The present volume describes the rich and complex world in which Ausonius (c. 310-395) lived and worked, from his humble beginnings as a schoolteacher in Bordeaux, to the heights of his influence as quaestor to the Emperor Gratian, at a time of unsettling social and religious change. As a teacher and poet Ausonius adhered to the traditions of classical paideia, standing in contrast to the Fathers of the Church, e. g., Jerome, Augustine, and Paulinus of Nola, who were emboldened by the legalization, then the imposition, of Christianity in the course of the fourth century. For this position he was labeled by the 20th-century scholar Henri-Irénée Marrou a symbol of decadence. Guided by Marrou’s critical insights to both his own time and place and that of Ausonius, this book proposes a hermeneutic for reading Ausonius as both a fourth-century poet and a fascinating mirror for his 20th-century counterparts.

In the First Millennium BC present-day Italy was inhabited by many different ethnic groups, most of which spoke a language affiliated with Latin. Sardinia, a large island to the West of the Italian mainland, had a culture characterized by nuraghs, a kind of massive stone tower, presumably for defense purposes. Many finds of bronze statuettes of warriors show the concern of the population to protect themselves from aggressors, also with divine support secured by impressive priestesses. However, Rome’s closest neighbours to the North were the Etruscans, who spoke a language quite different from any other people in Italy. For a long period Etruscan kings ruled the Romans who, however, liberated themselves from the foreigners and, in reverse, started to conquer their territory. Gradually, from about the Sixth Century BC to about 100 BC, the Romans came to dominate the Etruscans as well as the ethnic groups we call the Italics. But, apart from the military conflict, from which the Romans emerged victorious they were in many ways influenced by the Etruscans, whose prevalence in the field of religion and art they admired. Actually, they welcomed cultural exchange. A striking example is that the Romans invited a famous Etruscan artist to decorate their most important temple, dedicated to Jupiter, on the Capitol Hill. The Etruscan excellence in bronze casting has left a rich heritage of bronze sculpture. Statues and statuettes were used as gifts for the gods in sanctuaries both in Etruria and Rome, as well as in many other parts of Italy.

The book is a synoptic catalogue of a large class of Greek manuscripts: it describes all pre-seventeenth century copies of the Greek New Testament in which the biblical text is accompanied by commentary. Manuscripts where this commentary consists of combined excerpts (catena) from the works of various authors are described in particular detail. Those that have similar content are grouped together, so that the potential relatives of any given manuscript can be easily identified. Several previously unknown types of catenae are distinguished and a number of previously unstudied codices are brought to light for the first time. To ensure its longer shelf-life, the volume systematically references on-line electronic databases (which are regularly updated). It will be of use to anyone interested in Byzantine book culture and in biblical exegesis.

Despite the flourishing of epichoric studies on the Archaic Greek scripts in the 1960s, embodied by archaeologists Lilian Hamilton Jeffery and Margherita Guarducci, most scholarship on early alphabetic writing in Greece has focused on questions around the origin of ‘the Greek alphabet’ instead of acknowledging the diversity of alphabetic systems that emerged in Geometric and Archaic times. The present book proposes to bring back the epichoric approach by focusing on the different ways in which the earliest epigraphic evidence represents the spoken Greek dialects. However, instead of continuing the palaeographic methodology of previous studies, this analysis follows the latest trends in grapholinguistics, more specifically the methodology of comparative graphematics. By examining the grapheme-phoneme relationships across Greek-speaking regions, it is possible to recognise that diversity and to draw connections with neighbouring contemporaneous alphabets, such as those for Phrygian, Eteocretan and Etruscan. This work, carried out within the Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) project, aims to contribute towards the conceptualisation of the so-called epichoric scripts as independent alphabets, as well as their framing within the ecology of ancient Mediterranean writing systems. Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) is a project funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 677758), and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge.

