Search

In the preface to the Carolingian collection of papal letters, known as the Codex epistolaris carolinus, the word imperium is used in the context of describing what is in the collection. In this article, I shall argue that a reinterpretation of the preface's statement about what imperium refers to will shed a different light on the CC as a collection in its entirety. What imperium refers to exactly can be debated, yet studying the Codex carolinus as a Carolingian product of its time, in combination with a reappraisal of its preface, may help to understand the source's historical context and its value to the Carolingian court. As I hope to demonstrate, the CC was an essentially purposeful collection, which underlined the shared history of the Carolingian family and the papacy in Rome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their new interpretation of "The Third Symbol of the Miles Grade on the Floor Mosaic of the Felicissimus Mithraeum in Ostia," Aleš Chalupa and Tomáš Glomb present a convincing argument that this symbol represents a bovine leg. Less satisfying is their conventional historiographical method by which the significance of a target problem is assumed to become clear when located in its historical context, in this case, an assumed but never explicated "symbolic world of the Mysteries of Mithras." As an alternative, I have suggested network theory as providing an empirically based possibility for tracking relationships between Mithraic cells and, thus, between similar imagery. Nevertheless, Chalupa and Glomb are to be commended for their credible identification of the ambiguous image associated with the grade of Miles in the Felicissimus Mithraeum and for reopening, thereby, a larger discussion about explanations for the diffusion of Mithraism and of its (supposedly) analogous Mithraic images throughout the Roman Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that Suetonius' reports claiming that Augustus was born in Rome at Ox Heads were misinterpreted. According to the author, the interpretation of Augustus' birth place was based on Suetonius' phrase, ad Capita Bubula. He argues that the phrase did not refer to a place but to a geometric pattern of reorganized Rome under Augustus' reign. He adds that the phrase caput bubulum does not necessarily have a literal meaning of ox head, but can be interpreted as a quasi-technical geometric concept.

In this paper we will consider some of the most significant interpretations concerning the relationship between the cristological debates in the fifth an sixth centuries and the transformations undergone by the State and Society within the Late Roman Empire. Moreover, based on these observations, we will try to offer some prospects for analysis for possible future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies Livy's account in Book 45 of the aftermath of Aemilius Paullus' conquest of Macedon employing two interpretative methods, both common in recent studies of historians. The first is "metahistory," in other words interpreting events within a historical narrative as commenting covertly on the genre of history and on the work as an example of that genre. The second is seeing how internal audiences provide a guide for the reader's interpretation. These, though theoretically independent, are in practice often related, with internal audiences being used as a trigger for wider reflections on the text and the genre. Four linked passages from Livy 45 are discussed in detail. One (Aemilius' tour of Greece) invites a systematic metahistorical reading without the use of an internal audience, partly to endorse Livy's own manner of "secondary" history, partly to promote a moral reading of the text. The other three employ internal audiences to similar effect: first, Aemilius' meeting with the defeated Perseus, and the lesson which he draws about the mutability of fortune; second, the spectacular games he organizes at Amphipolis; and third, his eventual triumph in Rome, along with the speech that Servilius gives in its support. The understanding of the genre of history that Livy promotes through these passages is, however, astonishingly narrow and didactic, ignoring even central aspects of his own work which do not conform to that understanding. The paper concludes by considering why Livy would wish to present himself and his genre as single-mindedly moralistic when neither he nor it actually was. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the interpretation of the chronological indicator of Gregory of Nyssa's "In Theodurum" homily in praise of Theodore. It has been implied that the interpretation may be identified on literary grounds as a scribal interpolation. It's presence is important in Gregory's panegyric on Theodore is important as a witness to the vitality of textual transmission in general and to the living.