A History of the Roman World from 753 to 146 B.C.Howard H. Scullard

1953 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-70
Author(s):  
Carl Roebuck
Keyword(s):  
Roman World ◽  
History Of

The Roman Retail Revolution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven J. R. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Archaeological Material ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Food And Drink ◽  
Bodies Of Evidence ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The University

Tabernae were ubiquitous among all Roman cities, lining the busiest streets and dominating their most crowded intersections, and in numbers not known by any other form of building. That they played a vital role in the operation of the city—indeed in the very definition of urbanization—is a point too often under-appreciated in Roman studies, or at best assumed. The Roman Retail Revolution is a thorough investigation into the social and economic worlds of the Roman shop. With a focus on food and drink outlets, and with a critical analysis of both archaeological material and textual sources, Ellis challenges many of the conventional ideas about the place of retailing in the Roman city. A new framework is forwarded, for example, to understand the motivations behind urban investment in tabernae. Their historical development is also unraveled to identify three major waves—or, revolutions—in the shaping of retail landscapes. Two new bodies of evidence underpin the volume. The first is generated from the University of Cincinnati’s recent archaeological excavations into a Pompeian neighborhood of close to twenty shop-fronts. The second comes from a field survey of the retail landscapes of more than a hundred cities from across the Roman world. The richness of this information, combined with an interdisciplinary approach to the lives of the Roman sub-elite, results in a refreshingly original look at the history of retailing and urbanism in the Roman world.

The Roman Military Base at Dura-Europos, Syria

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon James
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Military Base ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Dynamic ◽  
Holy Places ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Military ◽  
Roman East

Dura-Europos, a Parthian-ruled Greco-Syrian city, was captured by Rome c.AD165. It then accommodated a Roman garrison until its destruction by Sasanian siege c.AD256. Excavations of the site between the World Wars made sensational discoveries, and with renewed exploration from 1986 to 2011, Dura remains the best-explored city of the Roman East. A critical revelation was a sprawling Roman military base occupying a quarter of the city's interior. This included swathes of civilian housing converted to soldiers' accommodation and several existing sanctuaries, as well as baths, an amphitheatre, headquarters, and more temples added by the garrison. Base and garrison were clearly fundamental factors in the history of Roman Dura, but what impact did they have on the civil population? Original excavators gloomily portrayed Durenes evicted from their homes and holy places, and subjected to extortion and impoverishment by brutal soldiers, while recent commentators have envisaged military-civilian concordia, with shared prosperity and integration. Detailed examination of the evidence presents a new picture. Through the use of GPS, satellite, geophysical and archival evidence, this volume shows that the Roman military base and resident community were even bigger than previously understood, with both military and civil communities appearing much more internally complex than has been allowed until now. The result is a fascinating social dynamic which we can partly reconstruct, giving us a nuanced picture of life in a city near the eastern frontier of the Roman world.

A systematic method for estimating the populations of Greek and Roman settlements

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 301-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. W. Hanson ◽  
S. G. Ortman
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Urban Population ◽  
Total Population ◽  
Vital Statistics ◽  
Systematic Method ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
History Of ◽  
Urbanization Rate

The last few years have seen a growing interest in the urbanism of the Greek and Roman world. This has led to a consensus of sorts about some of its vital statistics, such as the sizes of the populations of the most important settlements and the size of the overall urban population, the urbanization rate (i.e., the share of individuals that lived in urban, rather than rural, contexts), and the total population. A good example comes from W. Scheidel in the Cambridge economic history of the Greco-Roman world. According to him, it is likely that c.1.5 million people lived in the 5 largest cities of the Greco-Roman world by the 2nd c. A.D. These included Rome, which is usually agreed to have had a population of about 1 million; Alexandria, which might have had c.500,000; Antioch, which could have had at least 150,000; and Carthage and Ephesus (Scheidel does not give explicit figures for those).