The Crownthorpe hoard was discovered in 1982 during a metal detector search of a Roman temple site. It consists of seven bronze vessels: native copies of two Roman silver wine cups and a spouted strainer bowl, together with an imported Roman saucepan, patera and a pair of dishes. The cups are copies of plain silver vessels of form Eggers 170, and may well have been made in a workshop in Norfolk. They are the only complete examples of insular copies of Roman wine cups from Britain. Copies of Roman wine cups were made in the east of England from before c. 25 BC. Some of these local imitations were inspired by imported cups that have not survived in the archaeological record. Bearing in mind that no imported silver plate is known from late Iron Age Britain after c. 10 BC, insular copies of wine cups show that more silver plate reached Iron Age Britain than we have hitherto realised. Confirmation comes from images of Roman silver cups on Iron Age coins. The spouted strainer bowl was made in a workshop to the south of Crownthorpe, somewhere in the counties north of the lower Thames. Such vessels are an insular type that owed nothing significant to the Roman world. They were used primarily for flavouring local drinks. A corpus of thirty-one such copper-alloy vessels is provided here, including three examples that reached the mainland of Europe. The Roman saucepan in the hoard is an Eggers 151 saucepan of Trau-Kasserolle type. They are rare finds: Crownthorpe is only the fourth example from Britain, and the only complete one. It came from a workshop along the Rhine or Danube frontiers. The patera is Italian and part of a set of hand-washing vessels; the jug that would have been used in conjunction with it was not present in the hoard. The two dishes have tinned inner surfaces and represent a long-lived Roman vessel type. The hoard was assembled at Crownthorpe c. AD 40-75. Relating the hoard to the local context suggests that the date can be narrowed down to c. AD 45-60/61. It was buried by a Briton, a member of the local Icenian elite. The set of vessels at Crownthorpe was used for preparing and serving local ale or mead flavoured with fruit or vegetable additives, and drunk from the cups. Wine amphoras are seldom found in late Iron Age and early Roman Norfolk, and that precludes the use of the Crownthorpe cups for the drink. As there are two cups, we should envisage their use for the host and a guest. The Eggers 151 saucepan was used to ladle the drink into the strainer bowl for its flavouring. Snacks to accompany the drink were served in the two dishes. Hand-washing in the course of these revelries was facilitated by the patera. Burial of the hoard near the site of a later Romano-Celtic temple with no trace of an organic container to facilitate recovery suggests it was votive. Other base-metal utensil hoards from Roman Britain cannot be satisfactorily accounted for as the temporary concealment of portable wealth with the intention of recovery, and strengthen the case for Crownthorpe being votive. No comparable hoards are known from late Iron Age Britain because few copper-alloy utensils were in use then, but we know that the practice of burying such hoards had its roots in a native tradition because single copper-alloy vessels have been recovered from watery contexts in the late Iron Age. Components of the Crownthorpe hoard had been dismantled when it was buried, but it should not be seen as a hoard of scrap metal intended for recycling. It is proposed instead that the termination of the useful working life of the hoard vessels represents an act of renunciation, in this case a repudiation of Icenian dealings with the Roman world that culminated in the calamity of the Boudican Revolt of AD 60-61.

After a long period in which the late Republican and Augustan poets were the main focus of scholarship in Latin poetry, more attention is now being given to earlier Republican literature, and even more to the poets of what used to be called disparagingly the ‘Silver Age’. The present volume reflects this changing perspective. Five of its contributors offer papers devoted to Augustan poets (Horace, Propertius, the Ovid of the Metamorphoses); there are two papers on early and later Republican epic; and five examine aspects of later Julio-Claudian and Flavian authors: Seneca the Younger, Silius Italicus, Martial, and Statius.

Bathing culture was one of the pillars of Roman society and bathhouses are one of the largest categories of a particular type of construction excavated in the Roman world. The large number of surviving remains and their regional variety make bathhouses vital for the study of the local societies in the Roman-Byzantine period. This book presents the archaeological evidence of close to 200 Roman-style bathhouses from the region of Iudaea/Syria-Palaestina and Provincia Arabia, part of the provinces of the Roman East, constructed from the reign of Herod the Great (second half of the 1st century BCE) to the end of the Umayyad rule (mid-8th century CE). The bathing complexes of the Roman, Byzantine, and the Early Islamic periods, ranging from large public thermae to small bathing suites, are for the first time analysed as unified data with an unprecedented amount of detail, considering a variety of parameters - from dating and setting, through building techniques and materials, to plans and decorations. Typologies of the bathhouses and their components are supplemented by exploration of the socio-cultural insight provided by this particular type of construction. The historical narrative of the regional bathing facilities is updated in the light of new information. The full raw data used for the study is provided in the expandable open-access online database.

The Journal of Roman Pottery Studies continues to present a range of important new research in the field by both established and early career scholars. Volume XVIII has a strong theme on pottery production with papers on kiln sites, mortaria and late Roman pottery production in East Anglia and at a small town in Belgium. A major new third century assemblage from civitas Cananefatium in South Holland is presented. The second part of an important gazetteer of less common samian ware fabrics and types in northern and western Britain covers fabrics from Central and East Gaul.

