Procopius of Caesarea wrote a classicizing history of the wars of Justinian, which focuses squarely on warfare in an age when his contemporaries were often directing their attention towards theological matters. Battles make up a significant portion of this history and they are the focus of this thesis, with particular attention paid to their literary construction, as well as the values, norms, and assumptions which underscore them. Chapter one focuses on the life and social background of Procopius, addressing issues such as his literary career and education. Chapter two looks at the wider context, including the three strands of thought concerning the composition of a work of history written in Greek, namely rhetoric, historiographical theory, and Greek military theory. It looks, particularly, at the theorists’ respective discussions of battle; and, the practices adopted by Procopius’ contemporaries when approaching battle, whether writing an ecclesiastical history, chronicle, or classicizing history, or a military treatise. In the next four chapters I focus on the text itself. Chapter three, on the Persian Wars, looks at issues such as narrative order and pace, the exhortation, and morale, discipline, and the use of stratagems. Battles in the Vandal Wars is the subject of chapter four, and here I look at how Procopius engages with his audience through the use of literary devices such as narrator interventions and narrative markers, as well as how he characterizes the warfare itself. In chapter five I explore the influence that Homer has had on Procopius’ descriptions of battle in the Gothic Wars, especially the siege of Rome. The last chapter, six, skips the thematic approach used in the previous three chapters and instead evaluates his battles on a case-by-case basis. While Procopius’ conception of battle betrays many of the hallmarks of his classical predecessors, there are unmistakable signs of the influence of his contemporary context, such as the attribution of outcomes to God. What is more, these battles, which are carefully constructed, and integrated into the wider text, showcase Procopius’ skill and ingenuity as a writer, and historian. As a result, my thesis demonstrates that Procopius needs to be taken seriously as a literary, cultural, and historical source for the sixth century.

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The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the role of the Praetorian Guard in the hundred years between the battle of Actium and the accession of Vespasian. This necessitates not only a consideration of those political activities which the Praetorians undertook at the behest of their emperors but also an examination into the motivations of the guardsmen themselves. Moreover, any study of the Praetorian Guard would be less than complete without an account of the development of the Praetorian prefecture. (Now unrestricted)

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This thesis aims to provide a methodology for approaching and interpreting ancient Egyptian cultural landscapes using the Oryx Nome as its case study. By bringing together textual, archaeological and geoarchaeological evidence a more holistic impression of the region during the Middle Kingdom is suggested. Considerations of how natural forms and processes within the environment contribute towards the formation of cultural landscapes as well as how the local inhabitants continued to redevelop their surroundings, create a sense of geographic identity and enculture their landscapes are also discussed. Ultimately, this thesis proposes that with a greater knowledge of an area’s ecological past archaeologists are better equipped to prioritise physical investigation of broad areas of the Egyptian floodplain in order to unlock the stories of those that once inhabited it.

This thesis examines the development of identities within Iberia during the Roman conquest of the peninsula through the lens of cultural hybridism, urbanism and economic changes. The aim is to explore how local Iberian communities evolved culturally through centuries of pre-Roman contact, and how these interactions fuelled later adaptations to Roman rule. Iberian communities, within this context, did not simply ‘become Roman’ but many acculturation theories have struggled to create alternatives to the ‘Romanization’ model successfully. While ‘Romanization’ is clearly problematic, this thesis will challenge and adapt several acculturation models to explore the visibility of cultural hybridity within ‘Roman’ and Iberian communities, and alternatively suggest the emergence of a pan-Mediterranean cultural background. These theories will then be applied in four case studies of prominent cities in southern Iberia: Italica (Santiponce), Hispalis (Sevilla), Corduba (Cordoba), and Augusta Emerita (Merida). In each of these case studies the thesis will address aspects of acculturation seen in the urban and economic evidence at those sites. The conclusion of this thesis will indicate that, while further study should be conducted, a more flexible approach to cultural identity should be considered in light of the evidence presented in the case of the evidence seen in these four towns.

