CLASSICS 1000 UWO — Greeks & Romans

Test II Notes

Peloponnesian wars —

Conflicts between Athenians and Spartans goes back to Persian wars.

• Disagreements and frictions between them immediately after the wars

• Athenians built alliances and thus built an empire (aka Delian League) whereas Spartans were internally focused

• Athens becomes more and more militarily successful

• Active hostilities began in the 460's and continued until 404 BCE when Athenians were defeated..

○ Thirty years of peace for 446 BCE divides conflict into phases…

○ The great Peloponnesian war was fought from 431-404 BCE

• People fled from frontiers into Athens1

• Athenian literature leading up to 404 BCE , sense that Athenians feared their own destructions

Thucydides

• Author of incomplete history of the war between Athens and Sparta (431- 404 BCE)

• One of the most important political texts

• Unfinished, died before he could finish it

• Born ca 460 BCE maybe earlier, general in 424 BCE, was minimum 30 yrs old

• Came from an aristocratic family

• Broke family tradition, enthusiast for Pericles

• Strong ties to Cimon and those opposed to Pericles - but Thucydides followed him

• Caught the plague but recovered… detailed and puzzling account

• Failed to save Amphipolis from Spartans, thus was exiled.. Returned 20 yrs later but then died soon

• On the outside looking in…

Herodotus loved to tell a long story, Thucydides is more analytical and aware of methodological reasons

The 10 yrs war is the first phase of the great Sicilian war.

Incomplete history falls into 5 parts:

Intro, (ii) ten years war, (iii) uneasy peace, (iv) Sicilian Expedition, (v) Decelean War

• In addition to the narrative of events, Thucydides uses extended speeches.

• The speeches in Thucydides constitute a fascinating series of texts.

• In particular the epitaphios (funeral oration) delivered by Pericles (winter of 430/31 BCE) is an extraordinary statement of the Athenian sense of their own greatness.

• There are other versions of this speech, and Thucydides’ speech is quite distinct.

Thucydides importance:

Seen as the model of history in its modern sense:

Unlike herodotus

History vs. Poetry

Poetry is a philosophy and tends to speak of universals, history of particulars

Democracy at Athens —

Wars

Retreat

Types of govt. :

• Kingship : reality in the Bronze Age (wanax), true kingship is a myth by the classical period.. Heredity -conflict over succession is kept in check

• Tyranny : tyrannos - does not rule by heredity - seizes control of an existing government. Not necessarily bad, Plato and Aristotle’s writings did associate some negative connotations were attached to it

• Oligarchy : broadens the base, ruled by the few, most common in the Archaic period. Aristotle considered it as ‘ruling by the rich’... Aristotle read the constitutions of each govt…

• Democracy : rule by the people, direct vs. representational or parliamentary democracy. Aristotle considered it ‘ruling by the poor’ but wasn’t too fond of it

No

• Aristocrat - rule by the best!!

The Ideology:

Rule (Kratos) of the people (demos) “It seemed good to the people

Demokratia: hotly debated form of constitution

Criticised by the oligarchs

Who were they?

Demos was a class i.e – the ordinary people or city poor

Athenian democrats believed that democracy was intimately connected with liberty

Democratic ideals

• Eleutheria - liberty

  • Political liberty to participate in democratic institutions

  • Private liberty to live as one pleased

• freedom of speech (parrhesia)

  • Public: to address fellow citizens in political assemblies

  • Private: a person’s right to speak his mind

• Isonomia - equality to participate in politics… largely dependant on social class though

• The concept of equality was strictly political, and was not transferred to the social and economic aspects of society

Helmsman - ship man steering a ship because our society resembles one

Cleisthenes

Divided Attica into 139 municipalities (demo or demes)

Institutions

Bringing Attica together:

city, inland coast

Institutions:

Political rights granted to adult males

Excluded:

women slaves and foreigners, as well as children

(coming of age was 18, full rights were granted at 30)

Assembly (ekklesia)

Normally attended by 6,000 citizens

Passed decrees

Adults male citizens over the age of 30

Legislators (nomothetai)

passed laws (nomoi)

Largest decision-making body

Rules punishment is transgressed, formal laws

Solon was a figure in history who wanted to formalise the system of Athenians; they referred to their laws as ‘laws of Solon’ then.

dealt with amendments to ‘Solon’s laws’ (594/3 BCE)

Courts (dikasteria)

Dealt with the administration of laws

Means ‘Places for Justice’

‘Dikae means judgements, judges were called Cretai

Magistracies (archai)

various administrative functions

The year was named after Chief magistrates

10 Generals (strategoi)

Elected offices, people voted for generals.

“Law, the king of all,

of mortals and immortals,

guides them as it justified the utmost violence

with sovereign hand.”

— Pindar

Legislation:

Vocab - meanings of words

Nomos means both LAW and CUSTOM

Thesmos is an older word.

Accent on last word could mean pasture

Law was originally custom - the legal system was defined by traditions, normal everyday life.

Law is when you formalise tradition.

Beginnings of laws are hard to define

Two distinct views:

• Unwritten law (oral and conventional views)

• Only written rules are really laws

• So long as Greece had oral culture, they would have oral laws one can assume

First written laws in any Greek city were said to have been drawn up by Zaleucus for Locri Epizephyrii (southern Italy)

In Athens the first written law are attributed to Draco (circa 621 BCE) — harsh laws thus Draconian Laws

Homicide laws remained in force, but Solon’s laws replaced

Unwritten ordinances (of gods)

Clash of culture and politics ; laws of the city are coherent with the ‘larger sense of laws’

Human laws reflect divine law.

After democracy… laws could be passed by a majority of the assembly

In 5th century BCE, no firm distinction between ‘permanent’ law aka nomos, and a ‘decree’ for a particular occasion aka psephisma

Legislation was not systematic; confusion

…

After 410 BCE … serious attempt to clean up legislative system:

• Existing laws were revised

• All were inscribed in stone

• No uninscribed laws were enforced

• No decrees could override a law

• Decrees continued to be passed by the Assembly

• New laws were made by the nomothetai

Judicature:

How were these laws administered?

“And look, this is a map of the entire world. See? That’s Athens right there.”

“What do you mean? I don’t believe it: I don’t see any juries in session”

Administration of justice through courts and judges.

Until early 6th century BCE all verdicts were given by

• 9 magistrates called archontes aka archons

• Court of the Areopagus: most ancient council at Athens

• The Ephetai: a jury of 51 members.

Solon instituted a system of trial by the elaia to hear appeals of the verdicts of the archons, etc. l

Jury system founded since elaia was inadequate:

Volunteers were called up each year, 6,000 people were drawn up

Continued to modify their jury

Population:

From 425,00 in 431 BCE decreased to 185,000 in 317 BCE

Women and children were around 3 to 4x the size of male citizens

Number of slaves was around double that of Male citizens

Century of sustained conflict affected population

Public v. Private Actions:

• Law on any subject generally

• Public actions were considered more important

• Litigant had to speak for himself but could use the work of a speech writer (aka logografos)

  • Lysias

  • Demosthenes

• Classical Athens had a massive focus on rhetoric and oratory

• Litigant could call on friends to speak in support

• Documents (eg. laws) could be read & witnesses could also be called.

• Testimonies from slaves could only be introduced if obtained under torture.

• Speeches were limited by time and water clocks were used.

• When the speeches were over the Jury voted immediately

  • No impartial summing up or discussion

• They voted by casting pebbles or shells in an urn(later, bronze votes were used)... Majority vote won.

• Punishment was then proposed by the prosecutor and litigant

• Second vote on punishment

Punishments:

• Monetary penalty

• Partial/temporary or Total disenfranchisement - taking away citizen’s rights,

• Confiscation of property, forced to give it away.

• Confinement in the stocks — a device that will immobilise a person — long terms of imprisonment were not common

• Public Humiliation — culture and community that was really preoccupied with the idea of honour and shame

• Deluxe disenfranchisement LOL — exile — return would be possible but after many years

• Death - executions

Athenian Judicial System:

• The chief weakness of this system was that the Juries could be swayed by skilful speakers

• Advantages:

• Large juries were difficult to bribe or bully

• The courts and the people were nearly identical so that the accused felt that he was being judged by the Athenian people and not some govt. Official

Family in Greek Society —

• Thucydides poster boy

• The Word family comes from Latin familia, but this word usually refers to the slave within a household.

• Greek counterpart, oikos, refers to the house in a larger sense whereas oikia, the physical house itself

• Senior male was called kyrios : took charge of relations with outside world

• Held legal authority (esp. women of the oikos)

• Women never severed ties with their natal home… Women lived their lives in two oikoi and men lived in one

• Households could include non - kin members

  • People, property, animals

Houses:

• Oikia not oikos

• Private houses were basically same throughout the classical and hellenistic periods

• Recent works reflected organisation of domestic space; windows were few and small

• Second story (common), reached with ladder

• Archaeological evidence is rare to none — exiguous

• Mud-brick on stone foundation

• Walls plastered and painted simply

• Floor of beaten earth

• One or two rooms on ground floor

• Simple hearth and portable braziers

• Fixed hearths and domestic altars were not common ; literary evidence attaches special importance to the hearth (Hestia)

• Roofs were pitched with rush and terra

• Andron has

Euphiletus:

His wife moved downstairs after having their child, he himself moved upstairs and since his wife was downstairs, Erastonhenes, who is an adulterer, to gain access to his wife.

Women in Greek Society:

• Leaving fathers home is a sort of betrayal - leaving your father for another man.

• Roles: wives mothers daughters and betrayers

• Mainly stories of Heros - being helped by the daughter of an adversary

Hesiod contemporary with Horic poems

• First woman created punishment for all humans, as the result of the crime of prometheus

• Theogany: rant about woman

• Early greek misogyny

• Arrival of women in greek myth brings birth, and birth brings death

• Pandora was an earth goddess

  • Hope trapped under the rim of the jar

• Semonides of Amorgos

  • Iambos on women

    • "The Types of Women," where he divided women into different categories based on their behaviour and characteristics. In this poem, he used iambic verse to satirise and critique various aspects of female nature.

    • He talks about how in the beginning women’s minds were made differently and how they were made from different types of animals

    • Says a lot about the values of early Greek society and what’s appropriate to women and their values

  • Early greek misogyny 🤝 early greek pessimism

  • How serious? What is its function

• “A word or two on the duties of women to those among you who are now widowed. I can say all I have to say in a short word of advice. Your great glory is not to be inferior to your essential nature, and the greatest glory of a woman is the be least talked about by men, whether they are praising you or criticising you” — Thucydides 2.45 (Pericles Funeral Oration)

• Women should not dominate male space.

Media - euripides and his plays - he thought misogyny and segregation was bad.. His plays did cause awareness but also ig commodified the struggle

Dionysus & Maenadism:

Maenad - mad woman

Occultish behaviour and vigorous worship:

Sustained by women - exclusively women

Fluid makes us live -

Celebrating the gods by having orgies

Modern day ‘orgy’ has been corrupted from the original meaning, (orgia)

Maenadic worship:

• Occurs

• Everything is structured around the oikos but at this point

• Ecstasy - ekstasia - out of self experience

• Fantasies of sparagmos or omophagia

• Reaffirmation of the normal order… myth is not about changing the world but affirming it.

• Maenadism is a powerful release.

