Arrian: Periplus Ponti Euxini


Book Description

This work contains Arrian's Greek text "Periplus Ponti Euxini", with an introduction, commentary and facing-page translation. It describes a tour taken by the Roman senator around the Black Sea and gives an insight into the cultural and political background of the early second century.




The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes


Book Description

A fascinating history of the intricate web of trade routes connecting ancient Rome to Eastern civilizations, including its powerful rival, the Han Empire. The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes investigates the trade routes between Rome and the powerful empires of inner Asia, including the Parthian Empire of ancient Persia, and the Kushan Empire which seized power in Bactria (Afghanistan), laying claim to the Indus Kingdoms. Further chapters examine the development of Palmyra as a leading caravan city on the edge of Roman Syria. Raoul McLaughlin also delves deeply into Rome’s trade ventures through the Tarim territories, which led its merchants to the Han Empire of ancient China. Having established a system of Central Asian trade routes known as the Silk Road, the Han carried eastern products as far as Persia and the frontiers of the Roman Empire. Though they were matched in scale, the Han surpassed its European rival in military technology. The first book to address these subjects in a single comprehensive study, The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes explores Rome’s impact on the ancient world economy and reveals what the Chinese and Romans knew about their rival Empires.




The Pontus of the nineteenth-century travellers


Book Description

This book is about the Pontus as seen and described by Western travellers of the 19th century. The information offered by these travellers was examined in the process of determining on the map the route of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, as narrated by Xenophon in his Anabasis. The problems associated with this determination are addressed in a book written in parallel with the present one (Iordanis Paradeisopoulos (2023), Xenophon’s Riddle. Also in Greek, Ιορδάνης Παραδεισόπουλος (2023), Ο γρίφος του Ξενοφώντος). Chapters from nine books are presented here. The books, written in English, are in chronological order those of Kinneir (1918), Porter (1822), Smith (1834), Hamilton (1842), Southgate (1850), Layard (1853), Curzon (1853), Tozer (1881), and Lynch (1901). Two articles are also presented, writthen by Brant (1836), and Briot (1870), and published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London. Additionally, excerpts are provided from the Greek text of historians narrating the sack of Trebizond by the Goths in 258 AD (Zosimus), and the conquest of Trebizond by the Ottomans in 1461 (Sphrantzes, Critobulus, Chalkokondyles, Ducas, Pseudo-Sphrantzes, Amiroutzes, Ecthesis Chronica). These excerpts are provided both in the original and in our English translation.




Christ’s Enthronement at God’s Right Hand and Its Greco-Roman Cultural Context


Book Description

Given the dearth of non-messianic interpretations of Psalm 110:1 in non-Christian Second Temple Jewish texts, why did it become such a widely used messianic prooftext in the New Testament and early Christianity? Previous attempts to answer this question have focused on why the earliest Christians first began to use Ps 110:1. The result is that these proposals do not provide an adequate explanation for why first century Christians living in the Greek East employed the verse and also applied it to Jesus’s exaltation. I contend that two Greco-Roman politico-religious practices, royal and imperial temple and throne sharing—which were cross-cultural rewards that Greco-Roman communities bestowed on beneficent, pious, and divinely approved rulers—contributed to the widespread use of Ps 110:1 in earliest Christianity. This means that the earliest Christians interpreted Jesus’s heavenly session as messianic and thus political, as well as religious, in nature.




Dreams and Dreaming in the Roman Empire


Book Description

An investigation into dream reports in the history and literature of early Roman culture.




On the Shoulders of Prometheus: International Collaboration and the Archaeology of Georgia


Book Description

Chapters in this volume, with contributions from a a wide range of multidisciplinary specialists, demonstrates the diversity and vibrancy of international research collaboration in the archaeology of Georgia and underlines the enormous potential of the country’s archaeological resource.




The Roman Lower Danube Frontier


Book Description

Over the past few decades, there has been a significant amount of research on the Roman Lower Danube frontier by international teams focusing on individual forts or broader landscape survey work; collectively, this volume represents the best of this collaboration with the aim of elevating the Lower Danube within broader Roman frontier scholarship.







Pax Romana


Book Description

The leading ancient world historian and author of Caesar presents “an engrossing account of how the Roman Empire grew and operated” (Kirkus). Renowned for his biographies of Julius Caesar and Augustus, Adrian Goldsworthy turns his attention to the Roman Empire as a whole during its height in the first and second centuries AD. Though this time is known as the Roman Peace, or Pax Romana, the Romans were fierce imperialists who took by force vast lands stretching from the Euphrates to the Atlantic coast. The Romans ruthlessly won peace not through coexistence but through dominance; millions died and were enslaved during the creation of their empire. Pax Romana examines how the Romans came to control so much of the world and asks whether traditionally favorable images of the Roman peace are true. Goldsworthy vividly recounts the rebellions of the conquered, examining why they broke out, why most failed, and how they became exceedingly rare. He reveals that hostility was just one reaction to the arrival of Rome and that from the outset, conquered peoples collaborated, formed alliances, and joined invaders, causing resistance movements to fade away.




Religion and Poverty


Book Description

Nowadays religions are especially important for those who are living in countries of the formerly so-called 'Third World'. The miseries of life seem to be so hard that just an afterlife in a transcendent paradise is promising relief. Consequently, there seems to be a close connection between religion and poverty, especially in the 21st century, when the hope for a better afterlife has become a driving force of the poor population of the world. However, what could be interpreted as a proof of the Marxist doctrine of religion as opium of the people, for sure deserves a more multiperspectival approach, which would not just cover the recent years of human history, but past centuries as well as the different religions around the globe. Therefore the second issue of Global Humanities traces the interrelationship between religion and poverty not only from a historical, but also from a sociological, religious and artistic perspective.