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The bitter mention of foreign tyrants in Mark 10:42-43a has long been interpreted as an accurate description of "pagan" life that contrasted with life in ideal Christian community. More recently, it has been read as a piece of rhetoric aimed at imperial Rome. These explanations are too simple, since they do not take into account the fact that contrasting ideal authority with stereotyped foreign tyranny was an established habit within imperial Roman rhetorical culture itself. I argue that the passage is best understood as Jewish participation in this Greco-Roman tradition. This study traces the evolution of the stereotyped image of foreign tyranny in Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Greco-Roman Jewish rhetoric, and suggests that the rhetorical strategy of Mark 10:42-43a parallels the selective and strategic use of the image in the Greco-Roman Jewish work of Josephus, and represents a similar simultaneous resistance and accommodation in the face of Roman imperial culture.

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The aim of this thesis is to explore the various ways in which Romans constructed the orator's role during this period. I emphasize that the orator was a central figure in Late Republican Rome and that a rhetorical training and an ability to speak in public - whether in the courts, in the senate house or in contiones - could be seen as essential attributes for the leading public figures of this time. In this way the thesis contributes to recent work which has stressed that the political system at Rome can be seen as a form of democracy. My chapters are arranged according to the texts which I have used as evidence in each. The first examines the surviving rhetorical handbooks and dialogues, and argues that there was a thriving and agonistic market for rhetorical education at Rome. Greek ideas were reshaped to suit the Roman socio-political world and its different practices, such as advocacy. Roman orators engaged in heated polemic over the best style of speaking, providing further evidence that the world of the forum was highly competitive. The second chapter uses a selection of Cicero's judicial speeches to argue that a Roman advocate could use a wide variety of strategies, both in portraying his relationship with his client, and in presenting his own persona. The third chapter focuses upon Cicero's Philippics, and explores the ways in which an orator could present his relationship - and establish his authority - with his audience, through his selection of arguments, such as the use of exempla. The final two chapters broaden the horizons of the work: the former uses the fragments of Cato the Elder and Gaius Gracchus to suggest that earlier Romans had used similar devices in developing their self-portrayals. The latter explores the historical texts of Caesar and Sallust, the only surviving evidence which sets the speech-act within the contexts of opposing orations and of audience responses. I conclude with an appendix on the published versions of the speeches.

A study of Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars as a gallery of portraits of Roman emperors. The object is to make sense of Suetonius' methods of depicting emperors as emperors and to ask what light is cast on contemporary perceptions of the role of the Emperor. In order to set the Caesars in context, the work is approached from three different angles, the literary, the social and the ideological. The first part looks at the literary background of the Lives. The question here is of how far the rubric method and the actual choice of rubrics can be accounted for in terms of literary tradition as opposed to the author's understanding of what was significant about an emperor. The second part considers the impact of the author's position in society on his presentation. An attempt is made to discover the viewpoint of one who was simultaneously an equestrian official and an antiquarian scholar. His view of society is related to his views of the emperor's place in society and his functions as an administrator. The last part examines the relationship between his representation of the emperor and the ideals desiderated in or attributed to autocratic rulers. Discussion centres on the use of virtues and vices as categories of estimation and on their relationship to official and theoretical 'ideologies'. Since it is argued that Suetonius shares the views of other Roman sources, discussion of individual virtues and vices ranges far beyond the Caesars.

This thesis aims to investigate the development and functions of public libraries in Rome and the Roman world. After a preface with maps of libraries in Rome, Section I discusses the precursors for public library provision in the private book collections of Republican Rome, and their transfer into the public domain with the first public libraries of Asinius Pollio and Augustus. Section II contains three 'case studies' of public libraries' different roles. The Augustan library programme is used in Ch.II.l to examine the role of imperial public libraries in literary life and the connections between Rome's libraries and those of Alexandria. Chapter II.2 concentrates on the libraries of Trajan's Forum to explore the intersection of imperial public libraries and monumental public architecture. This chapter responds to an important recent article by arguing for the continued identification of the Forum's libraries with twin brick buildings at its northern end, and suggests a series of correspondences between these libraries and its other monumental components. The conclusions of this chapter are important when considering the public libraries of the wider empire, several of which seem to have been inspired by the Trajanic libraries. Chapter II.3 considers imperial public libraries and leisure by looking at the evidence for libraries within bath-house complexes, concluding that their presence there is consistent with the archaeological and epigraphic evidence and fits in well with what we know of the intellectual and cultural life of these structures. Section III examines various aspects of the practical function of Roman public libraries: their contents (books and archives), division into Latin and Greek sections, provisions for shelving and cataloguing, staff, usership, architectural form, decoration, and housing of works of art. The picture that emerges is of carefully designed and functional buildings intended to sustain public, monumental, and practical functions. Section IV uses a variety of texts to examine the way in which libraries were viewed and used. Ch. IV. 1 discusses the evidence for use of libraries by scholars and authors such as Gellius, Galen, Josephus, and Apuleius. Ch. IV.2 examines parallels between library collections and compendious encyclopaedic elements within Roman literature and considers how library collections came to be canon-forming institutions and vehicles for the expression of imperial approval or disapproval towards authors. The channels through which this imperial influence flowed are investigated in Ch. IV.3, which looks at the directors and staff of the public libraries of Rome. The final section (V) of the thesis concerns public libraries outside the city of Rome. Provincial libraries provide a useful case study in 'Romanisation': they reveal a range of influences and are shown to embody local, personal, and metropolitan imperial identities. There follows a brief conclusion, and a bibliography. There are also five appendices of numismatic and epigraphic material discussed in the text. This material has not been adequately or completely gathered elsewhere and is intended to assist the reader; where appropriate it includes illustrations, transcriptions, and translations.

