This thesis investigates how we can better appreciate the Roman concept of culpa without incurring in a contemporary falsification of its original rationale. Using a revisited version of Quentin Skinner’s contextualism in light of Gadamer’s hermeneutics, it proposes a deep immersion into the uses of culpa by authors representing different forms of literary expression: Plautus (comedy), Catullus (neoteric poetry), Lucretius (philosophy), Cicero (rhetoric) and Ulpian (jurisprudence). This selection is justified not only by their diverse literary achievements, but also by the satisfactory state of preservation of their writtings. The aim of the thesis is neither to blend these disciplines into a unified narrative, nor to perform an evolutionary inquiry of the legal notion of culpa, an approach exhaustively pursued by great Romanists albeit based on limited data and much speculation. Instead, this thesis looks at specific authorial interventions to understand the concept as close to the original authors use as possible. This approach flows from the understanding that culpa was not used in Latin literature as an abstract notion, but was in fact explored in various contexts involving conflict and judgment.

This study considers the development and evolution of Byzantine diplomacy through a crucial and previously overlooked period of the empire’s history. Current scholarship has neglected the analysis of Byzantine diplomacy from 1204, when the capital of Constantinople was seized by the Fourth Crusade, to 1261, when the city was returned to Byzantine control. During these years the institutions of the Byzantine state were preserved at Nicaea, which continued the complex relationship between Greeks and Latins and adapted the tested methods of diplomacy to meet new challenges. Of central concern is the frequency of church-union negotiation, or disputatio, during the period in question. Attempts to heal the schism of the Eastern and Western Churches were a frequently used tool of Byzantine diplomacy even before 1204, but the sources, problems and implications surrounding this aspect of foreign relations, although taken up by those pursuing theological analysis, have been neglected by historians. The emperors in Nicaea repeatedly opened talks with the papacy to end the schism before 1261, most notably in 1234, a meeting which carried profound implications for Byzantine foreign policy. By placing the disputatio in the context of Byzantine-Latin relations after 1204, we gain a more complete understanding of Byzantine diplomacy.

This dissertation demonstrates that the presence of Latin basilissai, Catholic wives of the Byzantine despots of Morea, in Mystras between 1349, when the city became the seat of the Despotate, and 1460, when it was surrendered to the Turks, had an impact on the artistic and cultural production at court. These foreign women were agents of the ruling political and economic elites of Italian and Frankish courts, and expressed their agency by mediating their specific cultural and artistic traditions into the production of their adopted city. Art and cultural historical approaches, in which attention is focused on painted and sculpted details, inscriptions, archaeological remains, architectural design, and urban planning, are used to show that the Latin women were historical agents, whose presence can be detected in Mystras. A multidisciplinary analysis of case studies reveals cross-cultural motifs in the artistic production, demonstrating the relationship between pieces of evidence. The production of the workshops of Mystras expressed features that were, in some cases, responses to Constantinopolitan and Byzantine models, while, in others, autonomous and innovative, revealing complex cross-cultural references. Ultimately, this study shows that the particular cultural and artistic landscape of Mystras is indebted to exogenous cultures linked to these women.

The work collected together here examines the distinctive conceptual approaches taken by Renaissance architects, during the period c. 1480-1550, towards the designing of their buildings. It analyses the designs of a wide range of buildings from the period by architects including Raphael, Michelangelo and numerous others. The conclusion reached is that many of these architects adopted approaches based, ultimately, on ways of thinking (about art as well as architecture) that had surfaced in late fifteenth-century Florence; and that their approaches were not just similar in many key regards but also corresponded closely with theories of language and literary imitation being aired at around the same time. The essays also explore how certain differences in approach, especially between Raphael and Michelangelo, were directly paralleled by differences in literary theory. Also proposed is that the design methods formulated specifically by Raphael in the years before his death (1520) became the template for those followed by many subsequent ‘High Renaissance’ architects; and that the architectural term ‘order’, which was coined by Raphael before becoming commonplace in architectural theory, had its origins in literary theory. As for the design methods taken up by Michelangelo, it is argued that these were initially comparable to those followed by Raphael, but that they gradually diverged in a way that was very much in line with his conceptual thinking about sculpture and painting, until they became, at a fundamental theoretical level, incompatible with those of his later contemporaries.

