This study aims to explore Luke’s presentation of Jesus’ authority in the light of his depiction of various authorities. Luke provides valuable clues to an understanding of religious and political power of the Roman Empire through Jesus’ birth and trial accounts. Also, my thesis analyses what role Luke’s tax-related accounts play in relation to the emperor’s authority. In this respect, I wish to present a new argument about Luke emphasising Jesus’ interaction with tax-collectors, as a way of displaying his moral authority, seen in his intervening effectively with one of the most prominently hated aspects of the empire, an aspect that the emperor was responsible for and should have dealt with. This analysis helps us to look into Luke’s portrayal of Jesus’ authority with the focus on the titles, benefactor and saviour. In doing so, comparisons and contrasts are to be made between Jesus and the emperor. Thus, this study aims to discuss how Luke elevates Jesus’ authority on the basis of his stance toward the emperor.

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After tracing the survival and manifestation of interest in the antiquities of Rome from the 5th to the 14th centuries, an attempt is made to show in what ways Petrarch is the precursor of the humanist antiquarians of the early Quattrocento. His writings on Rome, and those of his followers, cannot be isolated from the political realities of 'Babylonish Captivity' and Schism, which for so long frustrated any concerted attempts to rejuvenate Rome, or investigate its antiquities. But the return of Pope Martin V to his native city in September 1420 paved the way to its recovery, and inaugurated a decade of intensive exploration of its ancient remains, undertaken by the artists and humanists who came to Rome from Tuscany and Northern Italy to work for the Pope, or his Cardinals. This study, at the source of rinascita, was to decisively change the course of both Italian art and humanism. Intellectually pre-eminent among the humanists who entered the Curia under Martin V, Poggio Bracciolini, it is argued, was the effective founder in modern times of both field-archaeology and classical epigraphy: disciplines which give the description of Rome inserted into Book I of his De varietate Fortunae its distinctive and original tone. The rival claims made on behalf of either Cola di Rienzo or Nicolo Signorili as founders of epigraphy are shovm to be mistaken. The latter, in his own treatise on Rome, commissioned by the Pope, attempted unsuccessfully, it is suggested, to wed the Roman tradition of communal antiquarianism to the humanistic approach recently introduced into the Curia by Poggio. The death of Martin V in February 1431 precipitated renewed hostilities, which forced Eusenius IV, his successor, into exile, and interrupted the course of archaeology in Rome for over a decade. The Roma instaurata, the treatise composed by his secretary Flavio Biondo, coincides with the Pope's eventual return to the city in September 1443, and reflects his attempts to restore it; its commemoration of the Pope's instauratio accompanies its recovery of Roma antica. The first sustained attempt at a humanist topography of ancient Rorne, Biondo's work draws on a wealth of disparate, and in many cases newly discovered, source material. In its erudition, and in its restoration of what had come to be corrupt, it must rank, it is claimed, as a major contribution not only to Roman topography, but to the historiography of the Renaissance, and the European revival of learning.

Roman gender was often defined and regulated visually – that is, if and under what conditions a woman or man appeared in public, through personal appearance, or through representations in art or literature. In this discourse on gender, the gaze (especially the public’s) was thus an important agent in helping not only to shape gender ideals, but also the direction and function of the discourse itself. The emperor affected these precepts because of his appropriation of public space and his control of the gaze: as the most powerful and high-ranking member of society, no one could be more visible than him, and his own gaze was unlimited: he was all-seeing and all-visible. As befitting these attributes of imperial office, public space became his domain, and he placed limitations on the expression of public images in this space. This therefore affected gender by limiting the ways in which it could be expressed and proved. Within the changed discourse, the emperor was the alpha male, the most masculine man in Roman society, and controlled public space and access to the gaze. Aristocratic males thus suffered a crisis in masculinity, and were forced to find alternate sources of masculinity from the traditional ones of gaining virtus through military service, public oratory and service, and public competition for gloria. In response, some still valued the traditions of military and service to the res publica, but no longer made public expression or competition of virtus as a precondition for its legitimacy or existence – in effect de-linking masculinity from the public sphere. Another response turned to the private sphere for inspiration, finding role models for virtus in ideal women and stressing a man’s behavior in the home as important in judgments on his masculinity. Femininity did not suffer such changes or crisis. Feminine ideals remained relatively stable, but with a few minor changes: imperial women were held to a stricter standard of traditional femininity to prevent their intrusion into imperial power, and their public activities were either low-profile or focused around the family. Aristocratic women had more scope for public activities, which enhanced their femininity but were not prerequisites for being a good woman: that is, it was not necessary for a woman to possess and maintain a public image for her to be feminine.

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In its lengthy history, Rome arguably did not suffer a military catastrophe greater than that at Cannae during the Second Punic War in 216 BC and at Adrianople during the Gothic War in 378 AD. Yet not only did Rome recover from both these defeats to win their respective wars, if Rome’s rise and fall were to be captured as a bell-curve, the two defeats would also be interestingly positioned on opposing sides of one another. This thesis will therefore assess the extent to which Rome’s recovery from military disasters can serve as a proxy to the “health” of the Roman Empire. In the process, the differences in Rome’s political unity, social enthusiasm and good fortune between the two cases will be highlighted and discussed.

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The Mediterranean World: From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Napoleon Eric Dursteler and & Monique O’Connell, The Mediterranean World: From the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Napoleon, Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, MD, 2016; 352 pp.; 25 colour illus., 68 halftones, 8 maps; 9781421419015, $34.95 (pbk)