Myths

Black figure dionysus - in his youth, he was kidnapped on the beach, he filled the ship of the pirates with vines and animals

Hera produces a handicapped god - Hephasteus whereas Zeus births Athena…

Hephastus makes hera a chair

Satyrs :

Goats outside of athens - horsey within athens

Bulbous nose, receding forehead

Women are Ritually free - loose women

Slavery :

Definition of a slave:

“a person who is, in the eyes of the law and of public opinion and with respect to all parties, a possession, a chattel, of another person”

Can be used and abused at will - slaves were flexible to the definition

Barbarians aka non greeks were appropriate slaves

Chauvinism - non greeks fere ‘naturally’ slaves since greeks were superior

Terminology bleaches or normalises the word of slave -

Servant v. slave

• Dmos : disappears after homeric poems, meaning ‘house’ (latin famolos - household slave)

• Doulos (douleia): standard word

• Andrapoda: ‘man footed’ dehumanising terms that equates them to animals

• Oiketes: household slave , from oikos (house)

Athenian slaves - some argue that the Athenian economy was entirely slave based.

Their legal states was consistent - with considerable gradation in other areas:

• Publicly owned slaves(demosioi)

  • Few hundred in number

  • Token police force

  • Serving as minor functionaries in the agora and courts.

• Privately owned slave

• Household slaves - f and m, males worked in fields

• Agricultural slaves

• Mine slaves - silver mines of Laurium

Douloi

Not all labelled slaves (douloi) were chattel slaves:

Sometimes people would get enslaved for their debt (debt bondage )

ca 600 BCE, political unrest led to Solon becoming

Sexuality —

Issues of hierarchy:

Hermes - phallic imagery - not fertility imagery .. How do we know this? It is never located in areas where it should be expected..

Phallic display — threatening — aspect of aggression

Maleness - Latin term connected with the male to courage to excellence

The herm is a depiction of maleness

Mutilation of hermes — deep mark on the community’s integrity

Maenad and Satyr black vase painting:

Satyr is aroused as they mostly are. He is harassing the Maenad

Male perspective of paintings etc.

Heterosexuality:

• Dominant (men) v. subordinate position (women)

• Hermaphrodites in myth

• Most women depicted on vases are clearly prostitutes (pornai, hetairai, auletrides) and not wives

• Romans faced a lot of anxiety around sexuality - Usurpation of men when women have WLW relations.

• The absence of opinion to WLW relationship in ancient Greece implies indifference.

(the vases we have seen are 2% of the vases that existed – not as abundant of evidence)

Married couple, eyes locked.

Homosexuality:

The lioness on the cheese grater LMAO

Dialogue of Plato Show

Homoerotic behaviour was particularly among the elite.

Remains controversial

With the emergence of the Polis, forming heterosexual

The popular pairing of a mature male and young boy -

Paederasty is more accurate than homosexuality.

Persia: Herotodus considers mingling with young boys in a homosexual relationship to be ‘one of the pleasures of life’ that they learnt from persians.

Greek homoseuxlaity is a complex social phenomenon

Dober approach:

• Phenomenon of the polis

• No early (especially in Epic) evidence for overt homosexual behaviour.

• It is the result of segregation of women among the elite

• Substitute for courtship - pursuing boys “if they had women, this wouldn't have happened”

• Avg. Athenian males were open to a large sexual experience, sex with anyone or anything

• Absence of overt homosexuality is a result of conventional reticence (cf. to prepon)

• Cross Cultural evidence –

• Cultures differ, we cannot always draw observations

Symposium:

• Reclining on couches

• Feature of commensality

• Related to warriors feast — conspicuous feature of Homeric society

• Anthropology of the evening meal

• Libation - liquid offering

• As an aristocratic institution

  • Activity based on the warrior group — the spartan reclining, syssition (shared mess), which remained the basis of Spartan military organisation

  • Centre for transmission of cultural values

  • Homoerotic behaviour

  • Political activity (hetaireia aka priv club)

  • Place of pleasure (games — kottabos, entertainment — hetairai)

  • Serious poetic performance

Greek Myth —

• Siren - partially woman partially bird

• Carrying a child — grave marker … myths of harpees carrying off children

What is a myth?

• Traditional tale

  • Not bound to any text or reality

  • Is the product of language

• MYTH exists independent of the tellers though…

• When the story is not connected to a text it can be shaped and moulded when needed ; thus

Genuine myth is shaped over time.

• Mythos — can refer to a speech, tale/story

• Traditional comes from ‘handing down’ generation to generation

• Functionalist definition of myth:

  • Series of devices that the ancients used to develop their view of the world.

• Some argue the myth does something more straightforward

Six Monolithic theories:

1. All myths are nature myths

   • Explains meteorological or cosmological phenomena

   • The assumption is that they used myth to describe instances which they observed but were unable to explain.

   • Explaining it through the excuse that ancients knew about certain concrete physical laws.

   • Works for SOME, but clearly not for others

2. Myths are Aetiological

   • Aviation – reason or cause

   • Myth is proto science

   • They seek to explain some aspect of the world

   • Similar to first, but broader in application

3. Myths are Charters

   • Serve as charters for customs institutions or beliefs

   • Explain and legitimise social practises

4. Structuralism

   • Primitive computer running this program on contemporary

   • Claude Strauss

   • Binary opposite that seek mediation

   • Shows structure but now oft myth

5. Psychological theories

   • Freud influential

   • Discussed the myth of Oedipus – repression in early childhood, of sexual feelings for the parent of the opposite sex, accompanied by desire to suppress parent of the same sex

   • Saw folktales, myths, sagas, even jokes and popular tales as related to dreams in form and content

6. Ritual theory of Myth

   • .Currently in fashion — associated with Walter Burkert

   • Important connection between myth and religious ritual.

   • Often some link between the narrative structure of the narrative and the pattern of action in ritual.

     • Ritual was a sequence of actions or, ‘the things being done’ (ta dromena)

• Theseus and the Minotaur – Minos – palace at Knossos

• THE MINOTAUR

  • Offspring of Pasiphae and a bull

  • Lived in the labyrinth

  • Athenians were supposed to give a regular tribute to king Minos

  • Became a problem for Athens because Athenians would be sent to be fed to the bull.

  • Theseus sails to Crete as part of the tribute

  • Minos’s daughter Ariadne falls in love with Theseus and aids him in his quest.

  • Gave him a luminous garland and a thread of goal (to find his way out of the labyrinth)

The Heroic Cycle:

• Theseus was adopted as a national hero

• He fought many monstrous villains in and around Athens

• Minotaur of Crete was his most famous adversary

• Never ONE canonical version of the myth

• Theseus is the Athenian answer to Heracles

• Athens does not have a deep bronze age, so no deep stories

Religion:

• Did not have a simple word for what we call religion

• Spoke of ta theia , theon therapeia and eusebeia

• Religion is a state of mind, a complex of beliefs and feelings about the forces which govern a man's life and situate it in the world.

Polytheism and Anthropomorphism

• nature / the world is not merely a reflection of a single transcendent deity

What is a Greek god?

• Immortality

Gods are deathless — athanatoi : those that are not subject to death

They are born, have a beginning but no end

• Anthropomorphism

Portrayed in human form — cannot be everywhere at once

Epiphany — manifestation for a day?

Cult iconography — characteristic representation … you see them and you know which god it is

Mythic and literary representations – can be part of literature and narrative

Mythic

• Greek conception of power

The Olympians:

• Zeus

• Hera

• Poseidon

• Demeter

• [Hades] - non one worships death

• Athena

• Apollo

• Artemis

• Aphrodite - 2 birth myths .. one relates her to this ‘legacy of Zeus’ Iliad - one says that she was much older than Zeus, of a diff generation.

• Hermes

• Dionysus - replaces Hestia

• Hephaestus

• Ares

Greek Drama —

Theatre of Dionysus sdjldd

• Athens

• Odd but purposeful design

  

• Once an orchestra – Greek word orchestra means dancing place.

• Elevated stage to make the actors more prominent

• Reflecting changing space and time

• Similar style theatres began to pop up across Greece cuz everyone wanted to be like Athens ofc

Best preserved theatre fig 1.1

Dramatis Personae

• Three great Athenian playwrights:

  • Aeschylus

524/525 - 456/455 BCE

• Sophocles

495 - 406 BCE

Around 120 plays - only 7 known - due to their usage as school texts in the Byzantine period

• Euripides

485 - 406 BCE

• Thespis - Thespians (after one of the first playwrights)

Chronology:

Basic Features:

— Dramatised as the play demands

— of considerable importance; may have been even more important in pre-Aeschylean tragedy

Limited number of speaking actors

— two in early period and three in later - sophocles

Stichomythia

— highly stylized and formal

— dialogue 2 lines, very grammatical

Length

— moderate

— ca 1,000 to 1,500 lines

Masks

— alien to modern notions of theatre

— remnant of tragedy’s ritual past

— gesture inflection of voice etc.

— very different onte

Contributory Influences:

Taken from mythology

–

Dozens of tragedies, only one is fictional.

Lots of tra

First – persians

Second is by Francis (toadman LOL)

Oedipus as the victim of unavoidable doom

Why does he blind himself

• Cutting himself offihUE

Test III Notes

Greek Comedy —

• Ambiguity of laughter

• Analysing humour is like dissecting a frog, the frog dies of it.

• Three phases

  • Old (5th to 4th)

  • Middle (first part of 4th) - no major names of this phase

  • New (after)

• Important comic poets:

  • Aristophanes

Old comedy – 11 plays survive

• Menander

Ancient poet did not survive antiquity but fragments of papyrus

Scattered quotations

1958 — large papyrus finds

Origins

• Tragedy and comedy come from similar but different places. Emphasis on tragic events..

• Tragedy : goat song… developed within culture of Dionysus, satyrs are goatlike

• Athenian satyrs are horsey… tragedy as goat song may be the idea that its rooted in competition and sacrifice. You win something and you sacrifice something…

  • Komodia – song of komos , song of the village (kome)

• Aristotle in poetics wrote that comedy arose “from the leaders of the phallic songs, which remain customary even now in many Greek cities”

• There are funny tragedies..one is not entirely serious while the other unserious. The two forms of art differ in the way in which the two forms of drama relate to the audience.

• Tragedy (universal) objectifying distance of the mythic past. Ancient myth, set in a time of kings and heroes (Thesues talking like a modern democrat while being a hero)

• World of comedy is the particular world of classical athens. Directly reflective of the audience

Old Comedy

• Aristotle’s observations .. phallic song referencing Greek ideas about potency, strength etc.

• Characteristics:

  • Costumes

padded, elaborate costumes – to be a bit grotesque

Masks - like tragedy

leather phalloi - used in strategic ways????

• Chorus

24 in number -

of primary importance in early plays

• Language

elaborate and varied

much sexual and scatological humour - lot of shit jokes

• Plots

often fantastic – loose in plausibility.. Disrupted for jokes

indifferent to reality

• Bolaraphon flew to Olympus on a pegasus.

emphasis on a comic ‘hero’

• Opportunist, lazy, sexual, anti-hero

strong connection with the world of contemporary Athens

• ‘real’ Athenians portrayed on stage (e.g. Socrates in Clouds)

citizens are seeing their own reflection on stage.. Socrates sits and watches himself be made fun of.

