The Origin and Early History of the Follis

1959 ◽  
Vol 49 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 34-38
Author(s):  
A. H. M. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
History Of

One of the mosaics of the villa at Piazza Armerina, which are generally dated to the early fourth century A.D., depicts in connection with a contest a table on and under which are what are evidently prizes, crowns, palms, and bags labelled , that is 12,500 denarii. I suggest that these bags are the folks, which were at this date and later units of currency. A follis was, as its name implies and as various metrological writers confirm, a purse, and these purses, according to literary and epigraphic sources, contained bronze coins or denarii. The follis is first attested in 308–9, but was probably introduced at an earlier date, somewhere between the great debasement of the antoninianus by Gallienus and the reform of the coinage by Diocletian, when the antoninianus or Aurelian's piece marked XXI were the only coins in circulation and their value had sunk so low that some higher denomination was essential. If this is so, the coins which the follis contained cannot have been denarii, which had ceased to be minted, though the value of the follis was reckoned in denarii.

Past Belief

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-40
Author(s):  
Anthony Grafton
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Saint Augustine ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Royal Road ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Church

This chapter examines the centrality of early modern ecclesiastical history, written by Catholics as well as Protestants, in the refinement of research techniques and practices anticipatory of modern scholarship. To Christians of all varieties, getting the Church's early history right mattered. Eusebius's fourth-century history of the Church opened a royal road into the subject, but he made mistakes, and it was important to be able to ferret them out. Saint Augustine was recognized as a sure-footed guide to the truth about the Church's original and bedrock beliefs, but some of the Saint's writings were spurious, and it was important to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. To distinguish true belief from false, teams of religious scholars gathered documents; the documents in turn were subjected to skeptical scrutiny and philological critique; and sources were compared and cited. The practices of humanistic scholarship, it turns out, came from within the Catholic Church itself as it examined its own past.

‘All the World’s a Stage-Painting’: Scenery, Optics, and Greek Epistemology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. F. Burnyeat
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
Phenomenal Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
History Of ◽  
Epistemological Debate ◽  
Underlying Reality

In the fourth century BCE, Anaxarchus and Monimus compared the world to stage-painting, to express scepticism about sense-perception and the worthlessness of human affairs, respectively. But the comparison traces back to Democritus’ discussion of Anaxagoras’ famous claim, a century earlier, that ‘appearances are a sight of things unseen’. According to Vitruvius, they were influenced by what Agatharchus had written about stage-painting, something that can be assessed properly only by considering the genre of technical treatises and the claims of those who were first to write on a subject. The comparison with phenomenal experience should ultimately be credited to Anaxagoras, though the points that he and Democritus make differ, owing to their different views of how the macroscopic world is related to underlying reality. These texts are thus not about the early history of perspectival painting, but stem from a fifth-century epistemological debate about what, if anything, sense-perception reveals about reality.

The Role of the Archdeacon Today

1995 ◽  
Vol 3 (17) ◽  
pp. 379-392
Author(s):  
R. L. Ravenscroft
Keyword(s):  
Local Church ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Under Five ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

The office of archdeacon has its origins in the early history of the Church. The archdeacon is referred to by St. Jerome and other writers of the fourth century. He was the principal deacon of a local church. The eminent Victorian ecclesiastical lawyer, Sir Robert Phillimore wrote: ‘The primitive offices of the archdeacon may be enumerated under five heads. First, to attend the bishop to the altar and to order all things relating to the inferior clergy and ministrations in the church. Secondly, to assist the diocesan in the distribution and management of the ecclesiastical revenues.’

Rock-pictures and Archaeology in the Libyan Desert

Antiquity ◽  
1928 ◽  
Vol 2 (7) ◽  
pp. 261-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Newbold
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
White Spaces ◽  
History Of ◽  
Out Of Africa ◽  
Libyan Desert

Out of Africa there is always something new, as Aristotle wrote in the fourth century B.C., and although the Libyan Desert is one of the most desolate areas of the world’s surface, recent explorations have shown that there are many archaeological discoveries to be made which will throw considerable light on the early history of peoples and their migrations in North Africa.In the eastern Sahara and in the Libyan Desert, there are still many unexplored tracts, and even, it is probable, several unvisited oases, particularly in the great white spaces on the map which stretch southwest and southeast of the Kufara oasis-group.

