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The control over marble and metal resources was of major importance to the Roman Empire. The emperor's freedmen and slaves, officers and soldiers of the Roman army, equestrian officials, as well as convicts and free labour were seconded to mines and quarries throughout Rome's vast realm. Alfred Hirt's comprehensive study defines the organizational outlines and the internal structures of the mining and quarrying ventures under imperial control. The themes addressed include: challenges faced by those in charge of these extractive operations; the key figures, their subaltern personnel and their respective responsibilities; the role of the Roman army; the use of civilian partners in quarrying or mining ventures; and the position of the quarrying or mining organizations within the framework of the imperial administration.
Paul the apostle is usually imagined as a man of prestige and power – comfortably conversing with philosophers, seeking an audience with the emperor, and composing compelling letters for Christians throughout the Mediterranean. Yet this portrait of a safe and conventional figure at the origins of Christianity airbrushes out many strange things about him. This volume repositions Paul as a man at the periphery of power. Recovering an Undomesticated Apostle explores the ways that Paul has been “domesticated” in both popular and scholarly imagination. By isolating selected crises of the apostle’s life and legacy and examining the social and material dimensions of his world, these essays collectively chip away at the received image of his strength and status. The result is a series of glimpses of Paul that frame the apostle as surprisingly marginal and weak within Roman society. Published in honour of New Testament scholar Leif E. Vaage, Recovering an Undomesticated Apostle presents Paul as a man operating from a position of desperation, making virtue out of necessity as he attempted to claw his way up in the dog-eat-dog world of the ancient Mediterranean.
In A Tale of Three Thirsty Cities: The Innovative Water Supply Systems of Toledo, London and Paris in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century, Chaim Shulman presents an analysis of three projects of urban water supply systems carried out between 1560s–1610s. The technical and economic differences between these projects resulted from external conditions not directly related to the water supply problem. Although the same basic technology was apparently available at the time in all cases, the geographical, engineering, entrepreneurial and cultural nature of each region differed. The inhabitants’ wellbeing improvement achieved varied accordingly. Much broader insights are drawn on the policies of the three monarchies regarding the initiative of and support for grand scale public works in general.
Fresh from their victory in Germania, Marcus Aquila and the Tungrians have been sent to Dacia, on the north-eastern edge of the Roman Empire, with the mission to safeguard a major source of imperial power. 'A master of the genre' The Times The mines of Alburnus Major contain enough gold to pave the road to Rome. They would make a mighty prize for the marauding Sarmatae tribesmen who threaten the province, and the outnumbered auxiliaries are entrusted with their safety in the face of a barbarian invasion. Beset by both the Sarmatian horde and more subtle threats offered by men who should be their comrades, the Tungrians must also come to terms with the danger posed by a new and unexpected enemy. They will have to fight to the death to save the honour of the empire - and their own skins. 'Some authors are better historians than they are storytellers. Anthony Riches is brilliant at both.' Conn Iggulden
Natural Materials of the Holy Land and the Visual Translation of Place, 500-1500, focuses on the unique ways that natural materials carry the spirit of place. Since early Christianity, wood, earth, water and stone were taken from loca sancta to signify them elsewhere. Academic discourse has indiscriminately grouped material tokens from holy places and their containers with architectural and topographical emulations, two-dimensional images and bodily relics. However, unlike textual or visual representations, natural materials do not describe or interpret the Holy Land; they are part of it. Tangible and timeless, they realize the meaning of their place of origin in new locations. What makes ea...
The author of the book of Revelation struggled, as we do today, to live out a Christian faith in the context of an empire that trampled and destroyed the earth and its creatures. In this book, Micah D. Kiel will look at how and why Revelation was written, along with how it has been interpreted across the centuries, to come to an understanding of its potential contribution to a modern environmental ethic. While the book of Revelation is replete with images of destruction of the earth, Kiel shows readers, through Revelation’s ancient context, a message of hope that calls for the care of and respect for the environment.
Marble is one of the great veins through the architectural tradition and fundamental building block of the Mediterranean world, from the Parthenon of mid-fifth century Athens, which was constructed of pentelic marble, to Justinian’s Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and the Renaissance and Baroque basilica of St. Peter’s in the Vatican. Scholarship has done much in recent years to reveal the ways and means of marble. The use of colored marbles in Roman imperial architecture has recently been the subject of a major exhibition and the medieval traditions of marble working have been studied in the context of family genealogies and social networks. In addition, architectural historians have rev...
From Greece to Palmyra, Tyre or Babylon, the names of the gods, like 'Thundering Zeus', 'Three-faced Moon', 'Baal of the Force' or the enigmatic YHWH, reveal their history, family ties, fields of competence and capacity for action. Shared or specific, these names bring to light networks of gods: the Saviour gods, the Ancestral gods, the gods of a city or a family. Names tell stories about the relationship between men and gods, gods and places, places and cultures and so on. They show how gods travel and spread, how they appear and disappear, how they participate in the political, social, intellectual history of each community. Through the study of divine names, the twelve chapters of this book unfold a gallery of portraits that reveal the changing aspects of the divine throughout the ancient Mediterranean.
The EMPIRE sequence continues with books IV-VI in Anthony Riches' bestselling series, available in a page-turning collection, including The Leopard Sword, The Wolf's Gold and The Eagle's Vengeance. The Leopard Sword The Roman agents who nearly captured Marcus Aquila have been defeated by his friends. But to protect those friends from the wrath of the emperor, he must leave the province which has given him shelter. As centurion of the second Tungrians, he leads his men from Hadrian's Wall to the Tungrians' original home. There he finds a different world from the turbulent British frontier - but one with its own dangers. A bandit chieftain is robbing with impunity. And now he threatens to dest...
A full-color guide to Italy's archeology and treasures. Archaeology Hotspot Italy presents a comprehensive overview of the Italian archaeology. The main archaeological epochs – from Paleolithic to the Middle Ages – and sites and the discoveries made in the last twenty years, as well as past and present great archaeologists are thoroughly explored. Archaeology Hotspot Italy gives also insights into the way in which archaeology is practiced today, dealing with controversies over interpretation of the past connected to different theoretical approaches and present-day social and political contingencies. One of the aims of Archaeology Hotspot Italy is to give to the reader the idea that archa...