• elements of social and political satire

  • a fundamentally conservative outlook

Middle Comedy

• ca 404 - 321 BCE

• follows the defeat of Athens in 404 BCE

• A time of experiment and transition

• Little political criticism

• Popularity of mythic burlesque

• No complete play survives (only scattered ‘fragments’)

• Alexis and Eubulus were significant figures

New Comedy

• Punctuating the drama, radical change in ancient drama.

• Originated with choral song and performance, but by the time we get to new comedy, its dance routines between acts

• Increasing importance of the actor and acting profession.

• ca 320 - 250 BCE

• Until recently New Comedy was known almost exclusively through Roman adaptation (Plautus and Terence)

• Papyrus-finds have increased our knowledge of Menander significantly

• Characteristics:

• 5-act structure emerged from structural changes in Old Comedy

  • This became the standard structure for all drama until recently

• Emphasis on social comedy and social tensions

  • rich and poor ; town and country ; citizens and non-citizens ; free and slave ; men and women ; parents and children

• No topical comedy, obscenity, no phalloi, etc.

• The language is closer to tragedy

• Menander’s strength was the sympathetic portrayal of many kinds of personal relationship and the problems that arise from ignorance, misunderstanding, and prejudice

• Grotesque faces suggest comedy, old men were funny to greeks

House of menander in Mytilene

• super fan from the island of lesbos, was a reader of Menander

• Muses don't have consistent function Thalia is the Muse of Comedy

• Reference to very particular moments in the plays

  • “Encheiridion” – act (4, 2 or 3)

• Shows progression on literacy (image mosaics with footnotes)

Greek Philosophy —

Overview

• Talking and thinking about things, these approaches were mostly defined by these philosophers who preceded us.

  • Before philosophy they told epic with myth…

  • Rise in 5th CE Athens; the analytical tools we use for contemplating the world

  • Asia Minor and then southern Italy

  • Xenophon vs. Plato’s writings

  • Socrates seems like this idealised figure, literary construct, shifting prescience, develops as Plato develops

  • Myth often focused on cosmology – ex. Hesiod's Theogony

  • Myth offered a narrative account of reality

  • Pre-socratic philosophers were not entirely diff from those like Hesiod.

  • Philosophy offer a coherent system vs. a story

Pre-Socratics

• Evidence is lacking, no works survive completely

  • Poetry has a system, prose does not, so it's tricky to know whether the quotes referenced by some philosophers were truly the words the other philosopher spoke.

  • Quotations in later writings but only in fragments

  • Doxographic Tradition: later philosophers writing about their predecessors.

    • Aristotle’s Metaphysics

Gives an overview of early philosophy, however, his bias and theoretical preoccupations offers a tainted account (people trying to grab round in the dark for some sort of truth he has himself reached)

• We see Pre-Socratic philosophy through the filtre of later thought

The Milesians

• Active in the 6th BCE

• Often called physical or natural philosophers

• Lived around the city of Miletes

• Interested in a material understanding of the world

  • They developed the idea of the arche (‘first principles’)

Thales

• CB thinks he's largely a legendary figure

• Was seen as the typical scientist or intellectual (Einstein)

• Water was the arche… primal substance, all things originated from water

  • May have been influence of non-greek traditions

Anaximander

• Born circa 485 BCE ?

• First Greek to write in standard prose.

• Quotation marks don't exist, but writing style and dialect shifts, turns to Ionic… ‘’

• His arche was to apeiron

  • That which is unlimited, the infinite?

  • The process which has not been subject to limits, the process by which matter comes to be, process of definition

  • To define something would mean to put limits around it, define it so that you are able to observe it from that which is not

Anaximenes

• Active until ca 500 BC

• Pupil to Anaximander

• Principle substance is air

Anaximander

• Ca. 504 BC

• Fire is the principle substance

Parmenides

• Fl. ca 540 BC

• Philosophical poem

  • How art is manifested, framed truth in a mythic form.

• Emphasis on being

  • True world is the world of unchanging beings.

  • To say that something is makes sense, to say something is not, does not make sense… difference insinuates that this something is not something other than itself.

  • ‘Is’ in Greek can be ‘true’ or ‘exists’.. is by itself has a deeper sense.

  • Existing is the only thing that's true and logically possible.

  • If the universe unfolds according to time, how does time change, what is the true concept of time.

  • Plato constructed a dialogue between a very old Parminedes and a very young Socrates and Socrates lost, this was fundamental to Plato’s own ideology due to his devotion to Socrates.

• His true account denies motion, change, difference, etc.

• Posed a major logical challenge for subsequent philosophers

The Strasbourg Papyrus

• Purchased in 1904, but not published until 1998.

• Papyrus shaped into a stand-up collar and decorated with copper leaves.

• In the early ’90s scholars realised that the papyrus was from a text of Empedocles

• Overlap with known fragments as well as new material.

• Gives us 69 continuous lines.

Empedocles

• Rich biographical tradition

• Ardent democrat (Aristotle)

• Healing powers and wea

• Said to have died by leaping into Mt. Etna.

• Credited with two main poems:

  • On Nature

  • Purifications (Katharmoi)

• Response to Eleatics… taking Parmenides on.. Until Plato (in Sophist)

• Empedocles responded to the points of

• Generation and destruction

• Motion and change

• Plurality

• Argues that the world is made up from the interaction of the Four Roots

  • Irreducible elements

    • Zeus ; fire

    • Hera ; air

    • Aidoneus ; earth

    • Nestis ; Water

• Principle of Love is of attraction, the opposite is Strife, polarity

• Things change radically and we are in the middle of this cycle.

• Philotes

  • Love is a cosmic force for early Greeks

• Neikos

  • Strife recalls Heraclits’ use of strife and war as cosmic principles.

• Cycle of change

A twofold tale I shall tell: at one time they [i.e., the roots] grew to be one

alone out of many, at another again the grew apart to be many out of one.

(fr. 8.1-2 = B 17.1-2)

• An implicit rejection of Parmenides, but he supports a Parmenidean notion of ‘unchanging change’.

  • Constant cosmic cycle, as the elements are influenced

  • A complex zoogony, details biology, attempt to reconcile the notions of birth death and general change with Parmenides’ view that being is unchanging and eternal

  • Underlying unity, of all elements

Empedoclean Scholarship

• Can Katharmoi be reconciled with the Physika?

• Were they composed at different periods in the poet’s life?

  • Empedocles’ view is comprehensive…

• Gold leaves with poems inscribed upon them

The Purifications - Katharmoi:

• Complete break from cultural tradition

• Precursor to philosophical writings that questioned

The Decree (fr. 107 = B 115):

Much in the text is obscure

• Wretched conditions of mortal incarnations is described

• If we are in exile, that harsh world is not nice for us, mystical Greek beliefs…

• Human life was unpleasant, life of the gods wasn't.. Everything gods do is without toil

• Hope of release and return to the company of the blessed (gods)

• Account of the underworld?? Descent to the underworld or a Katabasis… very controversial

• An account of early history of race

• Ritual injunctions – how to live a proper life

Concluding remarks:

Empedocles offers a glimpse into the world of mystical religions of Greek Italy in the Classical period

Empedocles sets out two complementary cycles: cosmic and the exile and incarnations of the daimon

Plato & Aristotle:

• Renaissance - period of creativity… Raphael’s fresco in the Vatican

• 5th CE Athens:

  • Sophistic revolution

  • Greek enlightenment – concentration of thinkers in Athens..

  • Sophistes = sophist aka a practitioner of sophia (wisdom)

  • Emphasis on practical use of sophia —> rhetoric

Socrates

• 469 - 399 BC

• Well known public figure

• Wrote nothing – highly influential

  • Plato wasn't his only disciple

  • Xenophon's Socratic works survive but all others are lost.

  • Inquiry of the divine mission

  • In 399 BC put on trial for impiety – introducing new gods and corrupting the youth

    • Improvising religion.. Introducing new gods OR corrupting the youth

• Homeboy was so annoying he rly said ride or die… wanted to be kept at states expense because he wished to be a philosopher (so pretentious but i still love you bae)

Plato:

• Athens ca 429 - 347 BC

• Folk hero for philosophical setting

• We've got everything from Plato. He became the fundamental philosopher… great literary artist

• Importance in education

• He lied to us.. His name was Aristocles, from a wealthy family background.

• Major influence of his life was Socrates.. Diff from Socrates in three respects

  • Rejected marriage

  • Founded a philosophical school - academy

  • Produced a great deal of written works

• Dialogues:

• Himself does not appear, reflection of the world: well known Athenians we are aware of through other sources.

• Historical moment in which a discussion can take place…

• Unique among philosophers in his refusal to present own ideas.

• Varied and open dialogues – much debate beginning in antiquity

• Earlier dialogue are shorter and more accessible

  • E.g., Apology, Laches, Euthyphro

  • Apology – speech that Socrates gave. Consistent with the way the earlier dialogues are written

  • Often ‘aporetic’

• Middle

  • E.g., Symposium, Republic, Phaedo

  • Socrates is still a central figure, but develops positive views of his own

  • Symposium – hierarchical structure … king should be a philosopher

• Late

  • E.g., Cratylus, Laws, Timaeus, Parmenides

  • Socrates is less important

  • Plato develops views of his own at length

  • Difficult – less influence on Western thinking.

  • Laws takes up ideas of the state, Timaeus - cosmology

• Plato’s idiosyncratic views are not reflective of Greek values. Aristotle was more aligned in that sense yet he had his own issues.

Aristotle:

• 384 - 322 BC

• Born in Stagira to a physician

• #orphan at a very young age

• Lyceum area surrounding Gymnasium, called place of Lucias – Apollo?

• At 17 he travelled to Athens and entered Plato’s Academy, where he remained until Plato’s death in 347 BC

• Aristotle’s relationship with Plato was complex

  • a mixture of admiration and criticism

  • may have prompted Plato to be critical of himself

• After Plato’s death, Aristotle left Athens

  • stayed in the court of Hermeias, ruler of Assos and Atarneus (in the Troad) until 345

  • married Hermeias’ adopted daughter Pythias

  • began his biological research

• In 342 BC Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor of Alexander (the Great)

• Returned to Athens in 335 BC

• He founded his own school called the Lyceum

  • the school was later named after the peripatos, and so there are references to Peripatetic philosophers

• Left Athens after the death of Alexander and died in Chalcis in 322.

• Classification system — biological writings and elsewhere

• Teleology – study of ends

• Fundamental thinker of western philosophical tradition.

• Works remained challenging

• Writings:

  • Esoteric works survive

  • Exoteric works are lost

• Extant works can be classified in three broad categories:

  • Logic and Metaphysics

  • Nature, Life, and Mind

  • Ethics, Politics, and Art

• The nature of the Aristotelian corpus remains controversial

• Written lectures?

  • Notes are selective and can be abstract…. Forgetting context can be challenging

Early Greek Medicine —

• Achilles was considered a hero

• Connection of rise and philosophy and formalised sense of medical practise, as well as ritual religious

Hippocrates of Cos

• First real physician… born ono Island of Cos

• Influence of Plato's writings

• Practise:

  • One cannot understand the body without understanding the whole world

  • How things fit into the cosmic structure of things.

• Earlier descendants saw themselves as the successors of the healing god Asclepius

Hippocratic Corpus

• Numerous writings on the subject of ancient medicine and medical practice

• Large body of texts, designed to combine the teachings (?)

