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This paper examines the correspondence of Li Zibiao (1760–1826), a Chinese Catholic priest trained in Naples who worked as a missionary in North China. Whereas existing studies of Chinese theology mainly focus on contextualisation, Li responded to persecution by thinking in global terms and de-emphasising differences between Europe and China. Using developments in casuistry and the moral theology associated with Alphonso de Liguori he was able to avoid the strictures of the Chinese Rites Controversy. His story enriches the history of indigenous clergy in China and suggests some of the roots of China's resilient rural Catholicism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much discussion over Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine focuses on the inability to charge aggression. However, another approach might be available: charging this under the ICC crimes against humanity (CAH) residual clause. First proposed in 2010 by Benjamin Ferencz, who lamented the circumscribed reach of aggression under the 'Kampala Compromise', the proposal has met with scepticism, primarily given that textbook aggression targets military forces, not civilians. Yet, civilian populations disproportionately bear the brunt of the violence of modern aggression (often being its direct targets). Russia's 2022 invasion is but the most recent and compelling example. Thus, this article resuscitates Ferencz's proposal, arguing that Russian leaders could be charged with using illegal force as a CAH under the residual clause. This approach would have practical advantages: initiating aggression in the Kremlin links liability to Putin much more directly for killing Ukrainian civilians, and charging it as CAH opens human victims to ICC participation and reparations. There are theoretical advantages, too, with utilitarian/retributive objectives better satisfied. Moreover, Ferencz's approach is better than recently proposed alternatives: using aggression merely as a gravity/liability modes/sentencing enhancer or alleging breach of the right to self-determination as the residual clause gravamen (arguably creating problems with victim group identification). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short paper considers and critiques the view that the named people greeted in Romans 16.3–16 are not also among the recipients of the letter to 'all God's beloved in Rome' (Rom 1.7). Variants of this view spring from the work of Mullins (1968): that the second-person greeting involves the greeting of 'a third party who is not intended to be among the immediate readership of the letter' (Mullins, 1968: 420) and are found in Thorsteinsson (2003), Stowers (2015) and Campbell (2023). A series of arguments are made against this view. In particular, the plural form of the imperative (ἀσπάσασθɛ) and the open nature of the addressees mean that Mullins' simple principle does not apply. In addition, Paul's usage elsewhere (including in Romans 16.16) contradicts Mullins' principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1653, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith created a secular mission for Scotland that initially struggled with finances and provision. Its Prefects argued that the Jesuits exacerbated these problems by failing to prepare students at the Scots College Rome intellectually for the mission. This article examines the resulting campaign for curricular reform that Scottish secular priests waged, one intended to improve missionaries' pastoral skills and undermine the college's Jesuit administration. It ultimately demonstrates the significance of education to wider conflicts between Propaganda Fide and the Society of Jesus regarding missions and resources in the seventeenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationing and illegal food trade in Second World War Italy have received very little scholarly attention in comparison to the scale and impact they had on people's daily life. This article contributes to filling this gap, first by providing an overview of the dynamics that already in the early years of the war determined the development of an illegal system of food trade. It then considers the experience of the black market through two wartime diaries, one published and the other unpublished, written by women of opposite political views, both living in Rome and its outskirts. The analysis of the diaries considers women's attitudes towards the black market. The article argues that the Fascist propaganda of duty to the homeland, so intensively practised through domestic literature during the 1920s and 1930s, was again exploited in wartime in the discourse around the black market and hid the political responsibilities of the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the concept of ἰδιώτης , often translated as 'layman', in Dionysius of Halicarnassus' critical essays, where he places particular emphasis on validating the judgement of the ἰδιώτης in aesthetic evaluation. Dionysius' focus on the impact and reception of art enables him to lay the groundwork for shifting the semantic meaning of ἰδιώτης from being in strict opposition to the artist/critic to a more fluid category, ranging from 'unskilled' listener and layman to a relatively experienced 'amateur'. By conceiving the change from ἰδιώτης to τεχνίτης in criticism as a more gradual process (rather than one of irreconcilable division), Dionysius shows the discipline