The Cambridge Ancient History
Dados do Periódico
| Tipo | SOURCE_BOOK |
|---|---|
| Editora | Cambridge University Press (US) |
| ISBN-13 | 9780521325912 |
| Open Library | OL25714453W |
| Total de publicações | 12 |
| Período coberto | 2001 - 2001 |
| Idioma | EN |
With Volume 14 The Cambridge Ancient History concludes its story. This latest volume embraces the wide range of approaches and scholarship which have in recent decades transformed our view of Late Antiquity. In particular, traditional political and social history has been enormously enhanced by integrating the rich evidence of Christian writing, and the constantly expanding results of archaeological research. A picture emerges of a period of considerable military and political disruption, but also of vibrant intellectual and cultural activity. The volume begins with a series of narrative chapters. These are followed by sections on government and institutions, economy and society, and religion and culture. A section on the provinces and the non-Roman world marks the rise of new and distinct political and cultural entities. This volume, and the CAH, ends in around AD 600, before the Arab conquests shattered for ever what remained of the unity of the Roman world
Education in the Roman empire
Throughout the fifth and sixth centuries a.d., and to some extent later also, the education of the young followed patterns established in outline almost a thousand years earlier. Changes in content and in institutional arrangements had certainly taken place during the long period. The gradual disappearance in the Greek world of the element of physical training and of the institution which provided for it, the gymnasium, is an example. But change …
Government and administration
The late Roman period saw the development, for the first time in the Roman world, of complex bureaucratic structures which permitted emperors, who had now abandoned the campaigning or peripatetic style of most of their predecessors during the first four centuries of imperial history, to retain their authority. The emperor and his court with its glittering ceremonies in Constantinople was the focus for the eastern empire, and from there issued the…
The army, c. 420–602
The late Roman armies of the fourth and early fifth century are relatively well documented: Ammianus and other narrative historians describe them at work in their main theatres of operations on the Rhine, Danube and Persian frontiers, as well as in Britain and North Africa; the Theodosian Code preserves a range of laws pertaining to their creation, sustenance and functioning; the Notitia Dignitatum offers a view, albeit complicated by partial rev…
Specialized production and exchange
DIFFCULTIES AND EVIDENCE Writing about complexity within the economy of the fifth to the seventh century will never be straightforward, partly because there has been so much debate about the nature of the ‘classical’ Roman economy that preceded it. Was the ‘Roman economy’ really a series of local economies, linked into a broader structure only by the demands of the state and by some limited trade in luxury products? Or was it a unified system in …
Land, labour and settlement
THE ISSUES AND THE EVIDENCE The vast majority of the population of the Roman empire, as in all pre-modern societies, worked on the land. There is a great deal we would like to know about these people: exactly how many they were; how many others they fed (whether artisans, soldiers and clergy, or idle rich); which areas they cultivated, and with what crops and which methods; to what extent their agriculture was specialized and tied into commercial…
Law in the western kingdoms between the fifth and the seventh century
Anyone seeking to write an account of law in the western kingdoms labours under two great difficulties. The student of Roman law can find comfort in the knowledge that his legal tradition was the creation of a political élite which prided itself upon its literary accomplishments. It was both a tool of government and one of the proudest manifestations of a literate culture. In the post- and non-Roman kingdoms, such comfortable assurance is only fo…
Armies and society in the later Roman world
The Roman empire was a structure created and sustained by force that had to be available for deployment both against external threats to the state’s existence and against any of its inhabitants who attempted to reject or avoid its authority. But for its first 250 years the empire managed to maintain a considerable separation between civilian and military spheres: soldiers were legally and socially distinct from civilians, and to a large extent ge…
Administration and politics in the cities of the fifth to the mid seventh century
This chapter is concerned with the political evolution of the ancient city – that is, of a political unit comprising an urban core serving as administrative centre of a rural territory – in a period of great change. As the western empire broke up, the relatively uniform environment that had been provided by the imperial administration was replaced by a great variety of conditions. In view of this, it is perhaps surprising that the evolution of ci…
Emperor and court
The figure of the late Roman emperor dominated his society as few rulers before or since. To convey what it would be like to die and meet God, a contemporary evoked the emperor emerging from his palace, and an age obsessed with religion constantly linked emperor and God: ‘God needs nothing; the emperor needs only God.’ The emperor’s body was human, but his imperial power made him ‘like God’. Yet the all-powerful ‘Master of Earth and Sea and Every…
Monasticism
Devotion to asceticism was a highly visible and in some ways alarming feature of the late Roman world. That thousands of men and women were ready to adopt a life of radical simplicity, sexual abstinence and apparent indifference to wealth, status and power, and that even larger numbers were willing to admire if not imitate their choice, tells us something remarkable about the society in which they lived. Restrictions in diet and sexual behaviour …
The family in the late Roman world
CHRISTIANITY AND LAWS ON THE FAMILY Before Constantine, no Roman emperor, not even Augustus, had displayed such a strong ambition to reshape family legislation and initiate thereby an extensive project of moral reconstruction: pudor tutus, munita coniugia was how a panegyrist pithily expressed it as early as 321. In some respects, Constantinian legislation merely brought to completion tendencies that had been operative for some time; in others, i…
