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Studies the effect of Rome's geographic worldview on its politics
This volume considers representations of space and movement in sources ranging from Roman comedy to late antique verse, exploring how poetry in the Roman world is fundamentally shaped by its relationship to travel within the geography of Rome’s far-reaching empire. The volume surveys Roman poetics of travel and geography in sources ranging from Plautus to Augustan poetry, from the Flavians to Ausonius. The chapters offer a range of approaches to: the complex relationship between Latin poetry, Roman identity, imperialism, and travel and geospatial narratives; and the diachronic and generic evolutions of poetic descriptions of space and mobility. In addition, two chapters, including the concluding one, contextualize and respond to the volume’s discussion of poetry by looking at ways in which Romans not only write and read poems about travel and geography, but also make writing and reading part of the experience of traveling, as demonstrated in their epigraphic practices. The collection as a whole offers important insights into Roman poetics and into ancient notions of movement and geographical space. Travel, Geography, and Empire in Latin Poetry will be of interest to specialists in Latin poetry, ancient travel, and Latin epigraphy as well as to those studying travel writing, geography, imperialism, and mobility in other periods. The chapters are written to be accessible to researchers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates.
The Edinburgh Companion, newly available in paperback, is a gateway to the fascinating worlds of ancient Greece and Rome. Wide-ranging in its approach, it demonstrates the multifaceted nature of classical civilisation and enables readers to gain guidance in drawing together the perspectives and methods of different disciplines, from philosophy to history, from poetry to archaeology, from art history to numismatics, and many more.
Wei Hsien Wan builds on the work of David Horrell and Travis Williams for his argument that the letter of 1 Peter engages in a subtle, calculated form of resistance to Rome, that has often gone undetected. Whilst previous discussion of the topic has remained largely focused on the letter's stance toward specific Roman institutions, such as the emperor, household structures, and the imperial cults, Wan takes the conversation beyond these confines and examines 1 Peter's critique of the Roman Empire in terms of its ideology or worldview. Using the work of James Scott to conceptualize ideological resistance against domination, Wan considers how the imperial cults of Anatolia and 1 Peter offered distinct constructions of time and space-that is, how they envisioned reality differently. Insofar as these differences led to divergent ways of conceiving the social order, they acquired political power and generated potential for conflict. Wan thus argues that 1 Peter confronts Rome on a cosmic scale with its alternative construal of time and space, and examines the evidence that the Petrine author consciously, if cautiously, interrogated the imperial imagination at its most foundational levels, and set forth in its place a theocentric, Christological understanding of the world.
In "Christian Origins and Greco-Roman Culture," Stanley Porter and Andrew Pitts assemble an international team of scholars whose work has focused on reconstructing the social matrix for earliest Christianity through the use of Greco-Roman materials and literary forms. Each essay moves forward the current understanding of how primitive Christianity situated itself in relation to evolving Hellenistic culture. Some essays focus on configuring the social context for the origins of the Jesus movement and beyond, while others assess the literary relation between early Christian and Greco-Roman texts.
Drawing from Michel Foucault's understanding of power, David A. Kaden explores how relations of power are instrumental in forming law as an object of discourse in the Gospel of Matthew and in the Letters of Paul. This is a comparative project in that the author examines the role that power relations play in generating discussions of law in the first century context, and in several ethnographies from the field of the anthropology of law from Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, and colonial-era Hawaii. Discussions of law proliferate in situations where the relations of power within social groups come into contact with social forces outside the group. David A. Kaden's interdisciplinary approach reframes how law is studied in Christian Origins scholarship, especially Pauline and Matthean scholarship, by focusing on what makes discourses on law possible. For this he relies heavily on cross-cultural, ethnographic materials from legal anthropology.
The decadence and depravity of the ancient Romans are a commonplace of serious history, popular novels and spectacular films. This book is concerned not with the question of how immoral the ancient Romans were but why the literature they produced is so preoccupied with immorality. The modern image of immoral Rome derives from ancient accounts which are largely critical rather than celebratory. Upper-class Romans habitually accused one another of the most lurid sexual and sumptuary improprieties. Historians and moralists lamented the vices of their contemporaries and mourned for the virtues of a vanished age. Far from being empty commonplaces these assertions constituted a powerful discourse through which Romans negotiated conflicts and tensions in their social and political order. This study proceeds by a detailed examination of a wide range of ancient texts (all of which are translated) exploring the dynamics of their rhetoric, as well as the ends to which they were deployed. Roman moralising discourse, the author suggests, may be seen as especially concerned with the articulation of anxieties about gender, social status and political power. Individual chapters focus on adultery, effeminacy, the immorality of the Roman theatre, luxurious buildings and the dangers of pleasure. This book should appeal to students and scholars of classical literature and ancient history. It will also attract anthropologists and social and cultural historians.
Political theory professor Stuart Elden explores the history of land ownership and control from the ancient to the modern world in The Birth of Territory. Territory is one of the central political concepts of the modern world and, indeed, functions as the primary way the world is divided and controlled politically. Yet territory has not received the critical attention afforded to other crucial concepts such as sovereignty, rights, and justice. While territory continues to matter politically, and territorial disputes and arrangements are studied in detail, the concept of territory itself is often neglected today. Where did the idea of exclusive ownership of a portion of the earth’s surface come from, and what kinds of complexities are hidden behind that seemingly straightforward definition? The Birth of Territory provides a detailed account of the emergence of territory within Western political thought. Looking at ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern thought, Stuart Elden examines the evolution of the concept of territory from ancient Greece to the seventeenth century to determine how we arrived at our contemporary understanding. Elden addresses a range of historical, political, and literary texts and practices, as well as a number of key players—historians, poets, philosophers, theologians, and secular political theorists—and in doing so sheds new light on the way the world came to be ordered and how the earth’s surface is divided, controlled, and administered. “The Birth of Territory is an outstanding scholarly achievement . . . a book that already promises to become a ‘classic’ in geography, together with very few others published in the past decades.” —Political Geography “An impressive feat of erudition.” —American Historical Review
From reviews: Scott offers us a new way to resolve an old problem. Instead of viewing Paul's geographical understanding of the world from a merely Greco-Roman perspective, he suggests that we begin with Paul's distinctly Jewish perspective of the world's geography: the table of the nations. Here Scott makes a compelling case and opens new vistas for understanding Paul as the apostle of the nations.Frank J. Matera in The Catholic Biblical Quarterly No. 59 (1997) 398-399.
This book looks at the Acts of the Apostles through two lenses that highlight the two topics of masculinity and politics. Acts is rich in relevant material, whether this be in the range of such characters as the Ethiopian eunuch, Cornelius, Peter and Paul, or in situations such as Timothy's circumcision and Paul's encounters with Roman rulers in different cities. Engaging Acts from these two distinct but related perspectives illuminates features of this book which are otherwise easily missed. These approaches provide fresh angles to see how men, masculinity, and imperial loyalty were understood, experienced, and constructed in the ancient world and in earliest Christianity. The essays present a range of topics: some engage with Acts as a whole as in Steve Walton's chapter on the way Luke-Acts perceives the Roman Empire, while others focus on particular sections, passages, and even certain figures, such as in an Christopher Stroup's analysis of the circumcision of Timothy. Together, the essays provide a tightly woven and deeply textured analysis of Acts. The dialogue form of essay and response will encourage readers to develop their own critiques of the points raised in the collection as a whole.