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9 results

  • VATICANVS GRAECVS 156, CASSIUS DIO AND THE LVDI SAECVLARES OF a.d. 204

  • C.T. Mallan
  • Journal:
    The Classical Quarterly / Volume 73 / Issue 2 / December 2023
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    09 January 2024, pp. 954-956
    Print publication:
    December 2023
    • Article
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  • A scholium in codex Vaticanus graecus 156 provides evidence that Cassius Dio's Roman History once contained an explicit reference to the ludi saeculares of a.d. 204, something that has been denied in recent scholarship.

  • 6 - The Castra Nova and the Severan Transformation of Rome

  • Edited by L. Bosman, Universiteit van Amsterdam, I. P. Haynes, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, P. Liverani, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy
  • Book:
    The Basilica of Saint John Lateran to 1600
    Published online:
    27 August 2020
    Print publication:
    17 September 2020, pp 91-113

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the impact of the Severan transformation of Rome in Caelian noting its implications for Constatine's later choice of this site for his Lateran Basilica.Septimius Severus dramatically increased the presence of soldiers in Rome and his reign is associated with several major military building projects.The best documented of these is the construction of the Castra Nova for his horse guards (equites singulares), a project that fundamentally reshaped the Caelian. Extensive elements of the fort survive beneath the Basilica of St John Lateran.This chapter explores the evidence for the building and subsequent use of the fort, placing the site in its broader topographical context.Following Constantine's victory at the battle of the Milvian Bridge the equites singulares were destroyed/disbanded and the Castra Nova site was used for the construction of the Lateran Basilica.The paper raises questions about the degree to which the history of the site's use may have impacted on the location and appearence of Constantine's church.

  • Chapter 6 - Understanding Money Use and Value

  • Colin P. Elliott, Indiana University, Bloomington
  • Book:
    Economic Theory and the Roman Monetary Economy
    Published online:
    03 February 2020
    Print publication:
    20 February 2020, pp 142-172

  • Summary

    Gresham’s law is much more than the idea that ‘bad money drives out good’ always and everywhere. Instead, historians should use Gresham’s law as a complex and interconnected set of conditions and premises involving ‘external’ elements (legal tender laws, differing coinage standards, transaction costs etc.) and an ‘internal’ sensitivity among (some!) coin-users to the precious metal content of coins.The ‘external’ conditions of Gresham’s law seem to have been inconsistently present at best. Legal coin values and precious metal values were more or less redundant during first century and a half of the Principate. A growing dissonance between legal value and metal value, however, emerged by the late second century AD, putting pressure on coin-users’ monetary habits. The actions of Roman authorities encouraged any metallist-minded coin-users to avoid the now relative high costs of monetary exchange at legal values and instead adopt special-purpose uses for money. The counterfactual logic of Gresham’s law, therefore, offers historians both improved understanding of Roman coin-users’ thinking as well as broader insights into the workings of the Roman monetary economy.

  • 1 - The Severan dynasty

  • from PART I - NARRATIVE
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 1-27

  • Summary

    Septimius Severus was born in Lepcis Magna in Africa in 145. The character of Severus' regime was inevitably influenced by the bloodshed, confiscations and terror associated with civil war, and by his dependence on the army. In the Severan era, of the equestrian procurators known to have military experience, about 57 per cent still had held one or more posts in the traditional equestrian militia. The proportion of ex-centurions and tribunes of the guard promoted to procuratorial posts remained roughly similar to that in the second century. The Severan army fought two civil wars, two difficult campaigns in the east, and a costly war in Britain while remaining a powerful effective force, loyal to the dynasty at the accession of Caracalla and Geta, and even after the murder of Geta. Severus himself became a worthy commander-in-chief. He recruited three new legions in Italy, perhaps for the war against Albinus.

  • 2 - Maximinus to Diocletian and the ‘crisis’

  • from PART I - NARRATIVE
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 28-66

  • Summary

    The fifty years following the death of Severus Alexander were among the most disruptive ever experienced by the Roman Empire. Historians conventionally refer to them as a period of 'crisis', which began in 235, reached its peak around 260, and then gradually yielded to the ministrations of a series of reforming emperors, ending with Diocletian. The outstanding characteristic of this crisis was war, both civil and foreign. C. Iulius Verus Maximinus was a man of late middle age. Though of relatively humble stock, he had exploited the opportunities for promotion in the reformed army of Septimius Severus, winning high rank and equestrian status. Between 235 and 285 the Roman Empire experienced great dislocation and distress. The principal causes of these disturbances have now been generally agreed by historians and may indeed be inferred from what Diocletian eventually did to bring them to an end.

  • 19 - Art and architecture, a.d. 193–337

  • from PART VI - RELIGION, CULTURE AND SOCIETY
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 672-703

  • Summary

    The reflexive relationship between art and society is particularly evident in the period AD 193-337, with art reflecting social developments and also shaping them. Art and architecture had a major role in creating the imperial image and in establishing a new Christian empire. The increasingly structured society had an impact on the development of style and form, while the enhanced status of the emperor and court ceremonial led to new themes in iconography and building types. From the Severans to the last quarter of the third century the picture is more changeable. Some of the most striking pieces are portraits of soldier emperors such as Maximinus Thrax and Philip the Arab. In contrast, portraits of Gallienus show a range of styles, rather as those of Septimius Severus had done, but bringing back a softer classicizing treatment of form. The development of Christian motifs on sarcophagi represents a new start and a progression from which there is no turning back.

  • 6b - The age of the Severans

  • from 6 - The emperor and his administration
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 137-155

  • Summary

    The victorious contender of the civil war that followed Commodus' assassination, Lucius Septimius Severus, the governor of the province of Pannonia Superior and an African of Lepcis Magna, found it expedient to present himself as Pertinax's legitimate successor. As for the women of the Severan dynasty, they played a decisive role not only during the palace intrigues accompanying the moments of succession, but also in the daily exercise of imperial power and in the very construction of the princeps' image. During the first two centuries of the imperial age the administrative fields dependent on the princeps steadily grew in importance. The Praetorian prefecture had extended its authority to cover matters of public order in Italy during the second century. The greatest changes in the administrative organization of the empire during the Severan age were those resulting from the large accretions of imperial property after the confiscation of individual urban estates belonging to the followers of Niger and above all Albinus.

  • 10 - Egypt from Septimius Severus to the death of Constantine

  • from PART III - THE PROVINCES
  • Edited by Alan Bowman, Brasenose College, Oxford, Averil Cameron, Keble College, Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    08 September 2005, pp 313-326

  • Summary

    This chapter sketches the social and economic features of the Roman province which have a bearing upon some of the key issues in the history of the later empire. The province of Egypt played a central role in the military and political struggles in the east during the 260s and 270s. The reforms under Diocletian and his immediate successors amount to a radical overhaul of the Egyptian administration, brought about by stages over more than two decades. The changes and developments in Egypt between Septimius Severus and Constantine are exceptionally important, not least because of the implications for the history of the empire in the third and early fourth centuries as a whole. Recent studies of fundamental aspects of the agricultural economy in the Fayum and the Oxyrhynchite Nome reveal management strategies which are both sophisticated in the case of day-to-day organization and relatively stable in the case of landholding and tenancy.