An overview of the physical state of Rome in the year 900, followed by an introduction to each of the major categories of material culture to be discussed: architecture, painting, icons, sculpture, inscriptions, manuscripts, ceramics, and coins. A rationale is provided for the format of the book: not a diachronic chronological survey as such, but instead organized around four overarching themes.

The introduction serves three main purposes. First, I present the topic of the book and its main goal: to identify the Greek tragedies that ancient actors continued to stage from the fourth century BC to the third century AD. In addition to surveying the relevant scholarly literature, I also introduce the terminology used in the book. Second, I describe the four types of ancient sources that allow us to reconstruct the repertoire of ancient actors: inscriptions, literary records, tragedy-related vases and Roman tragedies. I discuss each category of records separately, presenting previous studies and addressing their contribution to my own work. Third, I summarise the four chapters making up the book and I describe how I have arranged the two Appendices collecting ancient sources, one related to identifiable Greek tragedies (Appendix I) and the other to their unidentifiable counterparts (Appendix II).

Considering the sources and material evidence available from Rome, this chapter focuses on the evidence of women’s associations with these soldiers of the different units stationed in the capital. These women were often labeled as “wives” in written documentation. By analyzing the available evidence, predominantly on funerary monuments, the authors expand the discussion of the social expectations and realities of women associated with the military in the context of the Empire’s center. The evidence gives us a rich image of an aspect of society that has not yet been explored, while at the same time providing a new perspective on the life of Roman soldiers. The origin of the women and their social background is treated as a relevant factor for their integration in the military community and – as inhabitants of Rome – in the community of the city. In this context it is interesting to consider the origin of personal relationships. In some cases, it seems that women accompanied soldiers to Rome from a provincial location and other cases suggest the relationship began in the capital itself.

Between the late second and the early fourth century CE, several empresses received the title Mater Castrorum, either in official documents, inscriptions, and coinage or in unofficial honorific or dedicatory inscriptions erected by subjects. Scholars have assumed the title was indicative of a tight-knit relationship between the empresses and the soldiers. Recent studies of the numismatic and epigraphic evidence, however, have demonstrated that, at least in the cases of the early Matres Castrorum, the title was not descriptive of an actual relationship with the military. These studies argue it was the product of dynastic propaganda that prepared a smooth path for successors. Given this new, demonstrated understanding of the title’s original purpose this chapter investigates how the title fits into ideologies that emperors “negotiated” with the constituencies in the Empire. Based on the evidence, we conclude that the meaning and use of the Mater Castrorum title changed over time according to the agenda of those who employed it. The evolution of the title is not surprising, but as with so many aspects of investigations into women and the military, the complexities of its use have not previously been conceived of in this way.

This chapter examines a series of athletic dedications to trace both the evolution of the epigrammatic representation of the angelia - the herald’s proclamation of victory at an athletic festival - and to define the particular characteristics of the epigram as an athletic dedication. While a continuity exists between modes of athletic verse, epigrams – as inscriptions – and epinikian songs – as choral performances – function differently and interact with different audiences. Epigrams do not, for example, use large-scale mythic narratives to bestow glory on their patrons, but they do circumscribe the movements and voices of their audiences and use the religiously and culturally important sites of their dedication to add to their meaning.

This chapter introduces the rich intersections between Latin literature and Roman material culture. Why should Latin scholars concern themselves with ancient objects? How might study of Roman physical remains inform an understanding of Latin literature? In what ways do attitudes towards Roman material remains align with disciplinary approaches to interpreting Latin literature? The chapter proceeds in seven interconnected parts. The first examines the materiality of Roman texts, introducing the picture-poems of Optatian. This leads to cultural ideas about words and images – and not least to the artefactual nature of manuscripts in both roll and codex. Late-antique ‘illustrated’ manuscripts take us to the rhetorical phenomenon of ‘ecphrasis’. Ecphrasis has been much discussed in recent years; but there remains a reluctance to look across the landscapes of art and text: a residual blindness to the ‘cyclical’ dynamics between visual and verbal media. The point leads to an analysis of words and images displayed in a shared environment, as well as some of the Roman rhetorical conceptual underpinnings. It also leads, in the final section, to variables of education, learning and literacy.

This chapter offers a perspective on Latin literature from the neighbouring field of Roman history. It discusses what appears to be a growing intellectual divide between the two fields, a divergence that is surprising given the increased focus on the politics of literature among Latinists. The essay also offers some suggestions for bridging the gap.I suggest that Latinists could take a much broader view of the structures of power in which Latin texts were embedded, rather than focusing on the phenomenon of autocracy and high politics, that they might profitably continue to extend their attention to non-literary texts and especially inscriptions, and that they could work harder to speak to historians.