This thesis uses Byzantine coins in south India to re-examine pre-Islamic maritime trade between the Mediterranean and south India. Analysis of historiographical trends, key textual sources (the Periplous of the Erythreian Sea and the Christian Topography, Book Eleven), and archaeological evidence from the Red Sea, Aksum, the Persian Gulf and India, alongside the numismatic evidence yields two main methodological and three historical conclusions. Methodologically, the multi-disciplinary tradition of Indo-Roman studies needs to incorporate greater sensitivity to the complexities of different evidence types and engage with wider scholarship on the economic and state structures of the Mediterranean and India. Furthermore, pre-Islamic Indo-Mediterranean trade offers an ideal locus for experimenting with a practical global history, particularly using new technologies to enhance data sharing and access to scholarship. Historically, this thesis concludes: first, that the significance of pre-Islamic trade between the Mediterranean and India was minimal for any of the participating states; second, that this trade should be understood in the context of wider Indian Ocean networks, connecting India, Sri Lanka and southeast Asia; third, that the Persian Gulf rather than the Red Sea probably formed the major meeting point of trade from east and west, but this is not yet demonstrable archaeologically, numismatically or textually.

La figure du uicarius, esclave appartenant à un esclave en chef (ordinarius) dans le pécule duquel il se trouve, traduit une hiérarchisation à l’intérieur du microcosme de la sous-dépendance. Comme en témoignent les sources, à la fois multiples et diversifiées, le vicariat complexifie à l’évidence l’appréhension des stratifications serviles. Ce travail entreprend d’éclairer l’origine de ce statut (achat ou héritage cognatique). Ce faisant, il révèle une stratégie de parenté qui contribue à la consolidation et à la réinvention des logiques de la famille servile. Il éclaire par ailleurs l’utilité, tant domestique que professionnelle, du vicariat. Pépinière de jeunes esclaves, le vicariat est une « école servile ». En formant les vicaires à leur propre « métier d’esclave », les ordinarii, véritables magistri, leur dispensent un savoir spécialisé (peritia) de haute technicité. Véritables chevilles ouvrières de l’Empire, ils constituent dans la familia Caesaris, où ils sont massivement représentés, le socle de l’appareil d’Etat romain. / The vicariat was a subownership system based on a slave (uicarius) belonging to another slave (ordinarius). The uicarii were included in the peculium of the first-degree slaves. The vicariat testified of hierarchies among slaves. This study aims to enlight origin of this status (purchase or cognatic inheritance). By doing so, it disclosed strategies in order to strengthen the slaves families. It also demonstrates vicariat’s utility on the domestic level as well as professional. The vicariat was a nursury for young slaves and a “slave school”. By training uicarii for a specific work, the chief slaves were magistri who taught them specialized knowledges. In the familia Caesaris, the vicariat was a important linchpin of administration in Roman State.

This study develops the interpretation of hybrid and human-esque male monsters by examining ambiguous presentations of these figures in Greek and Roman literature and art, putting a fresh perspective on the hero/monster encounter and showing that monsters are developed characters rather than simple heroic attributes, as they are frequently interpreted in modern scholarship. Additional strands running through the thesis are consideration of the hero’s ambiguity through visual similarity to monsters and through shared characteristics; the relationship between monstrous body and monstrous behaviour; the subjectivity of monsters; how masculinity relates to monstrosity; and how monsters operate within the Other/self discourse as ways of exploring human behaviour and relationships in the two monster tale types of heroic encounter and love story. As well as looking at how media and genre affect characterisation, where relevant, the political and social contexts of Greece and Rome will form a background to considering how monsters are presented. This thesis explores the full range of the male monster’s ambiguity (humanised through gestures, clothing, or body; placed into a social context by humanising, or by relationships with humans; given subjectivity) and monstrosity (they explore excessive human behaviour and masculinity), and how the monster is a character in its own right.