The Cambridge Ancient History
With Volume 14 The Cambridge Ancient History concludes its story. This latest volume embraces the wide range of approaches and scholarship which have in recent decades transformed our view of Late Antiquity. In particular, traditional political and social history has been enormously enhanced by integrating the rich evidence of Christian writing, and the constantly expanding results of archaeological research. A picture emerges of a period of cons…
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Education in the Roman empire
Throughout the fifth and sixth centuries a.d., and to some extent later also, the education of the young followed patterns established in outline almost a thousand years earlier. Changes in content and in institutional arrangements had certainly taken place during the long period. The gradual disappearance in the Greek world of the element of physical training and of the institution which provided for it, the gymnasium, is an example. But change …
Government and administration
The late Roman period saw the development, for the first time in the Roman world, of complex bureaucratic structures which permitted emperors, who had now abandoned the campaigning or peripatetic style of most of their predecessors during the first four centuries of imperial history, to retain their authority. The emperor and his court with its glittering ceremonies in Constantinople was the focus for the eastern empire, and from there issued the…
The army, c. 420–602
The late Roman armies of the fourth and early fifth century are relatively well documented: Ammianus and other narrative historians describe them at work in their main theatres of operations on the Rhine, Danube and Persian frontiers, as well as in Britain and North Africa; the Theodosian Code preserves a range of laws pertaining to their creation, sustenance and functioning; the Notitia Dignitatum offers a view, albeit complicated by partial rev…
Specialized production and exchange
DIFFCULTIES AND EVIDENCE Writing about complexity within the economy of the fifth to the seventh century will never be straightforward, partly because there has been so much debate about the nature of the ‘classical’ Roman economy that preceded it. Was the ‘Roman economy’ really a series of local economies, linked into a broader structure only by the demands of the state and by some limited trade in luxury products? Or was it a unified system in …
Land, labour and settlement
THE ISSUES AND THE EVIDENCE The vast majority of the population of the Roman empire, as in all pre-modern societies, worked on the land. There is a great deal we would like to know about these people: exactly how many they were; how many others they fed (whether artisans, soldiers and clergy, or idle rich); which areas they cultivated, and with what crops and which methods; to what extent their agriculture was specialized and tied into commercial…
Law in the western kingdoms between the fifth and the seventh century
Anyone seeking to write an account of law in the western kingdoms labours under two great difficulties. The student of Roman law can find comfort in the knowledge that his legal tradition was the creation of a political élite which prided itself upon its literary accomplishments. It was both a tool of government and one of the proudest manifestations of a literate culture. In the post- and non-Roman kingdoms, such comfortable assurance is only fo…
Armies and society in the later Roman world
The Roman empire was a structure created and sustained by force that had to be available for deployment both against external threats to the state’s existence and against any of its inhabitants who attempted to reject or avoid its authority. But for its first 250 years the empire managed to maintain a considerable separation between civilian and military spheres: soldiers were legally and socially distinct from civilians, and to a large extent ge…
Administration and politics in the cities of the fifth to the mid seventh century
This chapter is concerned with the political evolution of the ancient city – that is, of a political unit comprising an urban core serving as administrative centre of a rural territory – in a period of great change. As the western empire broke up, the relatively uniform environment that had been provided by the imperial administration was replaced by a great variety of conditions. In view of this, it is perhaps surprising that the evolution of ci…
Emperor and court
The figure of the late Roman emperor dominated his society as few rulers before or since. To convey what it would be like to die and meet God, a contemporary evoked the emperor emerging from his palace, and an age obsessed with religion constantly linked emperor and God: ‘God needs nothing; the emperor needs only God.’ The emperor’s body was human, but his imperial power made him ‘like God’. Yet the all-powerful ‘Master of Earth and Sea and Every…
Monasticism
Devotion to asceticism was a highly visible and in some ways alarming feature of the late Roman world. That thousands of men and women were ready to adopt a life of radical simplicity, sexual abstinence and apparent indifference to wealth, status and power, and that even larger numbers were willing to admire if not imitate their choice, tells us something remarkable about the society in which they lived. Restrictions in diet and sexual behaviour …
The family in the late Roman world
CHRISTIANITY AND LAWS ON THE FAMILY Before Constantine, no Roman emperor, not even Augustus, had displayed such a strong ambition to reshape family legislation and initiate thereby an extensive project of moral reconstruction: pudor tutus, munita coniugia was how a panegyrist pithily expressed it as early as 321. In some respects, Constantinian legislation merely brought to completion tendencies that had been operative for some time; in others, i…
The Cambridge Ancient History
With Volume 14 The Cambridge Ancient History concludes its story. This latest volume embraces the wide range of approaches and scholarship which have in recent decades transformed our view of Late Antiquity. In particular, traditional political and social history has been enormously enhanced by integrating the rich evidence of Christian writing, and the constantly expanding results of archaeological research. A picture emerges of a period of cons…