This thesis examines the relationship between human will and divine will as mediated through state divination in the Roman Middle and Late Republic. The nature of ancient evidence for incidents involving state divination, and for divinatory ‘rules’, is scrutinized: the historicity of many divinatory incidents recorded in Roman tradition is defended, and the existence of a body of basic divinatory ‘rules’ posited. Current models of the relationship between human and divine will in Roman divination are examined; the thesis challenges the ‘alignment’ model wherein the outcomes of state divination are assumed routinely to have aligned with the will of their recipients. Cases where divinatory outcomes do not appear to have aligned with recipients’ will are identified in Cicero, Livy, and Cassius Dio. The modern view that state divinatory techniques (auspication, haruspicy in sacrifice, and prodigy-interpretation) routinely generated desired results is called into question. The thesis then re-evaluates the canon of ancient ‘rule-statements’ generally cited as evidence for augural ‘principles’ that the report of a sign was considered as valid as an actual sign, and that it was acceptable for individuals to fabricate or to reject signs at will. Instead, it is suggested that a real sign was preferable to a reported one, and that the validity of an oblative sign depended on the individual’s awareness of it. Finally, the thesis proposes an alternative to the currently-accepted understanding of the auspicial procedure ‘servare de caelo’, arguing that even this procedure need not be seen as invariably generating signs in alignment with human will and as countenancing sign-falsification. These conclusions are held to encourage a re-consideration of the modern understanding of the nature of Roman state divination and of Roman religion.

The Common Voice of the People is a study of the importance of heralds and their proclamations to the communal life of the ancient Athenian polis in the Archaic and Classical periods. This dissertation aims to contribute to the growing body of modern scholarship on issues of public communication, the tension between literacy and orality, the importance of ritual in the ancient polis, and the varied roles and identities of Greek heralds. While there has been a great focus in recent scholarship on literacy and the written record, the official place of orality within the Classical polis has been neglected, and until now there has never been a full scale study of heralds and their place within the community. Building upon the recent scholarship on news dispersal within the polis I have explored the positions and roles of the ancient Athenian heralds within their community, and the historical progression of the herald’s position from Geometric Greece to the end of the Classical world. I have sought to determine what their importance and the importance of their proclamations was to the proper functioning of the Athenian community. Marshalling evidence from both literary and epigraphic evidence I employed these deductions about heralds to further explore the importance of both official state and unofficial citizen proclamations in the spread of news and within established ritual. This work explores a range of topics concerning polis life such as religion, civil communication, public notice, private citizen disinheritances and manumissions, international communication, Imperial Athenian attitudes towards subject allies, and the necessity of proclamation to the conferral of honor. The Common Voice of the People demonstrates the depth of integration of heralds and oral communication within a variety of aspects of polis life, the surprising absence of heralds from certain central aspects of internal Athenian communication, and the continued importance of orality as both a practical and ceremonial aspect of official forms of communication and ritual in an increasingly literate classical Athens.

Ein neues Ziel-Inhalts-Konzept des Rahmenlehrplans nimmt in dieser Lehrerhandreiche Gestalt an. Fachwissenschaftliche und didaktische Instruktionen sowie ein ideenreicher Arbeitsteil (Materialien und Aufgaben) helfen bei der Unterrichtsvorbereitung. Aus dem Inhalt: - ein integratives Antike-Projekt untersucht Möglichkeiten und Grenzen gesellschaftlicher Teilhabe in Athen und der römischen Republik; - Augustus und Alexander als Zentralgestalten universaler Monarchie und Reichsbildung werden in der biografischen Rekonstruktion und im historischen Kontext lebendig; - das Thema Erinnerungskultur in der Antike und heute verweist auf Grundprobleme der Geschichtskultur; - Anregungen zur Arbeit mit dem Spielfilm „Alexander“ als historische Quelle führen an rezeptionsgeschichtliche und medienspezifische Aspekte historischen Lernens heran

This thesis examines the evolution of the junior officer positions of the Roman army in the period 91BC – AD14, and the motivations, background, and status of their holders. Two introductory chapters consider the nature of the available evidence and the way in which the agendas and survival patterns of our sources have influenced modern perceptions. There follow three chapters of diachronic analysis, each analysing the number of officer positions available, the roles and functions of the junior officers, and the status of the junior officer positions in the periods 91 – 50BC, 49 – 31BC, and 30BC – AD14, and finally three thematic chapters examining professionalism and other motivations for service, the perception of service as a junior officer, and the role of the municipal elite within the junior officer corps. In addressing these issues, the thesis challenges the modern view that the junior officer corps suffered a dramatic decline in status at the start of the first century BC through unwillingness to serve on the part of the Roman social elite. Instead, emphasis is placed on the important changes which occurred within the junior officer corps during the period 49 – 31BC, when the increasing demands for both manpower and loyalty among the warring commanders had a significant impact on both the junior officer positions and the men who held them, and which also led to innovation in the organisation of auxiliary forces. The reforms of Augustus that followed, and the junior officer corps of the earliest years of the Principate are also discussed, in particular the notable military innovations of the Augustan period and the role of the Italian and provincial equestrian ordo. Furthermore, this thesis analyses the development of professionalism within the junior officer corps and the perceptions of service as a junior officer as expressed in literature as well as in epigraphic and iconographic commemoration. The thesis concludes with a series of appendices which list all attested junior officers of the period, as well as those considered junior officers by modern authorities, with discussion of those officers whose careers or dating might be considered controversial.