The Legal Policy and Reforms of Hadrian

1934 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fritz Pringsheim
Keyword(s):  
Small Towns ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
The South ◽  
Legal Policy ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Frontier Region ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Roman Administration

The reign of Hadrian marks the beginning of a new epoch in Roman administration and in the history of Roman Law. Hadrian's visit to Britain is immortalised by the Wall which he built from Tyne to Solway. Its construction is characteristic of the Emperor's willingness to renounce further conquests and even to abandon land which had been Roman. The Wall marked the limit of the districts which he was prepared to retain and administer. It followed, not the shortest and easiest route, but a line beyond the fortified area whence a look-out could be kept over the barbarians outside, and its object was the completion and definition of the fortified frontier region whereby it became easier to civilise and to pacify the country which lay to the south. Hadrian's aim was to bring order and peace to the land bounded by the new frontiers of the Roman world. Thus Hadrian may be sharply contrasted with his predecessor Trajan, the soldier on the throne, who owed his elevation to his successful wars in the Rhine region, and who as Emperor extended the frontiers of the Empire on the lower Danube and in the East. On Hadrian's accession the Empire was more powerful than ever before or afterwards, but its financial and military resources were strained to the utmost, and indeed frequently had been overstrained. The small peasant owners and small towns, sources of Roman culture and prosperity, had begun to suffer and disappear.

Lead pollution and the Roman economy

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 354-364
Author(s):  
Damian Pavlyshyn ◽  
Iain Johnstone ◽  
Richard Saller
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Roman Economy ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Institutional Frameworks ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Industrial Societies ◽  
Somatic Energy

More than a decade ago, the Oxford Roman Economy Project (OXREP)1 and the Cambridge economic history of the Greco-Roman world put the question of the performance of the Roman economy at the center of historical debate, prompting a flood of books and articles attempting to assess the degree of growth in the economy.2 The issue is of sufficient importance that it has figured in the narratives of economists analyzing the impact of institutional frameworks on the potential for growth.3 As the debate has continued, there has been some convergence: most historians would agree that there was some Smithian growth as evidenced by urbanization and trade, while acknowledging that production remained predominantly agricultural and based primarily on somatic energy (i.e., human and animal).4 This is, of course, a very broad framework that does not differentiate the Roman empire from other complex pre-industrial societies. The challenge is to refine the analysis in order to put content into the broad description of “modest though significant growth”5 and to offer a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the economy.

Mapping Ancient Libya

1994 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
David Mattingly
Keyword(s):  
Rural Settlement ◽  
Fundamental Importance ◽  
The South ◽  
Roman World ◽  
New Information ◽  
Settlement Geography ◽  
History Of ◽  
East And West ◽  
Ancient Geography ◽  
Definitive Form

Between 1946 and 1951 Richard Goodchild carried out the fieldwork that was to result in a seminal series of articles and publications on the ancient settlements of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (Goodchild 1948; 1949a/b; 1950a/b/c/d; 1951a/b/c; 1952a/b/c; 1953; 1954c; 1971; 1976; Goodchild and Ward-Perkins 1953; Ward-Perkins and Goodchild 1949; 1953). The cartographic results appeared in 1954 as two splendid sheets in the ill-fated Tabula Imperii Romani (TIR) series at a scale of 1:1,000,000 (Goodchild 1954a/b). These twenty-two publications remain of fundamental importance to our understanding of the ancient topography of Libya.Goodchild's map can with hindsight be seen as one of the few successes of the ill-fated TIR project. The TIR initiative aimed to produce 58 maps covering the Roman world, but huge problems have beset it all along and only 11 maps have ever appeared in definitive form. Although work continues in some areas, it must be considered improbable that this series will ever be completed (see Talbert 1992 for a thorough review of the history of the TIR).The fact that it is now nearly 40 years since the compilation of Goodchild's two TER sheets for Libya is probably reason enough for resuming his interest in mapping ancient Libya. Much has happened in the interim to refine our knowledge of both urban and rural settlement, as a glance at the relevant volumes of Libya Antiqua, Libyan Studies and Quaderni di Archeologia delta Libia will reveal. For the study of the ancient geography and toponomy of Cyrenaica, the studies by Stucchi (1975) and Laronde (1987) are of particular importance. In addition to map corrections necessitated by the new information and perspectives, one may cite the inconvenience caused by the incompleteness of the TIR coverage to the south, east and west of the Leptis Magna and Cyrene sheets. For instance, how can we hope to understand the settlement geography of Roman Tripolitania without reference to Tunisian western Tripolitania or to the desert tribes (Phazanii, Garamantes etc)?

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