The thesis aims to observe the function of Paul's dual citizenship in the narratives of Acts. Luke reports Paul's status as a Tarsian and a Roman citizen. However this conflicts with the account of Paul's origins mentioned in his own letters. After surveying Paul's origins in his letters and Acts, the conclusion drawn is that the biblical texts are inconsistent. Thus, the issue of Paul's citizenship reaches an impasse in terms of historical discussion. Therefore, the study of Paul's citizenship turns to a literary approach, since Paul's Roman citizenship is the dominant force which enables Paul to appeal to Caesar in the trial narrative. Without Roman citizenship, the narratives of Acts cannot be interpreted clearly. For a fuller understanding of the trial narratives in Acts, this thesis also investigates the trial narratives in the Acta Alexandrinorum, a collection of ancient documents which record the political conflict between the Alexandrian Greek citizens and Jews in Alexandria during the early Roman Egypt, as the closest known parallels to the Acts texts. At the centre of each of their accounts is the issue of citizenship. The Acta Alexandrinorum also contain significant motifs, particularly "patriotic motifs" and "martyrdom motifs", and two propagandistic ideologies: "anti-Semitism" and "anti-Romanism" which form the groundwork for our understanding of the function of Paul's dual citizenship. The comparison between the two documents casts new light on Luke's genuine purpose. This thesis shows that Paul's citizenship functions primarily to control the narratives of Acts as well as Luke's ideological stance. Luke's ideological stance is demonstrated to be "anti- Jewish" and "anti-Roman" in a manner which ultimately discloses the power of the Gospel of Jesus. The dramatis personae and even the Roman empire are won over by the Gospel of Jesus in Paul's trial narratives.

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The basic object of study of this dissertation is those texts conventionally known as 'the writings of the Roman land surveyors'. It deals in particular with the nature of the works of a body of authors (Frontinus and his later commentator, 'first' and 'second' Hyginus, Siculus Flaccus and Urbicus) which have come down to us, within the aforesaid collection of writings characterized by a diversified technical framework, through a peculiar manuscript tradition. Their treatises are of a special importance because they do not simply illustrate various principles and aspects of the technique of land measurement connected with areas of territory which have been parcelled and allocated. These authors, in fact, also describe those different kinds of markers which typify the boundary system used to enclose private/public areas or parcels of land. Such descriptions are connected by them with a discussion about different types of disputes which may arise either about the boundary line/strip or an area of land. The aim of the research is double. On the one hand, it seeks to ascertain more precisely the interrelation between the writings (or part of the writings) of the above mentioned authors: what was the extent and character of the influence each treatise may have exerted on the other by means of the technical terminology and systematization of the subject (along with any development of the land surveying technique) they followed. The first part of this study is, therefore, devoted to a close analysis of the way their works have been transmitted and all the most relevant passages which may lead not only to a better understanding of the nature of such works, but also to a more reliable chronology. On the other hand, this investigation is aimed to ascertain what was the actual province of the Agnmensores in the procedure for settling private and public law cases concerning land disputes in Imperial Rome. By commenting on all the most relevant epigraphical and documentary records dealing with this subject, along with those collections of laws concerning the 'action for regulating boundaries', it is possible to maintain not only that, according to the Roman law in force, the Agrimensores never held any office of arbitrators or judges to settle such disputes, but also that the jurists' and the Agnmensores' way of indicating the object of disputes about 'boundary' and 'site' was different, since their technical needs were different.