of rhetoric and literary criticism to be a particularly relevant form of learning that speaks to the sensibilities of Imperial Rome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article highlights two possible unnoticed acrostics in Ovid's Metamorphoses concerning the predictions of Calchas and Helenus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roman remains were discovered by chance at Saf-Saf Lakhdara in the Chott Chergui (Algeria). This article attempts to demonstrate that these ruins are part of a Roman fortification in the south of Caesarian Mauretania, far from the Severan limes , the course of which has been confirmed by numerous archaeologists. A historical-comparative study has been carried out to confirm that the ruins of Saf-Saf Lakhdar are those of a castellum. The corpus of graphic and photographic records and the 'Khnag 'Azzir' inscription, combined with theoretical sources on Roman defensive architecture, confirmed that the fortifications at Saf-Saf Lakhdar were part of a castellum. The 'Khnag 'Azzir' inscription revealed three main facts: it is dedicated to deities to commemorate the victory over the Berber tribes of the Saharan Atlas; it mentions Caius Octavius Pudens, who was procurator during the reign of the emperor Septimius Severus; and it mentions the conflicts between Rome and the Bavarians, a tribe from the ancient Maghreb. We urgently need to protect the site and carry out excavations in the hope of finding pottery or other objects that could shed light on and support this discovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last few years, much of public discourse has been concerned with the rise of populist movements across the world. Hindu nationalism, Brexit, and the rise of Le Pen are just some of the phenomena that have garnered attention and concern. Although, in Rome and America , classicist and political scientist Dean Hammer does not start with this topic, contemporary populism is his destination, specifically in the shape of Donald Trump and the conditions in which his presidency arose. As Hammer investigates several aspects of both the creation and undoing of self-identity and political norms in the United States, he cites templates, points of comparison, and, finally, warnings in both Rome's founding myths and the history of its transition from republic to principate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite early imperial portenta being largely ignored in secondary literature, the reports of such incidents demand increased scholarly attention. This paper contends that decoding reports of portents from the early empire can give us fundamental insights into key moments of identity negotiation in this period. This paper will primarily focus on two such reports, signs of divine displeasure reported in Athens and in Camulodunum. This paper contends that within such reports we can glimpse complex and contested issues of identity creation and redefinition at intra-local, trans-local, and global levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the ongoing fieldwork and research of the ROMETRANS project, which aims to analyze the political, military, and religious transformations of Rome's forgotten quarter from the 1st to the 8th century CE. Due to the impact of COVID-19, the project's timeline has been extended, and fieldwork is still being conducted in 2023. The article highlights various aspects of the research, including geophysical surveys, borehole analysis, structural analysis of ancient buildings, laser scanning of structures, and sampling of hydraulic structures and artifacts. The project also includes the development of visualizations to facilitate analysis and debate. The article acknowledges the funding received from the European Research Council and expresses gratitude to the various individuals and institutions that have supported the research. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Papers of the British School at Rome is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Rome is a complex metropolis. The city faces the challenge of imagining and shaping an inclusive and sustainable future for its inhabitants. On several occasions, city policies and interventions have not met the goal of preserving environmental resources. For their part, the inhabitants of Rome tend to doubt the ability of institutions to take care of the city's resources. We focus on civic environmental monitoring led by the local independent association A Sud, aimed at assessing the environmental status of two of the city's rivers. From a review of applicable literature on governance, environmental and social justice and climate urbanism, we build a theoretical frame to guide our analysis. We inquire how civic monitoring in a complex city can benefit urban resource governance and foster urban transitions. We also explore the extent to which these initiatives have the potential to inform or have actually informed the scientists and policymakers responsible for designing city adaptations. Our analysis demonstrates that citizen-gathered data can enrich the scientific knowledge base and trigger claims for interventions, bringing in information on local issues often overlooked by competent institutions. The initiatives also improved individual and collective attitudes towards the city and its resources, stimulating a sense of care and a watchful citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The years between 1890 and 1914 saw