The study of Roman frontiers tends to concentrate on the historical development and military tactics, in construction and actions, of the Roman army. Little attention has been given to the daily life of the soldiers; and those studies that address daily organisation tend to rely upon interpretations that were made about the Roman army in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Furthermore, the scholars who have researched this aspect tend to apply their arguments to the army as a whole, believing it to have been an homogenous group of people. The early interpretations were often based on anachronistic views that the Roman army was organised and operated in a similar manner to the military system of the time these early archaeologists were writing. One area of the organisation of the Roman army that requires greater deliberation is health care, many aspects of which are taken for granted or interpreted on the basis of understandings made by scholars early on in the development of the discipline. The more recent theories about the system of medical care in the army are also based on rather sparse supporting evidence. It is, therefore, the aim of this thesis to make a two-fold examination of the subject by examining legionary and auxiliary fortifications on the Rhine, Upper and Middle Danube and British frontiers. Queries are raised about previous scholarship in order to see if there is sufficient evidence to support the interpretations and understandings on which more recent scholarshipis based. Following this, new questions are asked of the archaeological and epigraphical material, in the context of more recent anthropological, historical and theoretical archaeological methods not previously applied in studies of Roman military medicine. The main issues are: to see if there is evidence to support the idea of a single system of medical care in the army or if the evidence shows variation within the system, either between the provinces or units; whether there was a difference in care offered to the auxiliary and legionary units; if there is evidence for civilians being treated by military doctors; and if there is evidence for cultural variation of medical practice within the units. The questions are broached by comparing the epigraphical, archaeological and architectural remains relating to medical treatment. Inscriptions mentioning doctors are examined to see if these support the idea of differences in the types of doctors employed according to frontier and unit type. In order to gain information about the cultural background of doctors and the development of medical care in the army the home of the doctors and the dates of the inscriptions are also examined. Medical instruments are employed as a source of evidence to determine the distribution and range of health care in the army. Not only are the instruments compared between fortifications and frontiers to see if there is evidence for medical variation, but they are examined for their context and deposition.It is argued that depositional processes can tell us much about how people understood medical tools and their associations with disease, wounds and death. Finally, the archaeological evidence of buildings identified as military hospitals is considered. In particular, it is questioned whether there is enough evidence to support the definition of the 'hospitals' as hospitals. Artefactual remains from within 'hospitals' are examined and compared when known, as are the plan and layout of each structure that has been recognised as a hospital. The description of Roman hospitals is frequently presented as if they were planned to serve the same functions as modem hospitals, so a comparison of these buildings and their functions, both civilian and military, is made with later (medieval and early-post-medieval) hospitals. Questions of the cultural construction of space are brought into this chapter as a means of demonstrating that the construction and use of buildings is culturally variable and not always undertaken according to a common sense or functional approach as understood in the modem west. It is apparent that our current identification of certain structures as 'hospitals' is far from secure. The thesis concludes by arguing that there is no solid evidence for the existence of a single medical system within the Roman army. A combination of military events and circumstancesa long with cultural variation in the make-up of the units provides the most plausible explanation for this pattern of variability.

This thesis examines the neglected architectural decoration from the late antique Mediterranean city (ca. 300-650 A.D.). It aims to address the omission in scholarly literature of any discussion about the decoration of non-monumental secular buildings, namely porticoes flanking streets, agorai, macella and ornamental plazas, small public baths, shops/workshops and ‘middle class’ houses. The decoration of non-monumental secular buildings has been overlooked at the expense of more lofty buildings and remains thus far one of the least known aspects of the late antique city. Considering that public porticoes and their associated structures (shops and workshops), along with small public baths and ‘middle class’ houses were crucial elements and accounted for the large part of any urban built environment starting from the Hellenistic period, the examination of their architectural decoration in this thesis represents the first attempt to redress this imbalance. Drawing upon an array of archaeological evidence, written sources, and depictions this thesis attempts to reconstruct how public porticoes, small public baths, shops/workshops, and ‘middle class’ houses might have looked on a daily basis. The geographical area entailed in this study presents more challenges than when focusing on a single site or province. Such a cross-regional approach of the topic allows to consider the decoration of public these structures as both as part of the history of individual cities and as part of Mediterranean-wide trends, guiding as such toward a more reliable visualisation of the late antique built environment. The picture conveyed in the Mediterranean cities is inevitably not the same. It is argued that as much as they shared similarities on the decoration of these structures, so did they also vary. The topic of this thesis is broad and definite answers cannot be given, nevertheless, it is hoped that a preliminary synthesis can be offered as a basis for future work.

Two objects formed the catalyst for this project and can be used to introduce the set of parallel and converging discourses that underline the text. A pair of cross-frame stools, still found in the entrance hall at Harewood today, generate a series of questions, regarding the collection itself and the Regency period, the history of the Lascelles family in the early nineteenth century and the dichotomy clearly present between the patterns of patronage of the previous generation and that of Edward Lascelles (d. 1814). Stylistically the stools look towards Egypt, engendering an investigation into the formation of this particular revival, centred on the figure of Dominique-Vivant Denon, whose text Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egvpte introduced French society to the archaeological discoveries found in the conquered lands. A copy of this text is located in the Harewood collections, and it forms the foundation of a consideration of the political, semiological and social implications of the use of a particular decorative style. Questions are asked regarding the cultural implications of interior design. This leads us back to an examination of how and why the Egyptian revival was established in Britain. This has motivated a consideration of the discourses of furniture history and the methods by which we understand stylistic change, and particularly an analysis of the presentation of such collections today and the historiography of English furniture styles. Each aspect of the study coheres around the central theme of the Harewood collection. Material objects such as the cross-frame stool represent a number of social rituals and cultural practices. My aim is to use theoretical models to begin to unravel the meanings associated with such objects.