Pater’s individual volumes of essays were republished and reprinted many times in the years following his death. The books passed from hand to hand, and entered the second-hand market, often featuring brief inscriptions which indicate that they were proffered as gifts, in addition to more revealing marks of ownership comprising underlinings and marginal annotations. This postscript considers a small sample of such books, helpful in illustrating the diversity and orientation of Pater’s posthumous readership. Ranging from an early copy of Appreciations bought as a schoolboy by an eminent English scholar to a pocket edition of the same work presented to a prospective Oxford student, these books testify to the continuing appeal of Pater’s writings. An underlying theme to be followed is the vexed question of Pater’s perceived relevance to the study of English literature while the subject itself was acquiring its institutional framework in British universities. Some indications of Pater’s American readership, and his appeal to the more flexible curricula of the ‘new universities’ of the 1960s, are also relevant to the context under consideration here.

This chapter is an overview of the extant Middle Mongolian historical sources of the Mongol Empire, its documents arranged here according to their places of origin, the writing systems used, and their content and genres. They are described and evaluated in the following sections: extant and lost chronicles, Uighur script epigraphic monuments (edicts, epitaphs and other memorial inscriptions, graffiti, seal and coin inscriptions), Uighur script letters of Mongol rulers to foreigners, monuments from Qara-Qoto, Uighur script documents from the lands of the Ilkhans and their vassals and from the Turfan area and the Dunhuang Mogao caves, square-script monuments, and badges and xylograph fragments in square script or in Uighur letters. The notes also offer new interpretations of some passages of the monuments discussed.

The discovery of eleven bronze rams belonging to war-ships off western Sicily, near the Egadi Islands, has produced an invaluable addition to our record of 3rd century BC Latin inscriptions. The archaeological and historical background as well as the palaeography and language of the Latin texts have been examined by J. Prag in three exemplary discussions (2014; 2017), which are expanded in this chapter. The question informing the present inquiry is whether these texts contribute to our knowledge of early Latin, or merely confirm what we know already about early pronunciation, morphology or syntax. The answer is not simple. Palaeographically and orthographically, the texts are very much in line with what one might expect of inscriptions of that time period. The many abbreviations mean that we cannot say much about their morphology. In principle, we should be able to say more about their pronunciation; but again, results are inconclusive. The texts are neither excessively archaic in appearance, nor excessively modern, and already at this early stage it is difficult to deduce pronunciation from orthography. But that in itself is a worthwhile result.

In the Ab Urbe Condita, Livy reports that in 363 BC a dictator was appointed to revive the ancient ritual of the Capitoline nail in the midst of a plague (Livy 7.3.1–9). While recounting this historic episode, Livy provides a detailed description of an inscribed law marking this ritual that was located in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline.

William Hallam grew up in the little village of Lockinge (Berkshire) but lived for the rest of his life in Swindon, where he was employed at the Great Western Railway Works. His remarkable diaries (eighty-two volumes: 1886–1952) provide an exceptional opportunity to assess the effects of moving from a rural, agricultural background to an urban, industrial one. Hallam was in many respects a classic example of the alienated industrial worker. This certainly intensified his passionate ruralism, yet its roots lay much further back, in the deep-seated loyalties formed by his early experiences in Lockinge. Indeed, although he was a working-class man rather than a genteel middle-class woman, the parallels between the role landscape played in Hallam’s life and in Beatrix Cresswell’s are remarkably close.

This chapter analyses Thucydides use of sources and his approach to evidence. It surveys his (possible) use of documentary sources and eye-witness testimony, before going on to discuss specific types of evidence cited in the text: inscriptions, letters, poetry and prose writing. The second part of the chapter explores the ways in which Thucydides’ approach to history (and to the writing of history) might have influenced his use of sources, drawing particular attention to the influence that Thucydides’ views of religion might have had on his presentation of events.

This book opens with some introductory notes on the two ecumenical synods, marking the discrepancy between their importance in the festival world of the Principate and the obscurity they have fallen into in present-day scholarship. This is mainly due to the extremely fragmentary source material on their history and organisation. The ecumenical synods are mainly known from inscriptions, often heavily damaged, and papyri from Egypt. These diverse sources present us with a complex and often contradictory view. The most important documents for this study are decrees drawn up by the synods, their correspondence with emperors and membership certificates. A great variety in names and titles further complicates our understanding of the synods. Nevertheless, there are a number of basic elements that recur in the documents promulgated by the synods themselves, which are discussed briefly. The final part of the introduction sets out the structure of the book as well as the basic principles that form the core of the argumentation.

The use of local languages is sometimes considered a marker of resistance to Roman power or culture. However, we show that continued use of local languages cannot necessarily be equated with resistance, nor is it easy to identify the use of language or script in particular inscriptions as driven by a desire to express resistance. This chapter discusses how (and whether) it is possible to know when resistance is involved in language use in the Roman Empire and examines case studies of inscriptional evidence pertaining to the use of Faliscan, Oscan, Paelignian, Venetic, Celtiberian, and Hebrew. We propose that many of them were written to present a ‘non-Roman’ rather than an ‘anti-Roman’ identity, and that ‘non-Roman’ identity could stand alongside both acceptance of Rome and violence resistance to its political hegemony.