This thesis examines the Athenian ephebeia, from its creation to 200 B.C. The primary aim of the study is to examine the forces which led to the perception of a need for the ephebeia and which influenced its creation. After describing the institution and then investigating the available evidence for its foundation date, I argue that the "formal ephebeia" was created in 335 B.C. and was substantially different in form from anything which had preceded it. There were, however, some antecedent aspects of the ephebeia which can be traced to earlier times. The following two chapters examine forces in the fifth and early fourth century which contributed to the creation of the ephebeia. The first is an examination of Greek military innovation in the fourth century and of new Athenian defensive policy. The second investigates a "discourse" of educational thought which was present in the intellectual circles of Athens in the fourth century, the nature of which can be found in writings of the "Socratic" philosophers. In the fifth chapter I descrive the environment of "Lycurgan Athens" and argue that the ephebeia was a deliberately "invented tradition" which suited its ideological context. The final chapter examines all available evidence for the history of the organization from 322 to 200 B.C., charting a transformation of the institution. There are two appendices: one on the demography of late fourth century Athens and its relationship to the ephebeia, the other on the life-dates of Menander and the year of his ephebate. There are also two catalogues of inscriptions. The first provides all fourth century ephebic inscriptions since the publication of Reinmuth's collection (or changes to those). The second provides all published third century ephebic inscriptions and some from the early second century.

The present study offers an in-depth examination of the institutional framework within which money operated as an economic agent in the Roman empire. Analyses focus on Classical Roman Law as reflected in the writings of Roman jurists from the second and early-third centuries CE. The legal sources are augmented by documentary materials, which give independent, albeit sporadic, evidence for actual practice. The thesis follows current trends in economic history to adopt approaches advanced by New Institutional Economics (NIE), while generally accepting Keynesian claims for the endogenous nature of money. Its innovative contribution is in suggesting a complexity-oriented approach to modelling the behaviour of money in the Roman empire; seeing money as a complex economic phenomenon, i.e. as a diverse and manifold apparatus which allows for new patterns of activity to be created by individuals, who self-adjust their use of it to the continuously evolving system in which they operate. The thesis is divided into four parts. The first is introductory. The second concerns the legal institutional framework for economic interaction; with discussions generally organised according to Roman legal categorisation, and considers developments in the role allocated to money in legal definitions for exchange transaction. The third part examines two study-cases of money-related institutions, namely, the instrument of interest, and interest-bearing deposits, demonstrating how money stimulated the interconnected dynamics within and between legal traditions operating under Roman regime. The fourth and last part is dedicated to a more general analysis of the complex nature of Roman money, attempting to model the historical example of Roman money with the help of complexity-oriented visualisations.

This thesis presents a new systematic arrangement of the coinage of the Gallic Empire as the basis for a revised edition of Roman Imperial Coinage. The coinage of all denominations, gold, silver and bronze, are unified into a single structure of issues. In 260, Postumus revolted against the Roman emperor Gallienus and took control of the Gauls. The chronology of his reign and of his successors is reviewed. The short reign of Domitianus II is interpreted as a revolt against the elevation of Tetricus. A rearrangement of Tetricus’s coinage supported by the epigraphic evidence proves that the elevation of Tetricus II to the Caesarship must be redated from 273 to 272. The location of the mints is discussed. Conclusive hoard evidence proves that the main mint was located at Trier, and not at Cologne. The study of iconography implies that choices were not necessarily made by the imperial authorities, but that more freedom was given to engravers than is usually assumed. The use of earlier coins as an iconographic repertoire strongly suggests that earlier coins were brought to the mint to be melted down. Metrological analyses of gold coins of the Gallic emperors show for the first time that silver was deliberately added to the alloy, following a practice introduced by Valerian and continued by Gallienus. The debasement of the ‘silver’ coinage is studied in parallel with its contemporary evolution within the Central Empire. Coin circulation is used in order to determine the frontiers of the Gallic Empire. It is demonstrated that the Gallic Empire reached its apogee between 262 and 265, ruling over Britain, the Gauls, Hispania and Raetia. The nature of the Gallic Empire is discussed. It is argued that this ‘Empire’ should not be viewed as a form of separatism, as often claimed, but as the unintended result of a status quo following Postumus’s acclamation and the long postponement of a final confrontation against the emperor of Rome.