several prominent studies from statesmen-administrators comparing British India with the Roman empire. These were not the self-congratulatory comparisons of earlier decades, but serious comparative studies aimed at learning practical lessons from Rome's successes and failures. To gain a clearer picture of the significance of these analogies and how they were used, the Indian Civil Service (ICS) examination papers from the same period are analysed. It is argued that, following a move in 1892 to make the ICS a fully graduate service, the Civil Service commissioners showed a sustained interest in asking candidates to compare India (and the wider British empire) with the empires of Rome and Greece. Rome was considered particularly relevant for the directly ruled parts of the empire, with a focus on provincial administration and frontier defence, while Athens was preferred for questions of colonial federation. In the final section, the spread of subjects and weighting of marks within the examination are considered. It is argued that a series of changes post-1892 were designed to favour candidates who had studied Classics at university enabling them to obtain a higher proportion of the overall marks than those specializing in other subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Book 12 of Tacitus' Annals spotlights the ascent of Agrippina, the new wife of Claudius and mother of Nero, to the heights of power in imperial Rome. This paper examines how Tacitus deepens and complicates that characterization through an allusion to Ovid's depiction of Augustus in Tristia Book 2. The allusion, coming in Ann. 12.22 as Agrippina is consolidating her power, serves to cast her as a figure of awesome anger and authority on a par with Augustus himself, but also as lacking the ability Augustus had to put limits on that anger. The allusion thus underscores the Annals ' broader arc of the unruly collapse of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, while at the same time revealing the deftness of the historian of the Julio-Claudians at continuing and complicating the themes of the famed poet of Augustus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vernae —often but not exclusively taken to be home-born slaves—are usually thought to have had a privileged role within the ancient Roman household. While previous studies have highlighted how these individuals were represented with affection or as surrogate members of the freeborn family, this article uses epigraphic evidence from Pompeii to argue that the reality for at least some vernae was much more grim. A full examination of Pompeian attestations of the word verna reveals that there was a connection to prostitution in over seventy per cent of extant appearances of the noun. Furthermore, contextualizing this phenomenon within the corpus of prostitution-related graffiti more broadly reveals that verna was the single most commonly used descriptor in advertisements for sexual services at Pompeii. Ultimately, the epigraphic evidence from Pompeii suggests that vernae were not safe from sexual exploitation, and it may have been their status as vernae that made them attractive to those wishing to purchase sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fundamentally, Roman economic history is the study of how and why inhabitants of the Roman world produced, distributed and exchanged goods and services. By understanding the economic actions, events, institutions and products of the Roman world, Roman economic historians come to understand better the Romans themselves: their motivations, values, relationships and identities, among other things. With such a broad remit, today's Roman economic and monetary historians not only scour traditional sources for evidence of Roman commerce, prices, labour, capital and contracts, but they now deploy an ever-broadening range of methodologies, theories and approaches – some of which originate well outside the disciplines of both history and economics. Some Roman economic historians, for example, create, investigate and run simulations, using massive digital archives of data gleaned from ancient evidence. Others compare micro-nutrients in ancient wheat varieties with their modern counterparts to gain a better understanding of diet, nutrition and economic prosperity in Roman cities. Increasingly, specialists in some aspect of the Roman economy find themselves members of internationally funded interdisciplinary teams seeking to understand what Arctic ice cores or North-American tree rings say about money production in the Roman principate. Roman economic historians' scholarly sprawl has never been more challenging to describe, but I believe it is possible to group recent developments in the field into three overlapping areas: digitisation, particularisation and consilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Roman high-avoidance (RHA) and low-avoidance (RLA) rat lines/strains were established in Rome through bidirectional selection of Wistar rats for rapid (RHA) or extremely poor (RLA) acquisition of a two-way active avoidance task. Relative to RHAs, RLA rats exhibit enhanced threat sensitivity, anxiety, fear and vulnerability to stress, a passive coping style and increased sensitivity to frustration. Thus, RLA rats' phenotypic profile falls well within the "internalizing" behavior spectrum. Compared with RLAs and other rat strains/stocks, RHAs present increased impulsivity and reward sensitivity, deficits in