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Despite the spectacular new excavations that are currently unfolding in the northern part of the city, the most significant discovery at Pompeii in recent decades was made just over a year ago, outside the main southern city gate, where a large and well-preserved funerary monument was dug up alongside the road that probably connected Pompeii to its harbour. It contained a uniquely long inscription, which, so we knew, was a detailed eulogy for an unnamed individual who had done incredible things for the Pompeian community (the name probably featured somewhere on the monument, but it has not been found back). As of this week, we finally have access to the full latin text, and, in my own rough translation (based on the text and Osanna's Italian translation, it reads something like this: When he got his toga virilis, he gave a banquet for the Pompeian people with 456 triclinia accommodating 15 man each. He gave a gladiatorial munus so lavish and splendid that it could be compared to any splendid colony beyond the city, as he had 416 gladiators in the arena – and as this munus coincided with a price hike in the annona, he fed them for a period of four years. The care for his citizens was dearer to him than his family matters: when a modius of triticum (grain) cost five denarii, he bought, and he offered it to the people for one and a half, and to make sure that his liberality would reach everyone, he personally distributed, through his friends, quantities of bread equivalent to one and a half denarius to the people. For a munus that he gave before the senatusconsultum (in 59 CE?), for all days of the games, he gave beasts of any kind, in a mixed composition. Moreover, when the Caesar (Nero) had ordered to lead away all families to more than two hundred miles from the city, he permitted only him to bring the Pompeians back to their country. Also, when he married his wife, he gave the decuriones fifty nummi, and, for the people, twenty denarii to the augustales and twenty nummi to the pagani. Twice, he gave big games without any burden to the community. Yet when the people recommended, and the ordo unanimously agreed that he would be elected patron of the city, and the duovir brought the issue forward, he personally intervened, saying that he would not be able to bear being the patron of his citizens. The translation needs quite a bit of fine-tuning, and some parts of the Latin text are only partially understandable – but the general message of the eulogy should be clear enough. Yet, what does it mean, and what does it tell us about Pompeii? The inscription is very nicely written, in full sentences and with very few abbreviations – it is almost true prose, compared to the formulaic texts full of standardized abbreviations that dominate our epigraphic record – clearly, we are in the first century CE, when the epigraphic habit is in full development. Some of the phrasing is strange. I am fascinated by the use of the word 'caesar' as sole reference to the emperor, which as far as I know is not common – usually you get an entire range of names and titles – and therefore meaningful; it points to the reality of damnatio memoriae, but in a more subtle way than the excisings that we know from Geta in the third century. Here, the damned emperor has no name, and
Journal of Roman Archaeology 32, 148-182, 2019
The rediscovery in the summer of 2017 of a large monumental tomb of unusual form outside the Stabian Gate at Pompeii caused an immediate sensation, and the swift initial publication by M. Osanna in JRA 31 (2018) of the long funerary inscription fronting the W side of the base, facing the road, has been welcomed gratefully by the scholarly community. The text-at 183 words, by far the longest funerary inscription yet found at Pompeii-records a series of extraordinary benefactions by an unnamed local worthy, beginning with a banquet held on the occasion of his coming-of-age ceremony and continuing, it seems, well into his adult life, up to the final years of the town when the monument was built. As Osanna and others have recognized, the inscription, which seems to allude to an historical event (Tac., Ann. 14.17), the riot between Nucerians and Pompeians around Pom-peii's amphitheater in A.D. 59, provides valuable if ambivalent new information relevant to the demographic, economic and social history of Pompeii that will require full discussion in a variety of contexts over time. The present collection of remarks, a collaborative effort, is offered in the spirit of debate and is intended as an interim contribution toward a more complete understanding of the text.
Illinois Classical Studies, 2019
in Mª. C. Pimentel, A. Lóio, R. Furtado, N. Rodrigues (eds.), Augustan Papers. New Approaches to the Age of Augustus on the Bimillennium of His Death. Georg Olms: Hildesheim, 2020, 9–17., 2020
The Roman Republican Triumph. Beyond the Spectacle (edd. C.H. Lange and F.J. Vervaet), pp. 131-148, 2014
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus no doubt was one of the Republic’s keenest and most self-assured glory hunters, as he never flinched from parading some of the sensational precedents that marked his meteoric career. He famously was the first Roman Imperator ever to celebrate public triumphs for victories won on three continents, viz. Africa, Europe and Asia, and spared neither effort nor expense to ensure that these triumphs were showy and captivating spectacles. He furthermore took triumphal commemorative strategy to the next level by means of his colossal stone theatre, meant literally to petrify and perpetuate the glory of his third and most resplendent triumphal parade and to burn it into the collective retina of the Roman people. Those bothering to have a careful look beyond the dizzying glitter of Pompeius’ triumphal record, however, will discern a vastly different, rather less lustrous picture, viz. that of a man who would not shrink from repeated arrogation of honours and glories, and who persistently, and consciously, transgressed and pushed the boundaries of Roman public law and triumphal custom. His triumphant and triumphal career, therefore, stands out as a dubious exemplum of insubordination and usurpation, much to the detriment of the fragile balance of power and oligarchic consensus upon which rested the entire Roman republican polity.