• Does not cohere as a system of medical practise – rather different texts on a variety of things

• Health and disease – balance –

• None of the works is likely to be by Hippocrates himself

• Does not offer a consistent view

  • emphasis on balance and morbid imbalance

• Much controversy surrounds Hippocrates' precise understanding of the nature of the body and disease

• Hippocrates was the ideal physician

Galen

• Galenic school was more influential in the ‘modern world’ basically second century – greeks and romans

• A.D. 129 – ca 190

• Galen started out as a gladiator

• Spent a lot of time on Plato and aristotles works

• Rose from gladiator-physician to court physician of Marcus Aurelius

• Important for writings on anatomy and pathology

• Central for Galen was the four-humour system (chymoi ‘juices’; L. (h)umores):

  • yellow bile (chole)

  • black bile (melaina chole)

  • phlegm

  • blood

• Three organic systems: heart, brain, liver

Anatomy, Physiology & Consciousness

• They did not dissect people

• Most obvious way they got to know about it was through sacrifice

• Battlefield – fighting with swords etc. – physicians while inspecting battle wounds.

• Desecrating a corpse was a religious offence

• Extispicy was an important source of knowledge about inner organs

  • Examining entrails

• Physicians made observations on the field of battle, but they did not practise dissection

• Dissection was believed to be an act of desecration

• It was only after the conquests of Alexander that Greeks in Egypt first made a formal study of anatomy

• Boy presents sacrificial animal to a warrior for inspection with a Scythian looking on

• Ancient Egypt – mummification

Herophilus of Chalcedon

• ca 330-260 BC

• Systematically explored the inner body…. Weird

• Opened ppl up for exploratory purposes……. Boy

• Active in Alexandria in Egypt

• Performed vivisectory experiments on convicted criminals

• His writings were very important

• Also important is Erasistratus (315-240 BC), who formulated general principles for discussing anatomy

Unusual Ideas

• The wandering womb caused illnesses in women

  • Called hysteria from hystera in greek

  • Womb wandering around the body and causing problems. Bruh what were these Greeks on

  • Why is she being so weird.. Must be her womb talking a stroll

• The brain (enkephalos, myelos) is in fact semen

  • Thinking through your chest? Liver = emotions!!! Can’t be anything else

• Enkephalos, grey stuff in the head… cum in head oh lawd

• Brain that sits on our head, full of semen, spinal column connects your semen to your genitalia

• If semen can only belong to men.. What about women.

• ATHENA AND THE HEAD OF ZEUS

Where is consciousness located?

• Where did the Greeks locate consciousness

• Psychic Organs

  • Modes of mental actions — varying words (mind – lungs? Spirit? Sensibilities? Heart, soul and spirit)

  • Heart seems more intellectual in nature – liver is the seat of deep passion

  • Valentine livers

Prometheus’ Immortal Liver

• Criminal – deceives Zeus

  • Titan; divine figure

  • Punished for stealing fire.. Tied to a rock in the middle of nowhere (fettered and nailed to a pillar)

    • Suggest ancient practise of crucifixion

  • Eagle eats out is liver for it tor degenerate and be eaten by the beast again

  • Ancient Greek application of the myth: Crucified slaves – vultures

  • Vulture is replaced by eagle since it is a bird sacred to Zeus

  • Hesiod’s Theogony,

  • Saviour – suffers terribly on our behalf

  • Why the liver? This punishment is reminiscent of the fate suffered by Tityos who tried to rape Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis

  • Liver is the seat of deep and intense feeling

  • Later it is increasingly associated with sexual passion… Eros fire at Polyphemus and shoots it at his liver

Plagues in Athens

• Homer, Iliad

  • “And the pyres of the dad were always burning without pause.”

• World of myth and epic… begins with a plague

• Silver arrows of Apollo – he is the healer of the plague but can also be the bringer of it.

Greek attitude towards disease:

• Ancient medicine was not population based, but the treatment of singular people, physicians would treat on a case by case basis.

• Disease is an external force – it is an affliction. Can be sent by God supernatural power or even magic

• Never mentioned contagious diseases — 19th century recognition of contagion

• Thucydides on the plague (430 BC)

• Plague was at its worst in 429 BCE

• Athenians moved in to the city during the Peloponnesian wars

• Starving people and plague breaks out…

  • “I shall describe its actual course, explaining the symptoms, from the study of which a person should be best able, having knowledge of it beforehand, to recognize it if it should ever break out again. For I had the disease myself and saw other sick of it.” (2.48.3)

• Social consequences identified by Thucydides.. Pericles died, the weakness and breakdown of Athens.

• Failing traditional values – people refusing to treat the sick out of fear.

• “No ostensible cause”

• Attacked – external force “redness and inflammation in the eyes, the inward parts, such as the throat or tongue, becoming bloody and emitting an unnatural and fetid breath”

• Neglected sick – disturbing phrase.. People putting themselves in cold bodies of water to somehow ease the burning and the pain :/

• Contagion proof — “the mortality among them being greatest because they were most exposed to it.” (2.47.4)

• Acquired Immunity —- “”

• The medical world was entirely focused on the patient – did thucydides find something the others could not? Yes and no.

Greek Athletics —

• Training of the body was crucial to Greek and Roman ideas of education

  • Mousike kai gymnastike — (music: poetry speaking etc, and athletics: training the body)

  • Mens sana in corpore sano — Roman ideas about sane/stable mind and stable body

• Warriors and Athletes — statues

• Everything was about competition – winning in war, in poetry and drama etc.,Athletics were about hard physical struggle to gain victory over the opponent

• Athlon as in prize – reward for competition

• Sport derives from hunting rituals

• Ritual sacrifice of energy

Origins of Sport

Two prominent theories:

1. Ethologists sport derives from a primitive hunting ritual as a kind of sacrifice of energy.

• Rooted in the more violent form of food collecting

• Pastoralism was dominant form of agriculture in prehistoric Greece

1. Games originated in Death ritual

• D

Involved games;

• chariot-racing, boxing, wrestling, running, javelin, fencing, throwing the weight (discus?), archery

Greeks began putting up statues a lot, statutes placed… inscriptions on statues

Sociology of games: Poems (Pindar) on bases of statues

Crown games

Major competitions

• Olympic Games (Olympia): Zeus

  • Women competed in separate games at Olympia: the Heraea in honour of Hera

• Pythian Games (Delphi): Apollo, Pythian was a priest of Apollo

• Nemean Games (Neamea, NW Argolid): Zeus

• Isthmian Games (Isthmia near Corinth): Poseidon

Events

• Running races

  • stadion at Olympia (192 m.)

  • diaulos (there and back)

  • dolichos (12 laps at Olympia)

• A race in armour

• Pentathlon

  • long-jump, stadion, discus, javelin, wrestling

• Pankration (boxing + wrestling)

Sociology of Sport

• Athletics were part of everyday life, but competition was part of elite society

  • prestige of chariot racing

  • horses were a significant expression of elite status

    • N.B. names in Hipp- and -ipp-

• Victory commemorated in monuments and poetry

  • Pindar and Bacchylides

Olympia:

Casual Competition – carnival like atmosphere

Reconstructed areas for competitions – entranceways

Transition

• Greece was ready to fall

• Period after peloponnesian war brought time of transition and crisis

• Central poleis were in a precarious position

The 4th Century —

Macedon

• End of 5th CE

• Wandering poets

• Euripides

• Eoscoles

Philip II

• Got aristotle to be his son’s tutor

• Architect of Macedonian greatness — world is driven by conquest

• Remains – speculated to be those of Philip the II… experiment in reconstruction, put bones together and attempt to work with software

Alexander

• 356-323 BC

• Alexander ‘the Great’

• Expanded Macedonian control to the East by subjugating the former Persian Empire

• Also conquered Egypt and most of India

• Became the monarch of most of the known world

• Was much romanticised by the later tradition

• Hellenistic Greece successors to Alexander

  • The successors to Alexander

  • The officers who partitioned Alexander’s empire

    • Antigonus (Persia, Phrygia, etc.)

    • Antipater

    • Cassander

    • Lysimachus (Thrace)

    • Ptolemy (Egypt)

    • Seleucus (Babylon)

• Cleopatra is the first one from the family that is

• Public inscriptions in Greek

• Greekness becomes increasingly assimilated into one culture

Hellenistic Literature and Culture

• Cultural Patronage of the Ptolemies

  • Library of Alexandria

    • Founded by Ptolemy I in early 3 century BC

    • Ambitious collection of all Greek literature

    • Catalogued by Callimachus

  • Museum (Mouseion)

    • Home for scholar-poetry

• Phlius – writing about literary culture “bird cage of the muses”

• Ptolemaic rulers — controlling narratives? Modern versions of Homer are most def altered/aligned by them

Alexandrian poetry

• Critical hostilities:

  • Egypt has best conditions to sustain papyrus texts

  • Critical hostility to Alexandrian Poetry

  • Tendency to see hellenistic literature as a transition from Classical Greece to Augustan Rome

  • The distaste of poetry that appears to be the product of royal patronage

  • The lack of appreciation of the poetry’s self conscious ‘intertextuality’

  • Preference for aristotelian unity and consistency, which many Alexandrian works do not possess

    • They wanted variety and diversity

  • Obscure mythical subjective

  • Most texts that have disappeared — myth was proportional to history

  • Rise of local historians

  • Scholar poets 1

    • Feitshizing originality – romantic ideas of poetry dismiss it as derivative

    • Poets had one eye on homer and one eye on each other

    • Song culture — poetry art music is reliant on other forms of art to sustain themselves

    • Alexandrians – critics claim are unoriginal

• Obsessive engagement with micro aspects of texts — editing and stabilising text of Homer, promoted a different attitude about thinking about texts.

• Greeks did become more literate but that's not why they started to synthesise Homer's works into confirmed works.

• Propertius:

  • Said that the subject matter in itself would not be talked about if it weren't for Homer..

  • Concerned with the Alexandrians

  • Troy by two different names — ilion, and you to troy

  • Oetaei – hill, god there is Heracles. Betrayed by wife suffering from poisonous garment, wanted to be burned alive

  • Heracles’ bow is needed

  • Poetry is only intelligible with long answers

Major Alexandrians:

• Callimachus

  • Fl. ca 260

  • Credited with 800 books – scholar poets, produced catalogue for library of Alexandria

  • Aetia — series of interconnected poems

  • Hecale —papyrus finds, takes place night before theseus has to fight the bull

  • Hymns — 6 hymns, paired with homeric Hymns

  • Epigrams — recited at symposiums

• Apollonius of Rhodes

  • Fl. 3rd cent. BC

  • Librarians at Alexandria

  • Argonautica – in 4 books ; Jason's quest of the golden fleece

  • Great hero is reconsidered and passive

• Theocritus

  • Fl. early 3rd cent. BC

  • Syracuse

  • Best known for being the first person to write Idylls (pastoral poetry) – between savage nature and civilised society

  • Model for the Roman poet – Vergil (Eclogues)

Early Rome & the Etruscans —

• Romans synthesised greek ideas into their own

• Treytons column? Scenes of roman life and conquests – carved in antiquity

• Greek world as

• Main evidence for Early Romans:

  • Archaeology

    • Indo-european

    • Phases into which its divided

  • Later ancient historians

    • Became aware of their own history and legacy

Latial I (1000-875 BC)

• Little evidence

  • A few burial urns

  • No habitation sites

Latial II (875-750 BC)

• Division of this phase into two is the result of the archaeological evidence, suggesting two population groups

  • Excavation of ancient Gabii

  • Low economic development (a subsistence economy)

  • Population approx. 100

  • no social stratification (two extended families)

Latial IV (700 - 580 BC)

• Goods from east – greece (hence ‘Orientalizing’ Period)

  • Great increase in wealth

• Evident in burials

  • Tombs exhibit

• increase in disposable wealth

• Celebration of military prowess

  • Rise of wealthy landowning class

• Owning land – essential to Roman notions of wealth

  • Tribal society – chieftains and head of gentes

  • Rise of centralised authority

  • Rome – dominated by the elite in Rome, making it a central focus and centralised authority – in comparison to Greek city states

• Who is related to whom?

