This is the first monograph to examine in detail the Ludi Saeculares (Secular Games) of Septimius Severus and argues that the games represented a radical shift from Antonine imperial ideology. To garner popular support and to legitimise his power, Severus conducted an intensive propaganda campaign, but how did he use the ludi to strengthen his power, and what were the messages he conveyed through them? The central theme is ritual, and the idea of ritual as a process that builds collective identity. The games symbolised the new Severan political and social vision and they embodied the idea of Roman identity and the image of Roman society which the emperor wished to promote. The programme of the games was recorded in a stone inscription and this text is analysed in detail, translated into English and contextualised in the socio-political aims of Septimius Severus.

Septimius Severus emerged victorious from the civil war of AD 193; he was not part of the traditional political elite, but instead a military commander from Africa, with a Syrian princess as his wife. To garner popular support and to legitimise his power Severus conducted an intensive propaganda campaign. This is the first monograph to examine the Secular Games (ludi saeculares), the magnificent festival which celebrated Septimius Severus as a bringer of peace and prosperity, and which also symbolised a new imperial ideology based on autocracy rather than the Antonine ideal of co-operation between ruler and Senate.

This collection of articles is an important milestone in the history of the study of time conceptions in Greek and Roman Antiquity. It spans from Homer to Neoplatonism. Conceptions of time are considered from different points of view and sources. Reflections on time were both central and various throughout the history of ancient philosophy. Time was a topic, but also material for poets, historians and doctors. Importantly, the contributions also explore implicit conceptions and how language influences our thought categories.

Examines portraits of Rome's Vestal Virgins as artistic documents and political vehicles

"Cassius Dio (c. 160-c. 230) is a familiar name to Roman historians, but still an enigmatic one. His text has shaped our understanding of his own period and earlier eras, but basic questions remain about his Greek and Roman cultural identities and his literary and intellectual influences. Contributors to this volume read Dio against different backgrounds including the politics of the Severan court, the cultural milieu of the Second Sophistic and Roman traditions of historiography and political theory. Dio emerges as not just a recounter of events, but a representative of his times in all their complexity"--

The year of the four emperors in AD 193 shows the cosmopolitan interconnectedness of the Roman Empire, yet scholarship has long framed the Severan dynasty in a narrative of descent stressing their North African and in particular their Syrian origins. The contributions of this volume question this conventional approach and instead examine more closely actual Severan policy in the Near East to detect potential local connections that determined this policy as well as how local communities and elites reacted to it. The volume thus explores new beginnings and old connections in the Roman Near East.

Time in the Eternal City is a major contribution to the study of time and its numerous aspects in late medieval and Renaissance Rome.