social behavior and attentional/ cognitive processes, novelty-induced hyper-locomotion and vulnerability to psychostimulant sensitization and drug addiction. Thus, RHA rats' phenotypes are consistent with a "disinhibiting externalizing" profile. Many neurobiological/molecular traits differentiate both rat lines/strains. For example, relative to RLA rats, RHAs exhibit decreased function of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), hippocampus and amygdala, increased functional tone of the mesolimbic dopamine system, a deficit of central metabotropic glutamate-2 (mGlu2) receptors, increased density of serotonin 5-HT2A receptors in the PFC, impairment of GABAergic transmission in the PFC, alterations of several synaptic markers and increased density of pyramidal immature dendrític spines in the PFC. These characteristics suggest an immature brain of RHA rats and are reminiscent of schizophrenia features like hypofrontality and disruption of the excitation/inhibition cortical balance. We review evidence supporting RLA rats as a valid model of anxiety/fear, stress and frustration vulnerability, whereas RHA rats represent a promising translational model of neurodevelopmental alterations related to impulsivity, schizophrenia-relevant features and comorbidity with drug addiction vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberius of Rome is often portrayed as Athanasius' strongest ally in the Latin West. His support for Athanasius is said to have begun by the end of his first year in office, when a synod in Rome accepted an Egyptian council's vindication of Athanasius against an Eastern council's excommunication. This article argues that the Roman synod did not ratify the Egyptian council's decisions but rather called for an appeals trial. In so doing Liberius did not defend Athanasius but preserved what he saw as the traditional duties and authority of the Roman see in matters of ecclesiastical discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The letter sent by Kyros of Alexandria to Sergios of Constantinople in 638 appears to contain a chronological contradiction: it implies that Sergios was aware before his death of the election of Severinus as the new bishop of Rome two months earlier. Given the travelling times in the seventh century, this is impossible. The problem originates in a mistake made by Louis Duchesne when calculating the chronology of the popes for his edition of the Liber pontificalis : for the period 619–49, all his dates are one year too late. This change of the chronological framework affects the interpretation of a number of documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the poetic epistles addressed to his unnamed wife, Ovid makes a number of recognisably consolatory exhortations that poignantly reframe her perception of grief. By depicting exile as a form of living death and his departure from Rome in Tristia 1.3 as a funeral, Ovid is able to cast his wife in the role of a mourning widow whom he consoles from his exilic grave. The moment of their separation becomes a traumatic event that gives the wife the emotional endurance to handle any future adversity. Such appeals to earlier resilience, frequently found in consolation, are employed in Tristia 3.3 and 5.11. In these poems, Ovid also draws upon the consolatory argument that death is not a malum and reframes this same notion about exile to assert his status as a relegatus to his wife and a broader audience. This paper connects Ovid's use of these ideas with the broader tradition of Graeco-Roman consolation, expanding our understanding of the genre and the Tristia 's place therein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Panegyricus Latinus XII(9), a speech performed before Constantine in Trier in 313 c.e. following his defeat of Maxentius the previous year, acted as a crucial localized act of communication to the emperor. Through a series of allusions and the careful presentation of his narrative, the orator made a case for the continued political and cultural importance of Trier within the newly expanded Constantinian empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of the many accounts of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in a.d. 312 written soon after the conflict, only those of Eusebius of Caesarea have Maxentius cross the Tiber on a bridge of boats to face the forces of Constantine. This detail, it is here argued, suggests that Maxentius may be seen as a latter-day Xerxes, the Persian emperor who, in preparation for his invasion of Greece in 480 b.c., famously spanned the Hellespont with a pair of boat-bridges. The article first reviews the seminal accounts of Xerxes' feat in Aeschylus' Persians and Herodotus' Histories , and next discusses the story's long afterlife in subsequent Greek (and Latin) authors, including those of Late Antiquity. Close analysis of Eusebius' battle narratives in his Ecclesiastical History (9.9.3–8) and in his Life of Constantine (1.38) reveals that their vocabulary echoes the distinctive language used by Aeschylus, Herodotus and later writers in reference to Xerxes' achievement. The article concludes by exploring the implications of this identification of Maxentius with Xerxes. It exemplifies two venerable tactics in Roman political propaganda: that of portraying a native rival as a foreign enemy and that of mapping the Persian Wars onto contemporary events. As Xerxes rediuiuus , Maxentius is cast as the quintessential barbarian