, sewers, bridges, conduits, etc., that together create the water infrastructure system of Rome. The long term goals of this project are to increase understanding of the profound relationships that exist between water systems, cultural practice, and urbanism in Rome, and by its example, in all cities, landscapes, and environments. It is hoped that this study will foster work by other scholars and designers who are interested in exploring the ways in which water infrastructure can be exploited toward the future development of humane, ecologically responsible, and engaging civic environments.

Abstract: What happens when states or empires face multiple and geographically dispersed assaults along their frontiers from non-state, tribal actors? It is plausible to argue that the result may be state decentralization, both military and administrative. In some cases, this may be a conscious strategy pursued by the central authorities, but in others, it may be the result of centrifugal tendencies pursued by disaffected local leaders. This article illustrates this argument by describing the end of the Roman empire, caused by multiple assaults of barbarian groups. The lesson is that in such an environment a centralized state that arrogates to itself all the functions of security provision may undermine its own safety.

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

In "Climate Change and the Fall of the Roman Empire," McCormick explores what bio-molecular evidence and climate change data suggest about the impact of volcanic events on the collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of Carolingian Europe. Drawing on ice core evidence and primary documentary research for the period 750 to 950 AD, McCormick examines the impact of volcanic events on the collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of Carolingian Europe. Climate cooling caused by eight volcanic events, resulted in nine major winter anomalies that affected food production and human survival.

This dissertation applies the principles of fiscal dissertation to the study of the Roman Republic. I argue that the creation of a profitable empire allowed the ruling elite to end their reliance on domestic taxation to fund state activity, and that Rome's untaxed citizens were effectively disenfranchised as a result. They therefore lacked the bargaining power to prevent aristocrats from enriching themselves at the expense of the state. The result was a set of leading individuals whose resources could overwhelm those of communal, public institutions. This wealth allowed them to control the distribution of economic resources within Roman society, reinforcing hierarchies and forcing less fortunate citizens to tie themselves to patronage networks instead of state institutions. This state, unable to command the respect of its constituents, was eventually picked off in the competition between great individuals.

Roman Imperialism and Runic Literacy : The Westernization of Northern Europe (150-800 AD)

Roman Acculturation of Indigenous Customs in Western Europe

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. 

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

What did the Roman emperor look like? Among the thousands of surviving Roman imperial marble heads, how do we put a name to a face, or a face to a name? This lecture will take a critical look at this process: it will not only question some of our modern certainties about who is who, but it will ask what we can learn from our mistakes.

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

Spanning one-ninth of the earth's circumference across three continents, the Roman Empire ruled a quarter of humanity through complex networks of political power, military domination and economic exchange. These extensive connections were sustained by premodern transportation and communication technologies that relied on energy generated by human and animal bodies, winds, and currents. Conventional maps that represent this world as it appears from space signally fail to capture the severe environmental constraints that governed the flows of people, goods and information. Cost, rather than distance, is the principal determinant of connectivity. For the first time, ORBIS allows us to express Roman communication costs in terms of both time and expense. By simulating movement along the principal routes of the Roman road network, the main navigable rivers, and hundreds of sea routes in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and coastal Atlantic, this interactive model reconstructs the duration and financial cost of travel in antiquity. Taking account of seasonal variation and accommodating a wide range of modes and means of transport, ORBIS reveals the true shape of the Roman world and provides a unique resource for our understanding of premodern history.

Book from U. of California which the University is offering free on-line. 

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.

A website on ancient Sicily

A section of a website on ancient Sicily

ancient Syracuse in Sicily

ancient Syracuse in Sicily