• Large political structure into which this is fitted

Literary Tradition

• Not really significant tradition of myth

  • Earliest phase before contact with Greek Culture – roman gods were not anthropomorphic

    • Latin filter to greek myth

    • 5 books Auc

Two strands of foundations

• Foundation of Rome was connected with the Trojan Hero Aeneas

• Attempt to link Rome with Greek tradition and chronology

• Minor hero in Iliad – Aeneas ; foundation of rome

  • Romulus and Remus

• Derived from IRomaI

• Foundation of rome itself – foundation myth

• Need to anchor the history of the state in mythic history

• Rome’s view through a dominant perspective — roman rule covered

• Numitor was driven into exile by Amulius, his younger brother. Made Rhea Silva, his daughter, a Vestal virgin… unmarried ritually pure girls – done to prevent heir

• Central cult of goddess Vesta

• Being buried alive for being raped … i want to kill myself

• Rhea is raped by god Mars – has twins and Amulius orders them to be thrown into Tiber

• Avoid shedding of kindred blood – river = no killing technically

  • Greeks practised exogamy – marriage as a phenomenon in ancient world

  • Establishing ties of marriage between families to bring together disparate groups

  • Death of Romulus

    • Murdered and dismembered – or disappeared

    • Quirinus was independent god – assimilation of romulus to Quirinus

    • Quirinius as Mars? Not a precise equivalent but an adaptation

    • Ares and Mars cannot be the same cuz Mars is the main god for Romans

Jupiter - equivalent to Zeus

The Early Kingdom

• Republication evidence – early regal period

• Rex Sacrorum – king of sacrifices

• Religious building in the Forum called Regia

• An archaic inscription mentions a rex

• Names of early kings are unusual and so may be authentic

• Other evidence suggests that a rex was a priestly office

  • Nothing in archaeological record that talks about oligarchy

  • History suggests king

The seven Kings

• Romulus ; Numa Pompilius ; Tullius Hostilius ; Ancus Marcius ; Tarquinas

Etruscans

• Chief competitors of Rome?

• Highly developed civilization — earlier Roman view was more biassed they saw they as a primitive and mysterious precursor to Rome

Language

• Believed to be obscure and mysterious

  • Gaps in understanding of grammar and lexicon

    • 9,000 epigraphic texts

    • A Liber linteus (linen book - fabric with writing)

    • 40-50 glosses (ancient texts – etruscan words in latin, early dictionary?)

Civilization

• Two accounts of origins

  • arrived from the east (Herodotus [1.94])

  • autochthonous (Dion. Hal.)

• The story of Tyrrhenus’ leading of an exodus from Lydia to Italy now seems to be a political fabrication

• They seem to have occupied an Iron Age settlement in Italy

  • Archaeological evidence – development in culture and society during 7th & 8th Cent. BC

  • Recognizable artistic tradition

    

    • Painted pottery

    • Buccero – distinctive style of pottery

    • Vase painting – greek influence - dancing and competition

    • Gold work

    • Statues – Distinctive features pointy beards and stylized features

Society

• Regal style society to system reminiscent of Greek polis

  • Distinct and hellenized society

  • Imperial expansion

  • Presence in Early Rome

    • Tarquin dynasty at Rome

    • Lucius Tarquinius Priscus

  • General depiction is negative due to hostilities – described as pirates

    • Theopompus of Chios

    • “ Sharing wives ” – Etruscan men are looked down upon

    • Goes against Greek custom : legitimacy of offspring fidelity and sexual consciousness

    • Misogyny in Greek society was mostly centred around maintaining ‘purity’ of heritage

    • “ It is not a disgrace for them to be seen naked ” – Exposing one’s body – slaves prostitutes etc could be exposed at the expense of whoever wherever – women, respectable ones need to cover up — clothes = sense of shame

      • Issues with the historical accuracy – Theopompus is clearly biassed in some accounts

    • Etruscan women did recline with men during dinner and did sit with men while watching sporting events.

    • Funerary inscriptions identify the deceased by both patronymics and matronymics

    • Etruscan woman had greater legal and social status than the majority of Greek women

    • Mommys boy - as a term carries heavy social implications

    • Death = partytime

Greeks Attitudes Towards the Etruscans

• Commercial and military rivals (Carthiginians in NA)

• Once Greek defeated Etruscan fleet off Cumae in 474 BC, Greeks could afford to disparage defeated enemy

• Wanted to account for the decline of Etruscan Naval and land power in 5th and 4th cent. BC

  • Luxury

  • Softness that comes with being overripe

  • Herotodus - “soft lands breed soft men”

Monarchy to Republic

• Last of the kings – Tarquinius Superbus – Etruscan origin

  • Superbus conveys arrogance – haughty – tyrannical populist (manipulated the masses)

  • Expelled – 6th century BC.

• Monarchy was replaced by elected republic system

• Magistrates senate etc. remained the same – change may have been gradual or instant

Basic Principles:

• The pomerium

  • = the sacred boundary of the city

• Within the pomerium was ‘home’ (domus)

• Outside was militia (i.e., the area of military service

• Implicit in this distinction is a basic view of the world

• Imperium

  • = ‘command’

• Gentes

  • family or clan groups

• Populus

  • = ‘people’

  • but the word’s basic sense suggests the army

• res publica populi Romani

  • = ‘communal affairs of the Roman people’

Basic Elements of Republican Government

• Collegiality

  • Magistrates were part of boards called ‘colleges’

• Popular Election

  • Roman magistrates were always elected by the Roman People in their various assembles

• Annual term for office

  • This proved to be problematic with respect to military campaigns

• Prohibition of direct election from one office to another’

• Consuls:

  • Absolute power for their

  • Ptrologing consuls – consolidation of power

  • Wars and victories – got filthy rich

  • Armies became more loyal to them and to Rome

• End of republic – civil wars compounding

The Struggle of the Orders

• Patrician families

  • Connected with rank of pater

  • Magistrates - elected from small number of elite families

  • Ruling few

• The plebs

  • Adj. : plebeian

  • Non-patrician members of populus Romanus

  • Mob crowd throng

• Contrasts and struggle of the two – central aspect of the Republic

Roman Expansion

• Make plebs happier by exploiting them!

• Conquest time

• Hadrian's column

• Italian tribes – etruscan like people – brought them under Rome's control

• Towards the end of 5th cent. BC, Romans began campaign of conquest and colonisation

• Alexander’s territory turned into small states and individual territories

• Romans had Rome. Political expansion – imposition of roman culture/

• Latin became the standard language. ‘

• Other languages:

  • Iscan-Umbrian, Greek, etruscan, Gallic

Roman Imperialism

• Modern term — growth of colonial empire 19th and early 20th cent.

• Used to describe growth of roman power

• 5th to 2nd cent. BC Rome was a profoundly military society

• Public figures – minimum 10 yrs in military

  • Imperium was essentially military power

Troops and wagon and captured loyalty, a general being celebrate for being the leader of all this… triumph over conquest

• Any aspiring magistrate had to have performed 10 yrs of military service

• Roman expansion was rooted in military success – they thought it lifted you up to the level of gods

  • Alliances - on Roman terms, resistance was met with conquest.

  • Character of Europe and Roman society.

• Moving outside of Italy

• Political unity – long term control by establishing provinces.

• WHy?

  • Origin was defensive and only incidentally expansionist

  • Economic motives and desire for territorial acquisition

• Political classes believed other states should do what Rome wants

• Pax Romana

• Aeneas

The Punic Wars

• Carthage

  • Phoenician colony on coast of NE Tuci

  • Important trading centre

  • Sought naval control of important trade routes,’

• Carthage and Rome

  • Rome and Carthage were close

  • Intentionally not initiated

Rome won

• Could be explained by following factors – determination s

• RepublicAtilius Regulus was captured

• 250 BC — carthaginians - sent Regulus to Rome to negotiate exchange of prisoners

• Corvus

  • Technological innovation in naval building.

  • Rotatable boarding

  • Sea battle into land battle..

• 2nd war was provoked by Carthi

Hannibal

• Can only perceive through a roman lens.. A

• Considered by both ancient and modern historians to be one of the greatest generals in history

  • Combining infantry and cavalry , importance of military intelligence, loyalty from his troops

Third and final punic war

• Provoked by Carthage

• Defeated by a Roman expeditionary force

• One side’s account, defeated

• The republic maki

Effect of Roman Conquest

• Constitutional anomalies from Hannibalic War – second punic ads

• Imperium and growing empire

• Repredal

• Increase in personal wealth

  • By procuu;

  • Slavery in war

  • Wealth acquisition – wars of conquest

• Family farms and lands —

• Mom and pop farms worked upon by hundreds of slaves

• Male head of family was important figure in political roles etc. usually they were in the army – small holders were often soldiers

  • They could not compete in markets with large estates

  • Growing urban port in rome

• You have to have some sort of property to be a soldier — strategy of them having a stake in the roman empire.

• Vast wealth & power of senatorial class led to arrogance

  • Treatment of Antiochus IV of Syria by Gaius Popillius Laenas (refused to shake his hand)

  • Resentment among italian allies – who were largely excluded from power

First Century BCE

Collapse of the Republic

• Collapse was not the end of the empire

• Oligarchic republic to a dictatorship

• Conquest of mediterranean basin created number of problem

The Gracchi

• Tibersius Sempronius Gracchus

• Elite family – re

• Tibirius practised holding office

• As tribune of the pleds, scipios absences Gracchus propeda

• Gracchus ignored senates will on foreign policy

• Tyrant in the making – alienated supporters by seeking immediate re election to avoid prosecution fo

Marius

• ‘New man’

• Popular support

Cornelius Sulla Felix

• Prominent patrician family

• Used army to seize Rome

• Significant reforms – divesting power

  • Tribunate was weakened

Caesar

• 100 – 15 March 44 BCE

• Born into patrician family – claimed descent from Venus and Aeneas

• Conquest in Gaul

  • Capable general – easy defeat of Pharnaces at Zela (crimean territories)

• Cleopatra

  • Ptolemy Caesar

• Civil War

  • Bloody struggle ended with Caesar in control of Roman State

  • Author of two surviving Commentari

• Monarchs would place themselves on a pedestal – on the level of gods

• Assassinated hastily

• Instituted a divine cult

• Dressed in manner of early kinds but did not assume the title rex

• Murdered at steps of the senate

Why was he assassinated?

• Caesar was a threat to the return of the republic

• Civil unrest resumed after his death however

• Ptolemaic rules of Egypt lived in a Greek bubble

Cleopatra

• Relations with high profile Romans

• Became Queen 51 BCE

  • First alone, later with younger brothers

  • Children with Marc Anthony and Caesar

  • Romanticized — more powerful irl than historical record

    • Said to be author of treatises on hairdressing and cosmetics

• Octavian’s Propaganda →

  • Interesting impressions of her

  • Monster and a wicked woman

• Horatius’ Poem on the Death of Cleopatra

  • Sacrilegious to bring out Caecuban – insinuating her religious and cultural opposition to their own?