Journal of Ancient History, 2019
The thousands of funerary inscriptions from the city of Rome published in CIL VI are a rich source of demographic data but are also the subject of serious debate regarding the epigraphic habit of the Romans. Do the inscriptions represent a cross-section of Roman society or are they largely the creation of the lower classes? Fixing the milieu from which the inscriptions come is difficult, because the exact status of more than 50 % of the commemorating population is unstated. The first section of the paper lays out the criteria according to which individuals, both those of certain status and those of uncertain status, may be classified as freeborn, freed or servile. The second section tabulates the results and argues that the practice of commemoration by modest titulus was overwhelmingly a phenomenon of the milieu of the freed. Since this is not a self-perpetuating population (the children of freedmen being freeborn), the prevalence of freedmen in the tituli shows it was among those families in transition from slavery to liberty that titular commemoration was most common. The freed drew attention to their own freedom , and even more proudly advertised the freeborn status of their children.
In 2014, many academic institutions and museums celebrate the bimillenium of the death of Augustus with colloquiums, exhibitions and publications. The life, the political deeds, and the era of the founder of the Roman Empire have not been honoured or discussed to such an extent since 1937-1938, when an exhibition, the 'Mostra augustea della Romanità', at the instigation of the Fascist regime, celebrated the two-thousandth anniversary of the birth of the Emperor. Yet the outcome of the re-examinations in 2014 will not be complete if emphasis is not put on the enduring fame and fortune he experienced in the West, for this renowned figure created an empire which united, for the first time, the Mediterranean with the regions north of the Alps. The importance of this personage throughout our recorded cultural history makes a multidisciplinary approach essential. Specialits of various fields - history, cultural history, literature, art history, semiotics, etc. - will bring together their skills and knowledges to retrace the multiple interpretations and appropriations of Augustus from his death to the present days.
Philologus, 2008
Carroll, Maureen 2007/2008, “ ‘Vox tua nempe mea est’. Dialogues with the dead in Roman funerary commemoration,” Accordia Research Papers 11, 37-80.
The life and career of Gaius Julius Caesar have been topics in research for centuries. His last years were the time in which he was the main driver of changes in the Roman world, changes which turned out to have immense impact on the centuries to come, including paving the way for imperial rule of the Roman Empire. This stage of his life has until today not been explored to its fullest extent. This conference aims at bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines, archaeology, history, philology and history of religion, in order to move towards a more multifaceted narrative about his dictatorship and the changes that he spurred, the changes that were stalled, the changes that were envisioned and the changes that were carried out – some, in the end, by others. We are looking for papers on focused topics such as Caesar’s impact on colonization of the Mediterranean world. Which colonies did he found, which ones did he plan and what did he leave to his successors complete? What role did the urban Roman population play, and what effects did the settlement of foreign populations have for the locals? Caesar’s foreign policy plans also remained unfinished. Here the Parthian question was constantly in the air after the defeat at Carrhae and remained in the minds of the various politicians after Caesar’s death. Furthermore, the regulation of the necessary defence of Gaul against the constant Germanic invasions across the Rhine remained postponed. In many respects, Caesar’s coinage was exemplary, and it was subsequently imitated in various respects in the triumvirate and in the imperial period, for example, in the minting of the ruler on the obverse. But here it would have to be examined why certain details were no longer found in the later imperial coinage, such as the embossing of priestly symbols. Similarly, Caesar’s inscriptions are to be analysed for their exemplary function for the imperial period. Caesar’s building programme in Rome and beyond was, on the one hand, indebted to the example of influential politicians of past times and, on the other hand – in its unprecedented monumentality, as with his forum – an intensification of previous practice that exerted a clear influence on the period that followed. Other possible aspects that require more intensive study are Caesar’s influence on Roman historiography, the patronage system in Rome, the cursus honorum and the political system in general, as well as Caesar’s religious programme and use of religion in and outside Rome. Through bringing new views into play across disciplines, we hope to bring new fruitful lines of investigation to the forefront of a central figure.
Prof. Dr. Yadigar İzmirli'ye Armağan, 2024
La filosofía en el Perú. El Perú en la filosofía, 2024
Arquitecturas del Sur, 2024
Jurnal Teknologi, 2019
BÁO CÁO ĐÁNH GIÁ TÁC ĐỘNG CỦA CHÍNH SÁCH TRONG ĐỀ NGHỊ XÂY DỰNG LUẬT LUẬT SƯ (THAY THẾ), 2024
Energy and Power Engineering, 2013
Reports in Advances of Physical Sciences, 2023
Advances in forest fire research, 2014
WIT transactions on engineering sciences, 1970
Transplantation Journal, 2010
Fusion Engineering and Design, 2020
Revista Brasileira de Zootecnia, 2009
Passione civile e impegno politico, 2024