This study is about one of the most ubiquitous and yet little studied aspects of ancient Greek religion, the offering of so-called ‘first-fruits’ (aparchai) and tithes (dekatai) in Archaic and Classical Greece (c.700-300 B.C.). A widespread and traditional custom all over Greece and the Greek Mediterranean, the offering of ‘first-fruits’ and tithes entailed using a portion of the proceeds from a diversity of human activities (such as craft-work, fishing, trade, military expeditions) to present something to the gods. I look at the different kinds of aparchai and dekatai offered to the Greek gods by individuals and states under various circumstances, the various contexts in which the language and practice of making such offerings were used, the deployment of this religious custom in politics, and the transformation of a voluntary practice into a religious obligation. Ultimately, however, my major concern is with questions of religious psychology: why people should bring aparchai and dekatai to the gods, and what motivations and expectations they might have had. Because it was such a commonplace practice, the custom has been taken simply as a given in both ancient and modern scholarship; and no attempt has been made to explain its religious significance. By drawing on current anthropological studies of gift-giving, I argue that that aparchai and dekatai do not merely give to the gods, but give back to the gods some of the benefits granted by the divinities in the first place, reflecting first and foremost a sense of dependence on the divine. I suggest that the offering of aparchai and dekatai may be thought of as a means of settling men’s debts to, and thereby maintaining good relations with, the gods, who were considered the sources of both goods and evils. I challenge the emphasis, common in modern scholarship, on material returns as the central motive behind the act of bringing gifts to the gods. Instead I suggest that the study of gift-giving between humans and the divine should embrace the possibility that psychological feelings of dependence on and gratitude to the gods might also have been involved.

This thesis examines the Greek institution of proxenia and uses it to explore how inter-polis institutions functioned in shaping the behaviour of both individuals and communities in the ancient world. In response to continuing debate concerning the nature of proxenia, I demonstrate that, throughout the Classical and Hellenistic periods, it was defined as an honorific status by the practical intermediary role which it performed in facilitating interactions between different poleis. As such proxenia was a central element of a broader system of inter-polis institutions which constituted the dominant interstate discourse in the ancient Mediterranean. This thesis shows that Proxenia with its particularly rich epigraphic record allows us to explore how poleis made use of this institutional language of status and legitimacy to assert membership of an interstate system which was conceived of as a society of poleis. In Chapter 1 I propose a new model for reconstructing how proxenia was understood based on the expectations – of what proxenoi should be and do – which poleis communicated in their stereotypical descriptions of honorands in proxeny decrees. Chapter 2 then explores how this abstract understanding of proxenia worked in practice in the political realities of elite competition in the Greek poleis. In Chapter 3 I use proxeny lists to reconstruct the perspective of the polis on proxenia – in the networks of hundreds of proxenoi which even small poleis amassed as a result of constant interaction. Chapter 4 explores the role of proxenia, within a broader system of institutions, in the construction of communal identity within an anarchic interstate system. In Chapter 5 I develop quantitative methods to explore the epigraphic record for proxeny’s decline, arguing that proxenia, along with the other inter-polis institutions, disappeared because the Roman authorities at the centre replaced inter-polis connections as the source of communal identity and prestige.

The focus of this thesis is the nature of the interaction between the civic elites and the civic coinage for which they were responsible. The Roman Province of Asia provides the ideal context for the study of local elites and their coinage because of the prevalence and prominence of the names of individual local notables, henceforth known as eponyms, recorded in civic coin legends. By combining the study of the function of coin eponyms and the prosopographical analysis of individual eponyms in the epigraphic record, it is possible to identify and explain the profound changes that affected civic coin production in the first three centuries AD. Local elites perceived coinage not only in terms of a functional means of exchange, but as a medium for personal and civic display. In this way the local elites exploited coin iconography in ways that paralleled other media of monumental display. New coin legends were developed, which identified explicitly the dedicatory nature of the coinage and the iconographic repertoire of coin types was radically expanded to express the cultural agendas and priorities of the civic elites. The first half of the thesis is devoted to the study of the relationship between office holding and coinage and the development of coin legend formulae during the first three centuries AD. The pattern and distribution of the various legend formulae is analysed in order to determine the extent of the eponym’s involvement in the production of coinage. In particular, this section intends to establish the extent to which coinage production was funded privately. The fourth chapter is arranged into a series of case studies discussing individual cases of personalized coin iconography. The final chapter of the thesis outlines how the civic elite’s conceptualization of coinage changed over the course of this period. It is argued that contact with the Roman monetary tradition affected civic elites’ attitude to coinage and that this manifested itself in the iconography and the fabric of the coins themselves.