  • Not only a threat to those loyal to caesar but also a threat to the whole empire

  • “Contaminated flock of men diseased by vice” — eunuchs

  • Out of control, drunk.

Augustus

• Statue –

  • Upper attire is militaristic

  • Draped toga – warriors didn't fight with the toga, but it's a symbol of civilised conduct

Roman culture – religion, roman civilization and their way of life

• Barefoot – direct contact with the earth, connected with the land (Augustan Ideology)

  • Baby – aligning to the Julian lan, and close association with the god venus – Cupid is the son of Venus

Children who represent the future – referencing Augustan Ideology again

• Painted and richly decorated – not white marble

• Series of Civil wars after Caesar dies

• The Battle of Actium stabilised the situation a great deal.

• Forces under Octavian had a victory – and they wanted to stop civil wars

• “August” – make big

• Maintaining control – challenge was to create a permanent system to govern Rome.

• Army has to be repurposed to traditional roles against foreign enemies – outwardly facing army

  • Restoration from civil wars’ inward focusing army

• Augustus as Princeps

  • Not an official title but reflected pre

Restoration of the Republic

• Jupiter increasing

• He was interested in Control

Test IV Notes

Augustan age was high point of Roman culture

Roman Art —

• Warm up slide – colossal statue

• Constantine – converted on deathbed, Christianization of Roman empire

• Greek Art – public & private

  • private : decorative intended for personal use ; public : decorative but regularly commemorative (sometimes symbolic function)

  • Scholar relation to leisure since you have time to contemplate

• Art and artistic style influenced by numerous cultures

  • Spoils from campaigns ; Greek artists migrating to Rome

• Romans were more interested than the Greeks in commemorating historical events in public and priv art.

  • Admiration of Greek but air of superiority

  • First Europeans to produce art gallery?

  • Private Patronage

Sources

• Discoveries from all points of the Roman Empire

  • Digs and black market in antiquities

Pompeii and Herculaneum

• Eruption of Mt Vesuvius (79 CE)

• Eyewitness account – Pliny the Younger (Gaius Piniuis)

• Important for understanding of ancient art and domestic life

Roman Painting

• Range of subjects - traditional myth to military conquests

• Migration ot Rome (Greek artists)

Wall painting

• Portable panels to wall painting shift … Elder Pliny said “this is deplorable”

• Pompeii & Herculaneum had extensive paintings in residences

  • Simple designs to complex polychrome chemes and scenes

Pompeii

• House of the Vettii ; north and southeast oecus

  • “Punishment of Dirce” painting

  • Daedaius showing Pasiphae the wooden cow

  • Ixion bound to the wheel by Hephaestus

• Trompe l’oeil decor architectural motifs and picture in house near Farnesina

• Trompe l’oeil decor in ‘Room of Masks’ from house on Palatine

• Scenes from landscape of the Odyessey

• Tomb on the Via Latina

• “Chiron and Achilles” painting from the basilica of Herculaneum

Roman Minor Arts & Crafts

• Astrology

  • Serpent design ring

  • Engravings

  • Metals like Sardonyx Chacledonyx

  • Augustus the transvestite????

  • Focus on Portraits:

    • portrayal of people as they are – individuated by iconography

  • Mercury god of commerce – merchandise

  • Optical Illusions

  • Effeminate clothing on men?

  • Achilles hidden, dressed up as a girl – puberty initiation

  • Decor - silver plates

  • Statues Dionisiac scenes

  • Lamps

Roman Mosaics

• opus tessellatum

stone or marble cut into cubic shape and fitted closely together in mortar

• opus uermiculatum

tiny pieces fitted together without any spaces ; imitates painting

• opus sectile

larger pieces

• emblemata

panels made in artists’ studios

• Greek myth and literature

Roman Sculptures

• Bronze marble other stones, precious metals terracotta

  • Typically mabrle

  • Used for extensively Commemorative purposes:

    • Funerary, decorative art or state propaganda, religion

  • Varieties:

    • Statues, busts, relief Friezes and panels, architectural embellishments

Roman Architecture

• Colosseum –

  • Marble decorations

  • Stolen and sent to Vatican for homes of the elite etc.

  • Absence of casingsrinthian columns – all orders are there

  • Psnk

  • Pantheon

Hellenistic & Roman Philosophy —

Best sources from hellenistic philosophy are from romans

• Important in order to become a sophisticated leader.. Someone who can lead an army, wage a case at court

  • Who they wanted to be –

  • Philosophy narrowed – less comprehensive than intellectual initiatives of Plato and Aristotle

  • Non-greek influences

  • More schools were established

  • It became more systematic

    • Plato and Aristotle’s attempts at making or producing systems is still uncertain

    • Philosophy became an integrated system for a complete understanding of the world’s structure and our place in it.

Principal Schools

Stoicism

• Zeno of Citium, Athens 313 BCE

  • Stoa Poikile — Painted Porch

  • Almost failed after Zeno – divergent positions unified by Chrysippus

  • Appeal to Romans: Duty – what you must do not what you wish to do

  • WritingsCicero

  • Stoic doctrine

Stoics made important contributions in the areas of logic, physics, and ethics

• Stoic Physics

materialist

appeal to exceptionless laws — fate

Fire basic substrate through which things are produced

• Cf. Heraclitus: emphasis on fire

  • Stoic Ethics

Virtue is sufficient for happiness

• Virtue? And maleness?

Nothing except virtue is good

Emotions are always bad

Epicurus

• 341-270 BCE

  • Best known through Lucretius’ Latin poem De rerum natura

  • Titus Lucretius Carus c. 94-55 BCE

  • Doctrine

  • Pleasure

  • Atomic theory

  • Freedom from fear of the gods

Cynics

• Founded by Diogenes ‘the dog’

  • so called because of his shamelessness

  • c. 412-324 BCE

  • Not really a philosophy, but a way of life

Extreme primitivism: ‘live according to nature’

Opposition to material possession

• Very influential on later Greek and Roman thought

  • No writings survive complete

Roman Religion

• Focus on hearth

  • Myth is Greek myth disguised as Roman gods

  • Goddess Vesta – cult of Vesta

  • Roman temples have similarity to Greek temples, just different origins

  • Abstract Divine forces pervaded the world - numina

  • Greeks were profoundly anthropomorphic → Roman religion was originally not; gods didn't have form

  • Talked not only of Gods, but numina as well

  • Agrarian – agriculture deities have big presence

  • Farms and divinities:

    • Flora - growth, Pomona - edible grown products, Consus - storing of agricultural produce, Robigus - croplite , Ceres - comprehensive goddess ; cereal ; demeter

  • Range of minor agricultural deities are not present in greek religion

  • The door connected to god Janus

    • Janus Clusivius - closing the door

    • Threshold – limentinus

    • Cardea - goddess of hinges

    • Forculus - fulcrum? Manipulating door leaf

  • Twelve gods → dii consentes

    • Twelve olympians cf.

    • Iuppiter ; Iuno ; Minerva ; Vesta ; Ceres ; Diana ; Venus ; Mars ; Mercurius ; Neptunus ; Volcanus ; Apollo

    • Gilt statues were originally stoof in the forum

  • Janus

    • God who presides over beginnings

    • Water-ways and crossings

    • War – temple of Janus was closed by Octavian in 29 BC

  • Hestia - Vesta

  • Connected with fire

    • Vulcna nature fire

    • State cult

  • Mars - Ares

    • Agricultural deity

    • War god is a later development

  • Jupiter

    • Product of hellenization

    • Great temples on the Capitoline

    • Cult developed and promoted by Augustus - divine patriarch

Magic in the Ancient World

• Worshippers of superstition

• Curses written, folded up and nailed through - binding spells

• Definitions? What is magic

  • “a manipulative strategy to influence the course of nature by supernatural (‘occult’) means” (Versnel)

• Considerable overlap of religion and magic

• Coercion – vs in religion you have to pray and hope

  • Concrete goals and performative strategies (spells, incantations etc.)

• The distinction between magic and religion is difficult to maintain

  • In our sources prayers, magical formulae, magical ritual all occur

• Secret knowledge and emphasis on the Secrets of the world – arcana mundi

  • Reason why magic became increasingly associated with evilness

• “Agamemnon spoke, and cut the lambs’ throats with the pitiless bronze and laid them on the ground gasping, as the life left them, their strength robbed by the bronze. Then they drew wine from the bowl into the cups, and poured it on the ground, making their prayers to the ever-living gods. And this is what any one of the Achaeans and Trojans would say: “Zeus, greatest and most glorious, and you other immortal gods: whichever side first offends against these oaths, may their brains spill on the ground as this wine is spilled, their own and their children’s, and may their wives be other men’s conquest.”

— Homer, Illiad

Sources

• Literary texts

  • Classical period – more explicit and detailed

  • Allusions to magical practise in Homer

• Magical papyri

  • Handbooks for magical practitioners: spell recipes

• Inscriptions curse tablets

  • Very private rituals and often buried

History

• Main approaches:

  • Long tradition and an ancient feature of the Mediterranean world

  • Or that magic came into the Greek world from the East - esp. Persia

• The Greek words magos, mageia (= Lat. magus, magia, magicus) are derived from Persian

  • the magi

  • Plato speaks of ‘the magian lore of Zoroaster’

• Evidence for magic is more abundant and explicit after the Archaic Period

  • an orientalizing period

Early Evidence for Magic

• Homeric poems

  • Circe in Odyssey - book 10

  • Autolycus’ treatment of odysseus wound in Od. 18 —

  • “They bound the wound of blameless, godlike Odysseus with skill, and checked the black blood with a spell (epaoide)”

• Why is Homer reticent about magic?

• Was magic a basic feature of Homer’s World

Objectives

Harmful — black magic

• Curse tablets - defixiones katadesmoi, incantations, potions and positions - pharmakon, pharmaka, sympathetic magic, contagious magic

• Beneficial — white magic

Magical techniques:

• Uncanny utterances: onomata asema or upces magicae.. foreign words? Prayer formulae and form

  • Any objects can be used

  • Special gestures.. performance is a very integral aspect of it.

