Editorial for Rosetta issue 29.
Articles
Institutional and regulatory issues were important agents in the development of water management. The goal was to determine the citizens’ duties and rights towards the availability and use of water in different life cases in fair proportion. Water management regulations are not a modern creation, but there is a long tradition of solving complex issues of water supply and use with rather sophisticated legal measures. The purpose of the study is to identify common features, local strategies, and underlying challenges for water availability and management in Graeco-Roman Egypt. The focus will be mainly on the Ptolemaic Period since it was a distinguished and transformational point in the administrative and legal system related to water management. Papyri, mainly of Roman materials, served as the primary literary source, providing valuable insights into the efficient administrative system and legal practices established in Alexandria to regulate, protect, and maintain water resources. The study also highlights the evolution of water regulations in ancient Egypt and Greece, as well as their impact of on the development of this new system.
In Egypt and Mesopotamia, as in most of the ancient world, belief in all-encompassing black-magic informed life and death. These magical forces also were believed to be a key determinant of health and disease operating through a pantheon of gods and demons. Nevertheless, by the third millennium BCE, institutionalisation of healing was well established in both societies and true medical practitioners were recognised. Although healing and magic were integrated by both priests and physicians, each profession functioned with a different balance. Physical examination and diagnosis could be rational and reasonably accurate, but highly formalised. Therapeutics was an empirically based mix of common sense, Materia medica and, of course, magic; the latter was also a consideration in deciphering causality and assigning diagnosis. In contrast, biblical Israel, as a monotheistic, magic abhorring society, was unique in many regards. It was responsible for introducing the first examples of systematic differential diagnosis as well as practising good, popular public health policies that were possibly innovative. Overall, though, biblical Israel was representative of other societies that functioned as end users of the medical skills and technology developed in Egypt and Mesopotamia. In their approach to disease and healing, the ancient biblical society still shared an outlook ubiquitous in the ancient Middle East that balanced spiritual considerations with real medicine.
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Modern scholars (Badian 1967, Lampela 1998, and Manni 1949, 1950) have long recognised the fact that the mighty kingdom of Egypt was reduced to the status of a Roman dependency long before being conquered by war. Roman influence (and interference) upon the kings has been accused of being the cause of this change. It is important to observe that most authors recognise Egypt had also started to fall under Roman control before the first century BC, probably from the 140s BC, when the king Ptolemy VIII, who owed his power to Roman support, got the control of Egypt.
Nevertheless, very few analyses have been done on the personal relationships between Romans and Egyptians, and none has been made about the modern concept of soft power: the power relation between Rome and the Ptolemies has been mainly shown as a mere convenience for the kings, later turned into a (justified) fear of Roman power and direct intervention, and it is has often been analysed through the political relationship of the Ptolemaic kings and Rome.
In general historiography has until now focused more on how the Egyptians had been forced into the protectorate by Rome, rather than on how they themselves had entered its net by seeking Roman interventions and cultivating relationships (I think to Ptolemy VIII connection with the Scipionic circle, or to the debt of Ptolemy XII with Pompey and other Roman bankers). Thus, I want to analyse in this work the history of Roman and Egyptian relations from 200 BC to 31 BC, observing how the multiple relationships and the usefulness of Rome brought Egypt progressively under the control of the Roman state.
This article aims to analyse the role of multilingualism to shore up the legitimacy of a number of Assyrian and Syro-Anatolian governors and regents who rose to power between the end of the ninth and the beginning of the eighth century BC. Interestingly, the royal inscriptions composed by the four rulers under analysis deal with the use of multiple languages. While Yarri of Karkemish states to know 12 languages, Azatiwada of Karatepe, Ninurta-bēlu-uṣur of Kar-Shalmaneser and Adad-it-’I of Guzana produced multilingual inscriptions. Within the unstable political frame and the multiethnic composition of the Syro-Anatolian Iron Age polities, the choice of the languages for the inscriptions is interpreted as a tool to reaching out different elites with reassuring messages. At a methodological level, in this article, I attempt to offer an interpretation of the purposes of the epigraphic inscriptions under analysis taking into consideration not only their content, but also their relationship with the monuments and their location. As a result, it is argued that multilingualism was strategically used by these rulers for gaining internal and international political consensus.
Interpretations of Jocasta’s gender in Euripides’ Phoenissae tend to focus primarily on her maternal aspect and dismiss elements that do not conform with her image as a mother, such as the patently military context of her suicide and the heroic connotations of the sword she uses. Approaching the play’s framing of Jocasta’s gender within a framework informed by Judith Butler’s theoretical work reveals Jocasta to be engaged in an ongoing performance of heroic masculinity and incestuous motherhood. This performance culminates in Jocasta’s suicide, and the tension thereby created between the character’s sympathetic portrayal and her death encourages the audience to reflect on contemporary sexual and gender norms.
The focus of this article is to explore the meaning of the pantomime of the judgement of Paris in Book X of the Metamorphoses (Met. 10.29-33), arguing that its location and embedded authorial commentary make it both a thematic climax and vital in understanding Apuleius’ authorial values. Central to this meaning is a philosophical apostrophe inset in the passage which contextualises a tone shift from the poor behaviours of the preceding books to the sober religious conversion present in Book XI. Leading up to this conversion, as Apuleius’ theatrical displays of crime and punishment presented in his narratives accurately reflect the type of performative punishments practised under Roman law, it calls into question the values of such punishment, especially considering their conflict with Platonic attitudes towards education. Since many of the inset narratives are parodies of myths set, ostensibly, in the real world, Apuleius’ attitude towards such stories is likely that they teach misaligned values, trapping their consumers in animal desires and leading to legal consequences. If so, then it might explain why Apuleius depicts the gods within this pantomime as highly eroticised human actors, why he says that such myths create ‘forum cattle’ (forensia pecora) and ‘vultures in togas’ (togati vulturii) who pervert the legal system (Met. 10.33), and why it is only after Lucius abandons this scene that his humanity is restored.
In recent years, approaches to religion and philosophy have led to a reassessment of the relationship between these two concepts in the ancient Mediterranean world. This article explores Neoplatonic thought in Ammianus Marcellinus’ Res Gestae as a unified religio-philosophical epistemology that informs the author’s understanding of how the course of history is shaped by the important players within it.
The discussion focuses on Ammianus’ portrayal of the emperor Julian according to the principles of this Neoplatonic religio-philosophical epistemology. Ammianus’ portrayal of Julian is framed in terms of the four cardinal virtues of the Platonic tradition as a clear link to Ammianus’ philosophical position. This portrayal is made under overarching themes of Fate and divine Providence that run throughout his narrative, as an indication of Ammianus’ religiosity. Both aspects are intrinsically linked to one another, which this paper demonstrates through reference to the protreptic letters of Iamblichus and Sopater. These letters discuss Neoplatonic teachings on matters such as ethics, political philosophy, and the metaphysical order of the universe. Through this analysis, it becomes apparent that Ammianus was familiar with the Neoplatonic intellectual trends of the fourth century CE, and used this tradition as religio-philosophical epistemology to understand and explain how and why the historical events that he records unfolded as they did.
Book Reviews and Short Pieces
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Short piece
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