First published in 2005. With updated documents including papyri, inscriptions and ostraka, this book casts fresh and original light on the administration and economy issues faced with the transition of Egypt from an allied kingdom of Rome to a province of the Roman Empire.

This book examines the appetite for Egyptian and Egyptian-looking artwork in Italy during the century following Rome's annexation of Aegyptus as a province. In the early imperial period, Roman interest in Egyptian culture was widespread, as evidenced by works ranging from the monumental obelisks, brought to the capital over the Mediterranean Sea by the emperors, to locally made emulations of Egyptian artifacts found in private homes and in temples to Egyptian gods. Although the foreign appearance of these artworks was central to their appeal, this book situates them within their social, political, and artistic contexts in Roman Italy. Swetnam-Burland focuses on what these works meant to their owners and their viewers in their new settings, by exploring evidence for the artists who produced them and by examining their relationship to the contemporary literature that informed Roman perceptions of Egyptian history, customs, and myths.

This second collection by Roger Bagnall brings together a further two dozen of his studies, this time covering Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Egypt, published over the last thirty years. Many of the articles deal with issues of historical and papyrological method: the restoration of papyrus texts, the direction of archaeological work in Egypt, economic models for Roman Egypt, the usefulness of postcolonial theory, and approaches to the defective literary tradition for the Library of Alexandria. Others concentrate on particular bodies of evidence, ranging from inscriptions to ascetic literature, from registers to women's letters.

An examination of the main characters in the Aeneid - Aeneas himself, Dido and Turnus - in the light of Virgil's contemporary Augustan political and literary ideology. The characters and the plot and incident of the epic are seen as embodying and exemplifying first the ancient ideals of kingship and concord, and second the Roman self-identification as at once 'Italian' and 'Trojan', and finally as reflecting the literary self-evaluation of the Augustan age. In the literary area, Virgil's relations with contemporary Roman elegy, with early Greek lyric and, most important, with Homer, are studied and reevaluated. Virgilian scholars and students of Augustan literature in general will find this book of interest to them.

This book presents an archaeological overview of the presence and development of Egyptian material culture in the context of Augustan Rome. The Augustan period was a crucial turning point for the urban landscape of Rome, which became specifically characterised by a complex, and often flexible repertoire of cultural diver¬sity. Studies in the past have focused primarily on (classical) Greek influences on the development of Augus¬tan material culture, while objects featuring Egyptian styles, themes and materials have remained generally categorised as exoticism, a fashion trend, or signs of so-called 'Egyptomania'. The research presented and discussed in this book, in contrast, raises the question whether and how 'Egypt' constituted an integral part of this Augustan material culture repertoire. By comprising for the first time a comprehensive and interpretative overview of such manifestations of Egypt in Rome, including public monuments, paintings, and architectural elements, as well as pottery, gems, and jewellery from private contexts, the study offers wide-ranging case studies, featuring object reappraisals as well as new archaeological finds and contextual analyses. By focusing on the archaeological data, rather than on the often better-known historical and textual sources, this books offers new arguments and evidence that the role of 'Egypt', as represented in the material culture of the city of Rome, was not that of an exotic outsider, but constituted a remarkably diverse and inherent part of the Augustan material culture repertoire and urban landscape.

After Egypt became part of the Roman Empire in 30 BC, Classical and then Christian influences both made their mark on the urban environment. This book examines the impact of these new cultures at every level of Egyptian society.

Egypt is by far the best-documented province of the Roman Empire. The dryness of its climate means that an enormous number of literary and documentary papyri have survived - a unique, reliable and lively source that documents Egypt in more detail than any other Roman province. Hitherto these have not been used extensively by Roman historians, on the erroneous assumption that Egypt is somehow 'atypical' as a Roman province. However, scholars now agree that Egypt should be devoted more attention by anyone interested in the history of the Roman Empire. This book offers a first approach to the subject, presenting a survey of the most important aspects of life in the province under Roman domination, from the conquest by Octavian in 30 BC to the third century AD, as they emerge from the micro-level of the Egyptian papyri and inscriptions, but also from the ancient literary sources, such as Strabo, Diodorus, and Philo, and from the most important archaeological discoveries.