Shortly after the death in 161 of Antoninus Pius, his sons dedicated a column to him as a funerary monument. The form of the column in general and the reliefs on the pedestal in particular raise problems central to the understanding of Roman art. In this first thorough study, illustrated with nearly 100 photographs, Lise Vogel restores the column to its rightful place as one of the major monuments of Roman art. In addition, she re-evaluates the meaning of the column of Antoninus Pius in the context of the development of second century Roman imperial sculpture.

This book provides an enquiry into the distinguishing traits of Greek and Roman figural imagery. A detailed analysis of a wide range of material conveys an understanding of the figural imagery of classical antiquity as a whole, counterbalancing studies conducted on single genres. Through in-depth studies of six major production categories—Greek painted pottery, Roman decorated walls, Greek gravestones, Roman sarcophagi, Greek and Roman official sculpture, and Greek and Roman coins—the reader gains insights into the making of classical figural imagery. The images are explored within their contextual frameworks, paying attention to both functional purposes and pictorial traditions. Image–viewer relations offer a perspective that is maintained across the chapters. The bottom-up approach and the many genres of imagery discussed provide the basis for an extensive synthesis. Lavishly illustrated with over 100 images, Excursions into Greek and Roman Imagery provides a valuable resource for students of classical antiquity and history of art. The book also offers classical scholars, museum curators and others interested in classical art a fresh approach to the figural imagery of antiquity.

In antiquity, “son of god”—meaning a ruler designated by the gods to carry out their will—was a title used by the Roman emperor Augustus and his successors as a way to reinforce their divinely appointed status. But this title was also used by early Christians to speak about Jesus, borrowing the idiom from Israelite and early Jewish discourses on monarchy. This interdisciplinary volume explores what it means to be God’s son(s) in ancient Jewish and early Christian literature. Through close readings of relevant texts from multiple ancient corpora, including the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Greco-Roman texts and inscriptions, early Christian and Islamic texts, and apocalyptic literature, the chapters in this volume engage a range of issues including messianism, deification, eschatological figures, Jesus, interreligious polemics, and the Roman and Jewish backgrounds of early Christianity and the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The essays in this collection demonstrate that divine sonship is an ideal prism through which to better understand the deep interrelationship of ancient religions and their politics of kingship and divinity. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Richard Bauckham, Max Botner, George J. Brooke, Jan Joosten, Menahem Kister, Reinhard Kratz, Mateusz Kusio, Michael A. Lyons, Matthew V. Novenson, Michael Peppard, Sarah Whittle, and N. T. Wright.

A collection of essays on early Christian, Jewish and Greco-Roman religious discourses in antiquity, focusing on the construction of gender in relationship to broader cultural and religious themes, argumentation and identity formation in the early centuries of the common era.

A mosquito-infested and swampy plain lying north of the city walls, Rome's Campus Martius, or Field of Mars, was used for much of the period of the Republic as a military training ground and as a site for celebratory rituals and occasional political assemblies. Initially punctuated with temples vowed by victorious generals, during the imperial era it became filled with extraordinary baths, theaters, porticoes, aqueducts, and other structures - many of which were architectural firsts for the capitol. This book explores the myriad factors that contributed to the transformation of the Campus Martius from an occasionally visited space to a crowded center of daily activity. It presents a case study of the repurposing of urban landscape in the Roman world and explores how existing topographical features that fit well with the Republic's needs ultimately attracted architecture that forever transformed those features but still resonated with the area's original military and ceremonial traditions.

An important new work that will change the way we think about and understand battles