Notable Witches:

• Circe

Homer – powerful sorceress

• Medea

Most famous ancient witch – great literary figure. Euripedes – play about a woman who is wronged

• Canidia (Horace)

Roman society – she has a bunch of followers and they kidnap an elite boy

• Erictho (Lucan)

Realm of the dead early routine in epic.. Deluxe witch.. Charming the moon down ; involved necromancy – occult behaviour

Social Setting

• Magic was highly valued — religious ceremonies would often contain magical elements

  • However secretiveness promoted suspicion

  • Magic as bad religion or praua religio .. and superstitio

Five ‘Recipes’

• All purpose spell

• Protection against Hecate

  • Associated with Artemis ; becomes separate from her and becomes a mysterious dark goddess, worshipped at crossroads

• Invocation of Hecate’s aid in divination and against a death penalty

• Invokes Hecate against an enemy

• A counter-spell against an enemy’s spell

Roman Literature

Prose

• History

  • Titus Livius (Livy) 59 BCE – 17 CE

  • P. (?) Cornelius Tacitus ca 56 - 118 CE

• Philosophy

  • M. Tullius Cicero 106 - 43 BCE

  • Lucius Annaeus Seneca ca 4 BC E- 65 CE

• Oratory

  • Cicero

• Novel

  • Petronius Arbiter d. 66 CE: Satyricon

  • Apuleius ca 125 -170 CE: Metamorphoses or Golden Ass

Roman Drama

Characteristics:

• Adaptations of Greek originals

  • Greek New Comedy

  • Euripidean tragedy

• Some influence of native Roman traditions

  • Esp. for comedy

    • mime

    • farce

• Seneca’s tragedies are much later and very different in character

  • 10 plays survive (2 are spurious)

  • influenced by Greek drama, not adapted

  • strong Stoic colouring

Major Figures:

Tragedy

• Quintus Ennius

  • 239-169 BCE

  • only fragments survive

Comedy

• Publius Terentius Afer (Terence)

  • d. 159 BCE

  • 6 plays survive

Titus Maccius Plautus

• ca 205-184 BCE

  • 21 plays survive

  • Name Maccius suggests ties with sub-literary popular entertainment

  • Free in his adaptations of Greek Comedy

  • Substantial musical element: exuberant and virtuoso cantica (arias and duets)

  • His humor is broader than New Comedy generally

    • New comedy tends to have humor found in the situation

    • In some ways feminist of old comedy – aristophenes – word play and puns

  • Fondness for elaborate comical names like artorogus

  • His plots are varied

    • Character study aulularia

    • Transvestite camp casina

    • Mistaken identity

Roman Satire

• satura quidem tota nostra est (“satire, at any rate, is all our own”), according to Quintilian (10.1.93)

  • But an important debt to Cynic diatribe

• Enshrined a Roman tradition of freedom of speech, although the reality is more cautious

• Poems detail the foibles of Roman society

• The major writers of satire:

  • (Gaius Lucilius ca. 180 BCE – ca. 102/1 BCE)

  • Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace) 65 - 8 BCE

  • Aules Persius Flaccus 34 – 62 CE

  • Decimus Iunius Iuuenalis (Juvenal) 67- ca 127 CE

• Prose satire:

  • Seneca, Apocolcyntosis (‘Pumpkinification’)

    • written on the death of Claudius and the ascension of Nero in 54 CE

Roman Epic

• No evidence for Roman oral epic tradition – started from contact with Greeks

• Livius Andronicus’ Latin translation of Odyssey as one fo teh defining events in 3rd cent. BCE

  • 21+ fragments of Livius’ Odyssey are rpeserved

  • Kept close to the actual wording

  • Adapted the text witha view of Roman sensibilities and idea of storytelling

• Then Naevius’ Bellum Poenicum (late 3rd cent. BCE)

• Quintus Ennius’ Annales (finished before 169 BCE)

Andronicus as a Translator

• Names of gods and heroes are given Roman counterparts

  • Mousa = Camena

  • Odysseus = Ulixes

  • Morta (a Roman goddess of prophecy) replaces fate

  • Conceptions shocking to Roman ears were toned down

    • e.g. Patroclus described as ‘counsellor equal to the gods’ (Od. 3.110) becomes uir summus adprimus (‘first-rate leading man’)

Vergil’s Aeneid

• Publius Vergilius Maro (Vergil / Virgil) 70-19 BCE

  • The Aeneid is the great epic of Augustan Rome

  • Skilfully combines the Homeric tradition with Ennian tradition of historical epic

  • In 12 books it narrates the adventures of Aeneas, and looks forward to the founding of Rome and its imperial mission

  • It is not merely propaganda: it presents a highly complex view of the human condition

Other Epics

• Ovid’s Metamorphoses (P. Ovidius Naso, 43 BCE – 17 CE)

  • Lucan’s Pharsalia or Bellum Ciuile (M. Annaeus Lucanus, 39-65 CE)

  • The tradition continues with minor figures who continue the Vergilian (and Ovidian) tradition

Personal Poetry

• Neoterics (poetae nouui)

  • Gaius Valerius Catullus – most accessible poetry

  • Best known for cycle of poems that he wrote about an affair

  • 116 poems ; survival was almost a fluke

• Lyric Poetry

  • Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace) 65 - 8 BCE

  • Four books of odes

• Love Elegy

  • Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid

• Catullus poetry

Roman Law

• Sources:

  • Statutes: laws passed by roman people in assembly - comitia.. decrees of senate, legal pronouncements of emperors

  • Injunctions of magistrates:

    • Annual edict of urban Praetor

      • Romes chief judicial magistrate

      • Important for private law

    • Other magistrates especially provincial governers had edicts of their own

  • Long standing custom

Jurists

• Like modern lawyers

  • although they had no formal training

• few in number (about 20 in the early period)

• Dispensed legal advice to clients

  • clients were expected to provide political support

  • close interrelationship between law and politics

• Jurists developed a rule-based form of judicial decision-making

• Legal processes became more formal and ‘professional’

The Digest

• Classical Roman jurisprudence is preserved in the Digest

  • a collection of excerpts from the writings of jurists

  • over 800,000 words in length

  • was assembled and published on the order of he Byzantine emperor Justinian in 533 CE

• The most influential source in the western legal tradition.

Roman Lawcourts and Judicature

• Two basic models:

  • arbitrator acceptable to both parties

  • paterfamilias calling upon friends to advise him on crimes committed within the familia

• Chief exceptions:

  • assembles used to try cases with political implications

    • esp. perduellio (can include violence threatened against the state)

  • concilium plebis (more democratic)

    • monetary penalties

  • comitia centuriata (favoured the wealthy)

    • penalties often serious (capital, exile)

• In 63 BCE a simpler system was implemented:

  • 7 permanent criminal courts (quaestiones perpetuae)

  • extorsion in the provinces (repetundae)

  • misuse of public funds (peculatus)

  • electoral corruption (ambitus)

  • forging of coinage and wills, treason (maiestas)

  • murder with a weapon or by poisoning (uis)

  • Augustus added an eighth for adultery

Pompeii

• Shrines – prominence of pillars, places of worship

• Remains of statues, shegs, storage rooms

• Ceilings with artwork

• Herculaneum – women’s bath decorated shrines of marine imagery

• Villa of the Papyri – notable figures at the end of the republic

  • Found papyri,

Culture

• Roman Empereors – imperator aka successful general, wiedling imperium

• Augustus settled on a bundle of powers > govt power

Julio-Claudian Emperors

• Augustus

  • 16 January 27 BC to 19 August 14 CE

• Tiberius

  • 19 August 14 to 16 March 37

• Both died of natural causes

• Caligula (also known as Gaius)

  • 18 March 37 to 24 January 41

  • assassinated by the Praetorian Guard

  • Little boot — military campaigns w his dad Germanicus

• Claudius

  • 24 January 41 to 13 October 54

  • poisoned by Agrippina

  • stammered and was limp

  • Uncle of Caligula

• Nero

  • 13 October 54 to 11 June 68

  • committed suicide

Year of Four Emperors

• Galba

  • 8 June 68 to 15 January 69

  • assassinated in favour of Otho

• Otho

  • 15 January 69 to 16 April 69

  • Committed suicide

• Vitellius

  • 2 January 69 to 20 December 69

  • assassinated in favour of Vespasian

Flavians

• Vespasian

  • 1 July 69 to 24 June 79

• Titus

  • 24 June 79 to 13 September 81

  • assassinated by Domitian?

• Domitian

  • 14 September 81 to 18 September 96

  • Assassinated

Nervan-Antonian

• Nerva

  • 18 September 96 to 27 January 98

  • Proclaimed emperor by senate

• Trajan

  • 28 January 98 to 7 August 117

• Hadrian

  • 11 August 117 to 10 July 138

• Antoninus Pius

  • 10 July 138 to 7 March 161

• Marcus Aurelius

  • 7 March 161 to 17 March 180

• Lucius Verus

  • 7 March 161 to March 169

  • Co-emperor with Marcus Aurelius

• [Avidius Cassius

  • 175

  • Usurper

  • Ruled only in Egypt and Syria – assassinated by his own army]

• Commodus

  • 177 to 31 December 192

  • His accession brought prosperity.. But then boy got assassinated

Year of the Five Emperors (193CE)

• Five claimants, each supported by different constituencies

• Really a period of civil war

Severan Dynasty

• Septimius Severus (193–211)

  • restored peace

• Caracalla (198–217)

• Geta (209–211)

• [Macrinus (217–218)]

• Elagabalus (218–222)

• Alexander Severus (222–235)

• Dynasty was unstable: political turmoil and problematic family relationships.. The Severan emperors are the last of the lineage of the Principate founded by Augustus.. The Crisis of The Third Century followed

Case Study: Elagabalus

• c. 203-222 CE

  • born Varius Avitus Bassianus ; brought ot Rome at 15

  • related to the Julian clan through his mother, Julia Soaemias

• Accession was orchestrated by his mother, who claimed that he was the son of Caracalla

• Renamed Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

• Priest in Emesa of the sun-god Heliogabalus, to whom he built two temples in Rome

• Notable for outrageous behaviour

  • left the affairs of state to be run by women

  • even let his mother sit on the Consul’s bench

• Earned the hostility of Rome

  • planned to have the Sun-god named the supreme deity of Rome

  • divorced his wife to marry a Vestal Virgin

• Assassinated by the Praetorian Guard

• Remains an enigmatic figure

  • principal account in the Historia Augusta is suspect

Popular Entertainment in Roman Culture

Gladiators:

• Combat introduced to Rome from Etruria in 264 BCE

• Originally held at Etruscan funerals for dead warriors

• Expensive for sponsors – scale of combat would be large

• 5000 pairs fought in 8 diff games given by Augustus

• 4 types of Gladiators

  • Murmillo – fish crest on helmet

  • Samnite – heavily armed, oblong shield and visored helmet

  • Retiarius – lightly clad fighting with a net and trident

  • Thracian – round shield and curved scimitar

• Prisoners of war and slaves – fighting as gladiators

• Professional fighters were either slaves who were bought for that purpose or a free volunteer bound to an owner by an oath

  • Valuable investment

• They were trained in schools under a lanista (retired gladiator)

• Elite romans were attracted to a gladatorial career because of its glamour and sex appeal

• Augustus and Tiberius → wanted to manage popularity so they passed legislation forbidding members of the senatorial class from becoming gladiators

• Restrictions on games seem to have had more to do with expenditure than distaste

• There were objections to the idea of bloodshed for fun

  • Cicero and Pliny approved if the combatants were condemned criminals

• Gladiatorial combats were first banned by Constantine I in 325 CE

  • too bloody a peacetime activity

Funerary inscriptions for dead gladiators

‘Fatal Charades’

• You must believe that Pasiphae did couple with the bull of Dicte: we have seen it happen, the age-old myth has been vindicated. Don’t let ancient Tradition vaunt herself, Caesar: whatever Legend sings, the amphitheatre (harena) offers you.

Martial, Liber Spectaculorum 6

Horse and Chariot races

• Originated in Cult

  • Sacrifice to Mars of the equus October

• The popular chariot races held in the Circus Maximus (and provincial counterparts) were managed by factions

  • characterised by colours (white, red, blue, green)

= seasons (Tertullian)?