tyrant, an Eastern despot resident in Rome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Roman attitude toward the Ethiopian as expressed in scattered passages is far less kindly than the Greek. The usage in Terence and the Auctor ad Herennium which imply a vogue for Ethiopians is probably in imitation of Greek usage. How early the Roman attitude crystalized into racial feeling it is hard to say, and as those who express it are chiefly satirists one must be careful in drawing conclusions. Nevertheless in the absence of an expressed good will and in the face of references which have a superior or contemptuous tone it is evident that the Romans had no special affection for Ethiopians at Rome, however romantically they may have spoken of the races of distant India. The earliest passage in which they are spoken of slightingly seems to be in Cicero— cum hoc homine an cum stipite Aethiope , Cicero, De Sen. , 6. The word does not occur in all the manuscripts and the Oxford and Teubner texts omit it entirely. In notes it is translated 'blockhead' and the statement made that in antiquity the Ethiopians were synonymous with stupidity, a conclusion obviously drawn from the passage and the modern attitude toward them. Even if the word was actually used by Cicero, this passage alone is basis for such a theory. Mrs. Beardsley (op. cit. , pp.119–120), in my judgement, is wrong in her conclusion that the Roman attitude toward the Negro crystallized into racial feeling. In support of her view that the Romans referred to the Ethiopians at Rome in a superior and contemptuous tone, Mrs. Beardsley includes the following passages: (1) Cicero, Red. in Sen. , 6.14 (cited incorrectly as De Sen. , 6); (2) Martial, VI, 39, 6; (3) Juvenal, II, 23. Cicero, Red in Sen. , 6.14... cum hoc homine an stipite Aethiope... , as Mrs. Beardsley admits, does not appear in all the manuscripts and is omitted in the best established texts. A consideration of the context leads me to believe that the editors (Oxford, Teubner, Loeb) are right in rejecting Aethiope or stipite Aethiope and in reading stipite. Nevertheless, the appearance of the variant indicates that the author of the reading used Aethiope in a derogatory sense. (It is possible that the pejorative meaning of aethiops was a medieval development.) In these two excerpts, Grace Hadley Beardsley and Frank M. Snowden, Jr., discuss the appearance of the word Aethiops ('Aethiopian') in Cicero's Post reditum in senatu 14. Beardsley, whose intellectual project was motivated, as Maghan Keita and, more recently, Najee Olya have discussed, by racial animus and who sought to find evidence of Greco-Roman anti-Blackness that was both consistent with, and therefore a legitimizing exemplum for, contemporary anti-Blackness in 20th-century America, took Cicero's words as 'the earliest passage in which [Aethiopians] are spoken of slightingly' at Rome—doing so cautiously, given the fact that most editors had deleted it from the text. Frank M. Snowden, Jr.—whose own work W.E.B. Du Bois explicitly contrasted with Beardsley—responded to Beardsley's assertion that Post reditum in senatu contained evidence of anti-Blackness with scepticism, ultimately doubting the legitimate textual presence of the term and interpreting its presence instead as an artefact of hostile scribal intervention. Indeed, both Beardsley and Snowden discuss the fact that Aethiope does not occur in all of the Cicero manuscripts. While it is true that none of the authoritative textual editions print Aethiope at Post reditum in senatu 14, the textual apparatus nonetheless demonstrates clearly that the term appears in the manuscript tradition more often than it does not: stipe P1: etiope P2 stipe uel ethiope G uel aethiope stipe E1 esope H [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores an important aspect of the constellation of elements that contribute to the construction of the image of 'Sappho' from antiquity to the twentieth century, that of Sappho's ultimate destiny after her fatal leap from the Rock of Leucas. I first argue that the story of Sappho's leap lies behind the description of the Underworld in a long fragment of a fifth-century Attic comedy, the Miners of Pherecrates, and that indeed 'Sappho' appeared as a character in the play. The next sections examine the background and the iconic function of Sappho's leap in the underground Basilica near Porta Maggiore in Rome and connects all these elements to the way in which the Underworld is represented in Sappho's textual fragments. The fifth section of the article deals with the ways in which Sappho's fate was reconfigured from the Renaissance onward, examining first visual, musical and dramatic representations. In the final part I focus on the ways the motif is transformed by Baudelaire and Yourcenar. The image of the poetess can shift from being an icon of an eschatological message of new life to one of an exemplary failure, two poles that have an impact both on the reception of classical antiquity and on the vision of the destiny of poetry itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'J'ai passionnément aimé la Méditerranée, sans doute parce que venu du Nord, comme tant d'autres, après tant d'autres.