The texts from Aphrodisias in Caria at the core of this book provide remarkable documentation for Roman history during the Mithridatic War, the Second Triumvirate and the second-third centuries A.D. They include a Greek translation of the longest senatus consultum so far known and a number of imperial letters. They throw light on provincial attitudes to Rome, on Roman policies in the provinces, on the relation of Octavian with Antony, and on many fascinating details of Roman administrative practice.

This study presents a comparative treatment of four East Roman provinces in the period 50 BC-AD 250 (Aphrodisias and Ephesos in Turkey, Athens in Greece, and Gerasa in Jordan), and it examines the instrumental factors behind regional and local urban developments. It argues that local communities were responsible for the organization and development of public space and buildings, which lends itself to an understanding of self-knowledge in these communities. Through a discussion of the interaction between architectural developments and historical and regional factors, this compelling study examines the interaction between the built environment, the social/political culture, and the urban identity in the eastern Roman Empire.

The best known variety of the ancient novel - sometimes identified with the ancient novel tout court - is the Greek love novel. The question of its origins has intrigued scholars for centuries and has been the focus of a great deal of research. Stefan Tilg proposes a new solution to this ancient puzzle by arguing for a personal inventor of the genre, Chariton of Aphrodisias, who wrote the first Greek (and, with that, the first European) love novel, Narratives about Callirhoe, in the mid-first century AD. Tilg's conclusion is drawn on the basis of two converging lines of argument, one from literary history, another from Chariton's poetics, and will shed fresh light upon the reception of Latin literature in the Greek world.

From the days of the emperor Augustus (27 B.C.-A.D. 14) the emperor and his court had a quintessential position within the Roman Empire. It is therefore clear that when the Impact of the Roman Empire is analysed, the impact of the emperor and those surrounding him is a central issue. The study of the representation and perception of Roman imperial power is a multifaceted area of research, which greatly helps our understanding of Roman society. In its successive parts this volume focuses on 1. The representation and perception of Roman imperial power through particular media: literary texts, inscriptions, coins, monuments, ornaments, and insignia, but also nicknames and death-bed scenes. 2. The representation and perception of Roman imperial power in the city of Rome and the various provinces. 3. The representation of power by individual emperors.

The Material Dynamics of Festivals in the Graeco-Roman East explores the various ways in which the experience of civic festivals in the Graeco-Roman East was created and framed by material culture. By the second and third centuries AD, Greek festivals were thriving across the eastern Mediterranean. Much of our knowledge of these festivals, and their associated processions, rituals, banquets, and competitions, comes from material culture— inscriptions, coins, architecture, and art-works. Yet each of these pieces of material evidence was the result of a conscious act, of what to record, and where and how to record it, with varying patterns discernible across different areas, and in different media. This volume draws attention to the choices made in a variety of different forms of material culture relating to Greek festivals from the Hellenistic to Roman periods, and unpicks the ways in which they encode or forge particular social relationships and power structures, as well as creating senses of community or communication between different groups. These helped to fix ephemeral events into public memory, to present particular views of their significance for the wider community, and to frame the experience of their participants.

James R. Harrison investigates the collision between Paul's eschatological gospel and the Julio-Claudian conception of rule. The ruler's propaganda, with its claim about the 'eternal rule' of the imperial house over its subjects, embodied in idolatry of power that conflicted with Paul's proclamation of the reign of the risen Son of God over his world. This ideological conflict is examined in 1 and 2 Thessalonians and in Romans, exploring how Paul's eschatology intersected with the imperial cult in the Greek East and in the Latin West. A wide selection of evidence - literary, documentary, numismatic, iconographic, archeological - unveils the 'symbolic universe' of the Julio-Claudian rulers. This construction of social and cosmic reality stood at odds with the eschatological denouement of world history, which, in Paul's view, culminated in the arrival of God's new creation upon Christ's return as Lord of all. Paul exalted the Body of Christ over Nero's 'body of state', transferring to the risen and ascended Jesus many of the ruler's titles and to the Body of Christ many of the ruler's functions. Thus, for Paul, Christ's reign challenged the values of Roman society and transformed its hierarchical social relations through the Spirit.

Explores the diverse forms of elite resistance to and in the Roman Empire, often in subtle and silent ways.