• Circus factions

  • blue and green eventually predominated

• “Bread and Circuses”

  • popular entertainment for the masses

• Individual charioteers became celebrities in Roman society

Martial – nasty poems

Women & Family in Roman Society

• Almost all of the information we have about Roman women derives from elite Roman males

• Usually women were portrayed stereotypically

• Chaste wives, mothers and daughters

• Evil seductresses, scheming power-mongers

• Evidence had resulted in scholarship tending to treat women more narrowly in relation to men

• The reality was almost certainly more complex

• Women played many roles

• The focus has often been on what they could not do rather than what they really did

• Recent work has attempted to redress the balance

Their Public Life

• No political rights, could not vote or be elected or hold office

• They could however, exemplify an ideal – embodying the values of the state, self-sacrifice to preserve ideals

• Some women did play ia role in political life

  • Through men in their lives – Cornelia mother of Gracchi

  • in their own right (e.g. Servilla, lover and friend of Julius Caesar and mother of Brutus, who chaired political meetings in a time of crisis)

• Livia (Augustus’ wife) combined virtuous and old-fashioned behaviour with a very active political agenda

• Roman men considered women frail and weak of mind, and so could not participate in business

  • the required a legal guardian (tutor)

Cf. the kyrios in Greece

• The reality was that they worked independently of their tutores

• Cicero’s wife Terentia managed the household finances

  • his daughter Tullia was a keen student of philosophy

Marriage and ideals

• Typically married in their teens – 10-15 yrs older with 6 children on avg

• Married to one man and after his death remain devoted to his memory – uniuira

• The Chaste casta or pudica uniuira is a highly praised ideal – opposite criticized

• Divorces and remarriages were common though

• To remain unmarried was not an option until the influence of Christianity grew around 400 CE

  • Sexual renunciation and ascetcism

  • Taking the veil – virgins of the church OR vow of Chastity after death of husband

  • Oppressive culture for pagan women

• Most significant way of creating alliances – elite & political alliance .. lower class alliance was often more practical

• Emphasis on children

  • Matrimonium – institution for making mothers

• Women played a prominent role (as in Greece)

  • this has often been underestimated by modern scholars

• Were believed to be important in securing divine favour in war

• Could also be held responsible for a crisis

  • E.g., Vestal Virgins

Two Imperial Women

Livia Drussila

• 58 BCE –29 CE

  • Married to Tiberius Claudius Nero in 43 BCE

    • son Tiberius (b. 42 BCE)

  • Divorced and married Octavian (later Augustus) in 39 BCE

    • scandalous because she was expecting her second son Drusus

  • Along with Augustus’ sister Octavia, Livia was consider a model of womanly virtue

  • Received important public honours during Augustus’ lifetime

  • After his death and the accession of Tiberius she became even more prominent

  • Received title Augusta (in Augustus’ will)

  • Became the chief priest of Augustus’ cult

  • Remained popular with the masses

  • Rumours of murder seem to be false (Robert Graves)

  • Deified after her death by Claudius on his accession in 41 CE

Agrippina The Younger

• 15 – 59 CE

  • Born to an illustrious family (with two earlier distinguished Agrippinae)

  • Exiled after the death of her husband Lepidus

  • Recalled and married by Claudius (48 CE)

    • she was his neice

  • Received honours as Augusta

  • Claudius adopted her son Nero by Lepidus

  • Highly honoured but sought greater power and influence

  • May have poisoned Claudius

  • Nero had her murdered

  • She wrote a memoir that was used by Tacitus (now lost)

Funerary Epitaphs

• A very important source for information about women’s lives are epitaphs

  • funerary inscriptions set up by husbands and/or family

  • often celebrate the virtues of the deceased

• “To the dead spirits of Claudia Lachne, freedwoman of Antonia, Philippus Rustianus, public freedman from the Sacrarium of the Divine Augustus, made [this tablet] for his dearest wife and for himself.”

  • CIL VI 2329

Slavery

• Played an important part in society

• Performed domestic and agricultural tasks within the household of their masters

• Warfare and debt slavery were the most common sources for slaves

• Terminology: seruus (f. serua) as opposed to ingenuus (f. ingenua)

  • also minister (f. ministra)

• The wars of conquest generated large numbers of slaves

• Worked on the estates owned by aristocratic families for large-scale agricultural production

• Slaves were desirable because they were cheap and easy to control

• But the large concentrations of slaves on estates created the threat of revolt

Revolts

• The most serious was in 136 BCE

  • took 6 years to suppress

  • resulted in the crucifixion of thousands of slaves

• The most famous was led by the gladiator Spartacus in 73 BCE

  • numbers grew to ca 70,000 (120,000 in some accounts)

  • took the Romans two years and 10 legions to put down

    • revolt put down by Lucinius Crassus in 71 BCE

Slave Families

• Increase in aristocratic wealth led to huge slave families (often numbering in the 100s)

• Early emperors had slaves and freed slaves to carry out routine administrative tasks

  • called familia Caesaris

  • were more trustworthy than the senatorial class

  • some of these slaves became very wealthy

  • (many slaves were allowed to keep part of their peculium)

Nuanced picture

• There were many types of slaves

• Literate slaves could occupy important positions within the household

• Ambitious slaves were often set up in business

• Obedient slaves could set up their own families

• Dissident slaves often endured harsh conditions

• hard labour, etc.

Punishment

• It was a master’s right to punish slaves

  • corporal punishment (i.e., beatings)

  • executions

• The harsh treatment emphasized the difference in status been slave and freeborn person

• Torture was routinely used in law-courts

Manumission

• Slaves could be freed

• Occupied a recognized position in society

• Remained bound to their masters

• Terminology: libertus (f. liberta)

• In special cases the freed slave could be granted citizenship

• Horace was the son of a libertus

Early Christianity

• Flourished among lower-class Greeks in cities of the empire

• Official ‘persecution’ strengthened the sense of community among Christians and reinforced their identity

• Christian communities were extremely hierarchal

Structure of the Early Church

• Each community had:

  • a church (ekklesia)

  • senior priests call ‘overseers’ (episkopoi)

the English word ‘bishop’ is ultimately derived from episkopos

• ‘elders’ (presbyteroi)

• There was a strong concern for maintaining the ‘correctness’ of the beliefs of the faithful

  • an important difference from pagan religion, which was more concerned with practice than doctrine

New Testament and Sacred Books

• A collection of 27 writings, mostly composed at the end of the 1st century CE

  • A diverse body of texts, but focused on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth

  • Four different accounts of the life of Jesus accepted as canonical

  • All the books of the NT were written in koine Greek – various assigned authors real authors unkown

    • not very accomplished as literary texts in terms of style – but highly influential

  • Although ascribed to named individuals, the authors are unknown

    • the Pauline books appear to have been written about a generation after the death of the Apostle

  • Many other holy books were circulating in late antiquity

Persecution of Christians

• Roman Govt. began ot make effort to stamp out christianity

  • Efforts were inadequate and inconsistent and could not deal with a well organized institution with clear beliefs

  • Govt.s perspective → Traditional religion is good, social organization!

  • Christian view of their God being the only god → reinforcement of Pagan gods being evil demons..

  • Exclusivit claims of Christians were seen as misanthropic

  • Christians were people who had abandoned their beliefs – criminal organization

  • Romans were also not great with Jews but they found it justified that Jew adhered to traditional ancestral beliefs

    • political problems (e.g., Jewish revolt of 66-70 CE in Egypt), a number of Jewish groups existed in the Roman Empire (e.g. Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes)

    • Cf. Josephus: a strong supporter of the Roman state, while proudly affirming his status as a Jew

  • Two main elements misunderstood:

    • The Eucharist (re-enactment of the Last Supper), in which worshippers symbolically drank Christ’s blood and ate his flesh

      • non-Christians associated this with the cannibalistic activities that were supposedly practised in certain disreputable magic rites

      • Cannibalism and occult rites

    • The Eucharist formed part of a ceremony called a ‘love feast’ (Agape) celebrating their love of God, and referring to their fellow Christians as “brothers and sisters”

      • non-Christians saw this as promiscuity and incest

Roman Conquest of Britain

Provinces under the Principate

• Augustan Settlement of 27 BCE

  • Provinces – either public or imperial

  • Provinces – garrisoned with legions made up of roman citizens

CASE STUDY: Conquest of Britain

• 43 CE Claudius invades Britain – first major conquest

  • 82 CE the Romans reach Inverness – north towards Sctoland

  • 122 CE – Hadrians wall – were prevalent due to their control of traffic, control of access and regularization of movement of people – boundaries of Romanness were

  • 142 CE The Antonine Wall

Vindolanda

Finds:

• Anaerobic conditions have allowed us to find materials that normally would have decomposed very quickly

• Examples:

  • Wattle and daub houses

  • Writing tablets

thin sheets of wood, latin cursive text written in ink

Recording lists of supplied and letters

The small holes on either side allowed for multiple tablets to be tied together.

Ex. Birthday Invitation

• Leather (including shoes)

Who wore them? Materials – Lepidina Slipper. Not exclusively roman soldiers but women children and much more

• Organic materials like seeds, nuts and even flower petals

Timber Forts

• The first 5 forts were constructed from turf and timber with a technique called wattle and daub

• Materials from the early layers which normally decompose quickly are preserved due to anaerobic conditions

  • Oxygen is blocked from reaching these layers, stopping decomposition

• Garbage

Crisis of the Third Century

• History of roman principate – increasingly becoming problematic because administratve structure was fragile

• Severus Alexander died 3rd CE – accession of Diocletian in 284 CE

• Reliance on imperial expansion – fringe of the empire do not want Roman rule ,

• Taking back conquered land

• A large number of short-lived emperors

• Incursions across all fronts of the Empire

• Civil war

Economic Decline

• By and large – silver currency became devalued and collapsed

  • Desertion of agricultural land

  • ++ Plague famine and population decline

  • Drinking lead – fertility rates?

Roman Army

• Expanding empire and increasing wealth of the elites…

  • In this period tho they become an issue

  • Increased army was an economic burden

    • Cycle of inflation – pressure ot pay led to debasement of coinage

  • Armies felt their importance – proclaiming emperor of their choice and thus decline of senatorial influence

External threats

• Sassanians in the east captured the emperor Valerian (253-260 CE)

  • Valerian died in captivity and his flayed skin decorated a Persian temple

  • Germanic tribes (e.g. Franks) in the north and west

  • The reason for these incursions is not clear

    • Periodic

    • did not involve large numbers

  • They required the deployment of military resources to the frontiers of the Empire

Crisis was not Universal

• Accelerated processes of decline begun under the Severans

  • A flowering of local culture in some places

  • Short-lived independent kingdoms

  • Palmyra in the Syrian desert (267-273 CE)

  • Gaul

  • Continued urban growth and prosperity in North Africa

  • oil trade

Tetrarchy

• Too big to be controlled centrally – division into eastern and western empire – rome and Constantinople

• A response to the Crisis by Diocletian

• The empire was divided in two, each presided over by an Augustus, aided by a Caesar in the late 3rd CE

  • Augustus Iovius and Augustus Herculius

• Rise of powerful ‘warlords’

  • e.g. Stilchio (ca. 359–408 CE) “the last of the Roman generals” (Gibbon)

  • Claudian

  • Last of the Roman generals – stronger cultural ties to local area than to Rome – overlying sense of Romannes is undermined

Fall of the Empire

• Divison of empire was a band aid solution

• 476 CE: Romulus Austuslus deposed

• Within a generation Western empire got divided into a series of Germanic kingdoms

• Eastern Empire – Byzantine empire continued (1000 yrs) and fell in 1453 CE