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roman coinage forms an astoundingly rich body of material. That applies to coins struck by the centre as much as so-called provincial coinage. The latter can be roughly categorised as 1) coins struck by cities in the east of the Roman Empire, and for the Julio-Claudian period also in the west (in the western provinces, cities stopped issuing coins around the end of Claudius' reign); 2) coinages issued in the name of federations of cities (koina) or coins celebrating alliances between cities (so-called homonoia-coins); 3) coins struck by 'friendly kings'; and 4) so-called 'provincial issues' — mainly drachms, didrachms and tetradrachms, but also bronzes — that were mostly struck by important mints such as Alexandria, Antioch and Caesarea (in Cappadocia), probably under the supervision of Roman magistrates, to circulate in specific provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discovered in the Forum Romanum , the Anaglypha Panels have traditionally been viewed as a monument concerned exclusively with the capital city. A new interpretation presented here argues that instead the panels represent a direct Senatorial response to Hadrianic provincial policy. This response drew on a recent more traditional monument, the Column of Trajan. By employing specific visual references from that military monument, the Anaglypha Panels plastered over the ideological gap left by Hadrian's reliance on peaceful consolidation. Rather than an obsequious paean to the emperor, the Anaglypha Panels can be seen as a Senatorial reminder of their expectations of their emperor, and even a rebuke to the emperor who turned his eyes from Rome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous reports (Haynes I et al. i , [1]; [2]) have summarised progress on ROMETRANS, the ERC-funded research project 'Rome Transformed: interdisciplinary analysis of political, military, and religious regenerations of the city's forgotten quarter C1-C8 CE' (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/835271). ROMETRANS work in Rome takes four main forms: structural analysis, geophysical survey, a programme of borehole drilling and ongoing archival analysis. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Papers of the British School at Rome is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Papers of the British School at Rome is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In 1806 the antiquarian Francesco Cancellieri wrote a treatise on the new bells fabricated for the campanile of the Capitoline palaces, replacing earlier ones destroyed during the Roman Republic of 1798-9. Cancellieri's text, and the story of those bells which it contains, offers important insights into the significance of bells in early nineteenth-century Italian Catholicism and also about clerical responses to trauma and loss. Close reading shows how Cancellieri used historical techniques to reconstruct an auditory community around the bells, part of the wider programme of 'resacralisation' which took place in Rome at this time. His words also hint at a complex and nuanced perspective on how to reconcile Rome's papal and republican traditions, which contrasts to later, more reactionary endeavours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been an increasing interest in classical and late antique studies on the existence of something approximating the modern concept of race in the ancient Greco-Roman world. Scholars of early Christianity have also debated the presence of prejudice based on skin color. The following study seeks to broaden this conversation by including late antique contexts outside of the Roman Empire as well as marginal language communities within the Roman Empire. This paper will demonstrate that anti-Black prejudice—or racism—did indeed exist in the late antique Roman world and that such racism was more pronounced in Roman literature written in Greek and Latin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

KB's discussion revolves around four axial themes (the land of Rome; frontiers; us; them) and one recurrent theme, the city. Warriors, Martyrs, and Dervishes - moving frontiers, shifting identities in the land of Rome (13th-15th centuries) A dialectic identity formation takes place whereby the newcomers transform the physical, social, and cultural space in an inclusive manner as they themselves are transformed, and the "natives" reformulate their identity in a vast and vaguely defined space in a highly exclusive fashion" (pp. 193-4). [Extracted from the article]

This article presents, for the first time in English, a translation of the two letters of the usurping emperor Magnus Maximus that are to be found within the Collectio Avellana (letters 39 and 40). The letters—from Maximus to the Emperor Valentinian II and from Maximus to Siricius, bishop of Rome—are each introduced with an extensive discussion of their subject matter, the circumstances of their composition, and their probable date. The article then considers possible reasons for these letters' unusual survival; as letters of a usurping emperor, one would have expected them to be destroyed, and the article explores how we may understand their inclusion in the Collectio Avellana. Finally, the translations are given, with extensive commentary in their notes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past century, scholars have identified examples of liturgical chant belonging to more than one Western liturgical tradition, including Franco-Roman, Old Hispanic, Old Beneventan and Milanese. In a seminal study, Kenneth Levy identified a set of offertories that circulate in the Franco-Roman, Old Hispanic and Milanese traditions, arguing that all existing