The canon of classical Greek and Latin poetry is built around big names, with Homer and Virgil at the centre, but many ancient poems survive without a firm ascription to a known author. This negative category, anonymity, ties together texts as different as, for instance, the orally derived Homeric Hymns and the learned interpolation that is the Helen episode in Aeneid 2, but they all have in common that they have been maltreated in various ways, consciously or through neglect, by generations of readers and scholars, ancient as well as modern. These accumulated layers of obliteration, which can manifest, for instance, in textual distortions or aesthetic condemnation, make it all but impossible to access anonymous poems in their pristine shape and context. The essays collected in this volume attempt, each in its own way, to disentangle the bundles of historically accreted uncertainties and misconceptions that affect individual anonymous texts, including pseudepigrapha ascribed to Homer, Manetho, Virgil and Tibullus, literary and inscribed epigrams, and unattributed fragments. Poems without Poets will be of interest to students and scholars working on any anonymous ancient texts, but also to readers seeking an introduction to classical poetry beyond the limits of the established canon.

This book investigates the complex relationship between funerary treatment and wider social dynamics through a contextual analysis of human skeletal remains and associated mortuary data from Voudeni, an important Mycenaean (1450-1050 BC) chamber tomb cemetery in Achaea, Greece. Voudeni is one of the most significant sites of Achaea, thoroughly investigated under the direction of the Honorary General Director of Antiquities, Dr Lazaros Kolonas. Over 60 chamber tombs, spanning the entire Late Helladic III period, have been excavated, yielding an unprecedented wealth of biocultural information. This study explores the post-mortem treatment of the body in the Voudeni cemetery, through a novel interpretive approach that transcends unproductive cross-disciplinary divisions. This biosocial approach integrates traditional archaeology, current reflections in mortuary archaeological theory and cutting-edge bioarchaeological methods, primarily focused on funerary taphonomy and archaeothanatology of commingled skeletal assemblages. The author proposes that the most effective route to explore the social dimensions of mortuary data is through an emic understanding of historically situated actions and experiences, both of the living actors, the mourners, and of the dead themselves. Human skeletal remains are used as the primary strand of evidence, both as the object of the acts of the living and the subject of their own lived experiences. Most importantly, this study aspires to show how reconciliation between abstract theoretical advances and empirical biocultural data may be possible, providing the most insightful path to a better understanding of the archaeological mortuary record. The book provides a thorough background on Mycenaean mortuary research and explores the topic in successive stages: a) theoretical and methodological framework, b) detailed taphonomic analysis and osteological results of 20 tombs, c) multivariate analysis of bio-cultural data across socio-temporal parameters (with special emphasis on the distinction between the palatial LHIIIA-B and the transitional post-palatial LHIIIC period), and d) final synthesis, addressing questions pertaining to changing social conditions in Achaea and key issues of current Mycenaean mortuary research. These include: tomb re-use; form, diversity, sequence and frequency of mortuary activities; mortality profiles; differential inclusion, visibility and funerary treatment of different groups/identities; changes in treatment of the dead body, reflecting shifts in notions of the self and social relationships. The results shed new light on social developments in Mycenaean Achaea, showing that the complex interaction between changing social conditions and mortuary practice is often reflected in subtle, yet meaningful, shifts of emphasis in the post-mortem treatment of bodies and bones, rather than in blatant radical changes.

In life, the emperor Domitian (81-96 CE) marketed himself as a god; after his assassination he was condemned to be forgotten. Nonetheless he oversaw a literary, cultural, and monumental revival on a scale not witnessed since Rome’s first emperor, Augustus. In tandem with an exhibition in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden and the Mercati Traianei in Rome, planned for 2021-2022, this volume offers a fresh perspective on Domitian and his reign. This collection of papers, produced by a group of international scholars, offers a wholistic and interdisciplinary approach to the emperor and his works that begins with an overview of Rome and its imperial system and ends with a reappraisal of Domitian and his legacy. The subject of memory sanctions after his death, Domitian’s reputation has suffered as a result of the negative press he received both in antiquity and thereafter. Building upon recent scholarship that has sought to re-evaluate the last of the Flavian emperors, the papers in this volume present the latest research on Domitian’s building programmes and military exploits as well as the literary sources produced during and after his reign, all of which paint a picture of an emperor who – despite being loathed by Rome’s elite – did much to shape the landscape of Rome as we know it today.