Finding Relics

2018 ◽  
pp. 101-121
Author(s):  
Robert Wiśniewski
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Church Politics ◽  
Ambrose Of Milan ◽  
To Come

When the cult of relics developed in the mid-fourth century, very few tombs of saints whose remains were to be venerated in the centuries to come had been identified. This chapter presents the early history of the search for and finding of such graves, which started in the last decades of the fourth century. It seeks to explain the reasons which lay behind this process, focusing both on the needs of the congregation and the role of the discovery in church politics. It also analyses the sense of the literary pattern of inventio and tries to find out how much this pattern reflected reality. Finally, it presents a case study: a literary dossier of the discovery of the relics of Gervasius and Protasius by Bishop Ambrose of Milan in 386.

The Mausoleum of Augustus

1927 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 23-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. Cordingley ◽  
I. A. Richmond
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Ammianus Marcellinus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Classical History

The early history of the Augusteo, as the Mausoleum of Augustus is now called, wins little space in contemporary literature. Among classical writers first Strabo and then Suetonius tell us that Augustus built for himself and his family, between the Via Flaminia and the Tiber, this huge circular tumulus, crowned with evergreens, surmounted by his own effigy in bronze, and retained by a lofty base of white stone. And these accounts supplement one another in detail, Suetonius noting that the work was done in 28 B.C, and thereby causing one to wonder whether Antony's fate and the conspiracy of Lepidus set Augustus about building his own last resting-place; while Strabo mentions that anustrinum of similar stone, with an iron railing in a circle round it, stood not far away. The building was ready by 23 B.C, when Vergil spoke 4 of it as new. Many people— we know of fourteen great ones— lay within; but the last Emperor to be buried there was Nerva, and then the tomb, entrusted to a procurator's care, was only opened for a short time to house, in the part allotted to Lucius and Gaius, the remains of Julia Domna. In the fourth century it found a place in the list of City monuments, and Ammianus Marcellinus pauses to state that two obelisks in front of it were later additions. After that classical history tells no more of the building or of its fate.

Early History of Elis and Pisa: Invented or Evolving Traditions?

Klio ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mait Kõiv
Keyword(s):  
Early Period ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

SummaryThe article discusses the development of ethnic and political identities, and the related traditions concerning the past, in Archaic and Classical Elis and Pisa. It shows that the earliest signs of Pisatan identity can be traced to the sixth century BC, and that the Eleans of the valley of Peneios on the one hand, and the people dwelling in the valley of Alpheios (i.e. the Pisatans) and the so-called Triphylia farther south on the other, nourished distinct traditions about their heroic past, which reflect distinct ethnic identities. Instead of assuming that the Pisatans as a group was intentionally constructed and its ‚history‘ invented during the political disturbances of the fourth century BC, we must accept that the Eleans and the Pisatans had since an early period developed and mutually re-negotiated the traditions confirming their identities and promoting their interests in the changing historical conditions.

Some early history of replica techniques for electron microscopy

1992 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 1076-1077
Author(s):  
Robert M. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Thin Film ◽  
Electron Microscopy ◽  
Optical Microscope ◽  
Early History ◽  
Bulk Materials ◽  
Thin Sections ◽  
Transmission Electron ◽  
Reflected Light ◽  
History Of ◽  
Electron Microscopes

By 1940, a half dozen or so commercial or home-built transmission electron microscopes were in use for studies of the ultrastructure of matter. These operated at 30-60 kV and most pioneering microscopists were preoccupied with their search for electron transparent substrates to support dispersions of particulates or bacteria for TEM examination and did not contemplate studies of bulk materials. Metallurgist H. Mahl and other physical scientists, accustomed to examining etched, deformed or machined specimens by reflected light in the optical microscope, were also highly motivated to capitalize on the superior resolution of the electron microscope. Mahl originated several methods of preparing thin oxide or lacquer impressions of surfaces that were transparent in his 50 kV TEM. The utility of replication was recognized immediately and many variations on the theme, including two-step negative-positive replicas, soon appeared. Intense development of replica techniques slowed after 1955 but important advances still occur. The availability of 100 kV instruments, advent of thin film methods for metals and ceramics and microtoming of thin sections for biological specimens largely eliminated any need to resort to replicas.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document