versions derive from an earlier, Gallican tradition. This article expands the evidence for connections between the Franco-Roman and Old Hispanic traditions, identifying nearly two dozen Franco-Roman responsories that are shared with the Old Hispanic rite and may be of Gallican or Iberian origin. The diversity of their liturgical assignments and circulation patterns suggests that the exchange of repertory took place at different times and through different routes. Many of these responsories are assigned to the later layers of the Roman liturgy. Others were added to the Old Hispanic liturgy between the eighth and tenth centuries. Just over half of these responsories show enough melodic connections between the Franco-Roman and Old Hispanic versions, in contour and melismatic density, to imply a shared melodic ancestor. Each version, however, uses the formulas associated with its own tradition, indicating that the melodies have been assimilated to the style and formulaic content of the receiving tradition. Despite the resulting melodic differences, we identify certain commonalities between Franco-Roman and Old Hispanic chant, such as text-setting strategies and common cadential contours, that facilitated the exchange of repertory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research in economics, social psychology, and sociology has produced compelling evidence that social norms influence behavior. In this paper we apply the Krupka and Weber (2013) norm elicitation procedure and present U.S. and non-U.S. born subjects with two scenarios for which tipping and punctuality norms are known to vary across countries. We elicit shared beliefs by having subjectsmatch appropriateness ratings of different actions (such as arriving late or on time) to another randomly selected participant fromthe same university or to a participant who is born in the same country. We also elicit personal beliefs without the matching task. We test whether the responses from the coordination task can be interpreted as social norms by comparing responses from the coordination game with actual social norms (as identified using independent materials such as tipping guides for travelers). We compare responses elicited with the matching tasks to those elicited without the matching task to test whether the coordination device itself is essential for identifying social norms. We find that appropriateness ratings for different actions vary with the reference group in the matching task. Further, the ratings obtained from the matching task vary in a manner consistent with the actual social norms of that reference group. Thus, we find that shared beliefs correspond more closely to externally validated social norms compared to personal beliefs. Second, we highlight the importance that reference groups (for the coordination task) can play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that the famous story about the strike, exile and return of the Roman aulos players, which is recorded in the sixth book of Ovid's Fasti and referred to by other Latin and Greek sources, is based on a narrative model that already existed in Greece in the Archaic period. The study draws parallels between the tale of the pipers and the myth of the return of Hephaestus to Olympus, suggesting that, apart from similar plots, the two stories share many motifs, such as references to themes derived from comedy and satyr drama. Searching for a possible channel of transmission of the story from Archaic Greece to Augustan Rome, the study explores the presence of satyric motifs in Etruscan vase-painting and Roman processional rites. It is furthermore emphasized that many of these motifs, which also appeared in lost satyr-plays, are echoed in Augustan poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The statue habit was a defining characteristic of Classical cities, and its demise in Late Antiquity has recently attracted scholarly attention. This article analyzes this process in the city of Rome, charting the decline and abandonment of the practice of setting up free-standing statues between the end of the 3rd c. and the mid 7th c. CE. Focusing on the epigraphic evidence for new dedications, it discusses the nature of the habit in terms of its differences from and continuities with earlier periods. The quantitative evolution of the habit suggests that its end was associated with deeper transformations. The final section examines the broader significance of setting up statues in Late Antique Rome, arguing that the decline of the statue habit must be understood in the context of a new statue culture that saw statue dedications in an antiquarian light, rather than as part of an organic honorific language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article considers a short text that was widely circulated in the mid- Roman Empire, in both a four-line and a six-line version, usually on gemstones. The text is a poem of sorts, but of a quite distinctive type. Part of it can be scanned according to the rules of classical (quantitative) metre, but more striking is the consistent rhythmic (stressed) pattern. Stressed poetry is not otherwise attested so early; this text may point to a substrate, now largely hidden from view, of popular verse that preceded the metrical revolutions of late antiquity and the Byzantine world. The poem is also a piece of visual artistry, designed to be looked at (particularly in its gemstone format). This hybrid status, between high art