Understanding Gilgamesh: his world and his story
Understanding Gilgamesh – brokenly – is to understand life brokenly. The Epic of Gilgamesh is the narrative of life.
Incest Laws and Absent Taboos in Roman Egypt
For at least two hundred and fifty years, many men in the Roman province of Egypt married their full sisters and raised families with them…
Was Pythagoras Ever Really in Sparta?
Did he really go to all of these places in person or did the Pythagorean movement make such claims in order to bolster their own credibility? Did others make similar claims for political and/or propagandistic reasons? Let us consider the sources as we have them.
Coming of age in Rome: the history and social significance of assuming the toga virilis
It is the purpose of this thesis, therefore, to collect and analyze evidence for the assumption of the toga virilis in an effort to determine its importance in Greco-Roman society both within the context of Roman family life and from the broader perspective of the cornmunity as a whole.
The instrumental value of others and institutional change: An Athenian case study
A primary motive for certain Athenian rule changes in the direction of increased legal access and impartiality in the fourth century B.C. was Athenian awareness of the increased instrumental value of foreigners.
Monogamy and polygyny in Greece, Rome, and world history
In what sense were the ancient Greeks and Romans monogamous, and why does it matter?
Making Space for Bicultural Identity: Herodes Atticus Commemorates Regilla
Herodes and Regilla built a number of installations during their marriage, some of which represented their union in spatial terms. After Regilla died, Herodes reconfigured two of these structures, altering their meanings with inscriptions to represent the marriage retrospectively. This paper considers the implications of these commemorative installations for Herodes’ sense of cultural identity.
Lost Roman law code discovered in London
Researchers at University College London have discovered part of an ancient Roman law code previously thought to have been lost forever.
Land tenure, rural space, and the political economy of Ptolemaic Egypt (332 BC-30 BC)
In this paper I argue that statist (or “despotic”) assumptions of royal power does not adequately describe the nature of political power in the Ptolemaic development of Egypt. I examine the process of Ptolemaic state formation from the point of view of the expansion and the settlement of the Fayyum, the foundation of Ptolemais in the Thebaid, and from the point of view of new fiscal institutions.
The Ethics and Economics of Ptolemaic Religious Associations
The first part investigates the economic status of the members…In the second part, the rules are examined in more detail in search of economic incentives that might explain why people joined associations..In the third part, a different approach is presented that tries to understand how the rules correspond to actual social relations.