In Byzantium, usurpation was made possible by the conflict between hereditary-dynastic and meritocratic-republican theories of rulership. Legitimacy was founded upon subjective notions of idealized moral-behavioural norms drawn from the imperial virtues and Christian ideology. Authority could be challenged when it was perceived to deviate from these norms. Investitures transformed a usurper from a private individual to an emperor on the basis of ratification by popular consent. The historic ritual of reluctance allowed emperors to present themselves as ‘moral ideals’ at the moment of proclamation, ridding them of blame for a usurpation. Guilt and sin were inevitable byproducts of usurpation, but imperial repentance facilitated an expiation and legitimized imperial authority in relation to moral ideals. On occasion a usurper’s successors would perform repentance on his behalf, freeing the dynasty from the sins of its foundation. The treatment of defeated usurpers could take a variety of forms: reconciliations enabled a peaceful ‘healing’ of the community. Political mutilations transformed the victim’s appearance and rendered him ‘other’ in an attempt to demonstrate his immorality and illegitimacy. Degradation parades inverted recognised investiture rites in order to permanently alter a victim’s identity and reveal him to be a tyrant, acting against the interests of the people.

This thesis examines the development of Roman Illyrian policy, from the late Republican hegemony over the region to the establishment of permanent imperial frontiers on the Danube and the beginning of the process that would integrate Illyricum ( the area between the Adriatic Sea and the River Danube ) into the Roman Empire. This thesis has two principal aims. Firstly, on the regional, ' microscopic ', level it defines and explains the development of Roman policy in Illyricum. Secondly, on the global, ' macroscopic ', level it examines some of the mechanisms of Roman policy - making, and fits Illyrian policy into the wider picture of Roman foreign and later provincial policy. Ultimately, the thesis recognizes and explains the reasons for a major change in Roman strategic interests from the Eastern Adriatic coast to the interior of the western Balkans in the late Republic and early Empire. Despite the problems of deficient sources, this thesis observes Roman Illyrian policy as essentially a political interaction between Rome and the entire regional geopolitical system of Illyricum, rather than defining it through Roman interactions with individual polities inside the system, or as part of the system. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Humanities, 2005.

This thesis is concerned to demonstrate that Egypt had an important part to play in the formation of the Roman empire. There is a tendency for Classical scholarship to discuss Rome’s relationship with Egypt in terms which fall very far short of the way in which Rome’s encounters with Greek culture are treated. Within scholarship today, any perceived problems with Egypt are still often overstated, while any respect which the Romans may have held for Egyptian culture is dismissed, underplayed or only grudgingly accepted. I intend to re-appraise certain aspects of Egyptian/Egyptianising material culture in order to demonstrate that while some areas of the Roman literary corpus are scattered with apparently derogatory remarks about Egypt, the material evidence tells a quite different story. The aim of this thesis is to examine Egyptian/Egyptianising material culture in order to put the evidence of written texts into a fuller cultural context and perspective. I shall take a chronological approach and intend to focus primarily on artefacts found in the public sphere. The exception will be Chapter Four in which I shall discuss notions about Egypt in the private sphere. The final Chapter will conclude with Hadrian’s era in which the Villa at Tivoli may be seen as an expression of the merging of aspects of both public and private. Octavian’s so-called ‘propaganda’ campaign is central to the question of how scholarship deals with encounters between Egypt and Rome. After Egypt’s incorporation into the new empire of Rome, it was not in Octavian’s interests to continue a hostile disparagement of the country, given his status as pharaoh. I will argue that Octavian set in motion a rehabilitation of the country’s reputation by a policy of appeasement towards Egypt and by incorporating aspects of Egypt’s culture into Rome. It is my contention that Egypt had a greater role to play in the ideology of Rome’s empire, particularly through its first Emperor, than modern scholarship allows. I conclude that the ‘question of Egypt’ while complex, fluid and often contradictory, nevertheless was very much less negative than modern scholarship portrays.