and popular culture, can also be detected in the content of the poem, which gestures towards both the poetics of intellectual elitism (using intertextual allusion, and dismissing the views of the masses) and a level of sexually aggressive assertion of embodied selfhood. It is a valuable witness to a form of middling literature (and a middling demographic), caught between aspirations to elite-style individuality and the mimetic imperative of an empire-wide consumer culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how villa baths in the north-western Roman empire can help us understand how rural regions were incorporated in the Roman cultural sphere despite the absence of cities and secondary agglomerations. Whereas in the first phase of Roman rule the addition of private baths to a villa could be interpreted as a marker of a Roman way of life, the ever larger and more luxurious bathhouses of the second and third centuries ad can only be understood in the context of intra-elite competition, revealing a real concern for displaying wealth and underlining social status, but also for leaving a family legacy. Here, a case-study in the rural north-west examines the role of baths in the self-representation of elites, the consolidation of elite peer interaction networks, the creation of social exclusion, and the inclusion of new ideas into local cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of ancient sources suggests that Roman women in the archaic period were not allowed to drink wine. Various theories have so far been proposed to explain this taboo, most of them assuming that it meant a complete alcohol ban, and relating it to the special role of women in the Roman family. However, a reconsideration of these theories, which takes into account the results of recent studies on the origins of wine consumption in Italy, shows that the archaic wine taboo had more to do with the nature of wine than with the nature of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction date of the 'Servian' wall and its layout in the riverside area between the Aventine and the Capitol are the two main questions addressed in this article. The interlocking topographical problems were addressed in 1988 by Filippo Coarelli, whose interpretation has become the generally accepted orthodoxy. But not all the difficulties have been solved, and with Coarelli's recent return to the subject a fresh examination of the evidence may be helpful. Careful attention is given here to stories of early Rome that involve the walls and gates, as reported in Livy, Dionysius and Plutarch; they are not, of course, taken as authentic evidence for the time of the alleged events, but as indicating what was taken for granted when the stories were first composed. New suggestions are made about a revision of the line of the city wall in 212 BC and the consequent restructuring of two important gates, the Porta Carmentalis and the Porta Trigemina; the mysterious 'Porta Triumphalis' is discussed separately in an appendix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to their different doctrinal positions, the various Syriac-using Churches of the Middle East have generally been understood as rivals to each other, with separate histories that can be studied in isolation. This article argues that doctrinal differences should not be given undue prominence, and that in the sixteenth century there was in reality considerable interaction between the different Churches. Increased contacts with Catholicism in this period may have encouraged these interactions, particularly in Rome itself, but connections were already present within the Ottoman Empire. These contacts had a significant effect on the Churches' historical development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adoption of the Rome Statute is a significant moment for international criminal law. Before its formulation, the criminal law was governed by the sources mentioned in their statute or Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice [ICJ Statute]. Custom is one of the important sources within the ICJ Statute. The ad hoc tribunals applied custom and even formulated certain customs. The formulation of custom is considered as against the principle of legality. To avoid such criticism, the State Parties inserted Article 21 in the Rome Statute. The provision clarifies the law which the court can apply. The parties chose not to include custom explicitly. However, the wordings of the provision indicate that the custom is still a source for the court. Apart from the wording of Article 21, other provisions of the Statute give ample scope for the application of custom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the mid fourth century b.c. some Roman gentes drew on a Pythagorean tradition. In this tradition, Numa's role of Pythagoras' disciple connected Rome (and the gentes) with Greek elites and culture. The Marcii, between 304 and 300 b.c., used Numa's figure, recently reshaped by the Aemilii and the Pinarii for their propaganda, to promote the need for a plebeian pontificate. After the approval of the Ogulnium plebiscite (300 b.c.), the needs for this kind of propaganda fell away. When Marcius Censorinus became censor, Numa's pontificate was no longer relevant for promoting the gens. For this reason, the Marcii used another genealogy for similar propagandistic effect: the figure of Marsyas, a symbol of plebeian ideals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]