Trinacria, the ancient name for Sicily extending back to Homeric Greek, has understandably been the focus of decades of archaeological research. Recognising Sicily’s rich prehistory and pivotal role in the history of the Mediterranean, Sebastiano Tusa - professor, head of heritage agencies and councillor for Cultural Heritage for the Sicilian Region - promoted the exploration of the island’s heritage through international collaboration. His decades of fostering research initiatives not only produced rich archaeological results spanning the Palaeolithic to the modern era but brought scholars from a range of schools and disciplines to work together in Sicily. Through his efforts, uniquely productive methodological, theoretical and interpretative networks were created. Their impact extends far beyond Sicily and Italy. To highlight these networks and their results, the Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, the Swedish Institute in Rome, the Norwegian Institute in Rome, the British School at Rome and the Assessorato dei Beni Culturali of Sicily, with generous support from the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, assembled this anthology of papers. The aim is to present a selection of the work of and results from contemporary, multi-national research projects in Sicily. The collaboration between the Sicilian and international partners, often in an interdisciplinary framework, has generated important results and perspectives. The articles in this volume present research projects from throughout the island. The core of the articles is concerned with the Archaic through to the Roman period, but diachronic studies also trace lines back to the Stone Age and up to the contemporary era. A range of methods and sources are explored, thus creating an up-to-date volume that is a referential gateway to contemporary Sicilian archaeology.

This volume is a collection of 19 articles in three sections reporting on recent research on the archaeology of shipwrecks, harbours, and maritime landscapes in the Mediterranean region. The shipwrecks section looks at excavated vessels from Mazotos, Modi Island, the port of Rhodes, Naples, and Narbonne, as well as a sailing reconstruction of the Ma‘agan Mikhael ship. The harbours section includes articles on areas from the Levant to Seville looking at a variety of harbour defence systems and dockyards dating from the Hellenistic period to the 12th century AD. Articles in the third section on maritime cultural landscapes combine data sets to examine human interactions with the sea: navigation from the perspectives of the accounts of early geographers, the skills required by the earliest sailors, and the contextual reconstruction of sea routes; coastal survey and resource use; and geoarchaeological evidence used to analyse the choice of harbour location. This book will be of interest to students and archaeologists researching the Mediterranean region, and all interested in a wide range of recent advances in maritime archaeology.

With its apparently complete town plan, revealed by the Society of Antiquaries of London’s great excavation project, 1890-1909, Silchester is one of the best known towns in Roman Britain and the Roman world more widely. Since the 1970s excavations by the author and the University of Reading on several sites including the amphitheatre, the defences, the forum basilica, the public baths, a temple and an extensive area of an entire insula, as well as surveys of the suburbs and immediate hinterland, have radically increased our knowledge of the town and its development over time from its origins to its abandonment. This research has discovered the late Iron Age oppidum and allowed us to characterise the nature of the settlement with its strong Gallic connections and widespread political and trading links across southern Britain, to Gaul and to southern Europe and the Mediterranean. Following a review of the evidence for the impact of the Roman conquest of A.D. 43/44, the settlement’s transformation into a planned Roman city is traced, and its association with the Emperor Nero is explored. With the re-building in masonry of the great forum basilica in the early second century, the city reached the peak of its physical development. Defence building, first in earthwork, then in stone in the later third century are major landmarks of the third century, but the town can be shown to have continued to flourish, certainly up to the early fifth century and the end of the Roman administration of Britain. The enigma of the Silchester ogham stone is explored and the story of the town and its transformation to village is taken up to the fourteenth century. Modern archaeological methods have allowed us to explore a number of themes demonstrating change over time, notably the built and natural environments of the town, the diet, dress, health, leisure activities, living conditions, occupations and ritual behaviour of the inhabitants, and the role of the town as communications centre, economic hub and administrative centre of the tribal ‘county’ of the Atrebates.

This second volume presenting the research carried out through the Exeter: A Place in Time project presents a series of specialist contributions that underpin the general overview published in the first volume. Chapter 2 provides summaries of the excavations carried out within the city of Exeter between 1812 and 2019, while Chapter 3 draws together the evidence for the plan of the legionary fortress and the streets and buildings of the Roman town. Chapter 4 presents the medieval documentary evidence relating to the excavations at three sites in central Exeter (High Street, Trichay Street and Goldsmith Street), with the excavation reports being in Chapter 5-7. Chapter 8 reports on the excavations and documentary research at Rack Street in the south-east quarter of the city. There follows a series of papers covering recent research into the archaeometallurgical debris, dendrochronology, Roman pottery, Roman ceramic building material, Roman querns and millstones, Claudian coins, an overview of the Roman coins from Exeter and Devon, medieval pottery, and the human remains found in a series of medieval cemeteries.

Since the time of Eduard Schwartz, scholars have tended to treat ecclesiastical policy under the influence of Justinian as inconsistent and even capricious. This book argues that such an image of Justinian, although seeming to provide a coherent narrative concerning the emperor’s character, falls apart when the details are scrutinized.