Volume 94, Issue 2 -

In view of the epigraphic evidence of earthquakes it is notable that they were rarely mentioned as causes of death in grave inscriptions. So far, this observation was interpreted to the effect that the ancient people consciously waived upon the notice to avoid hubris and a provocation of the gods. Here the relevant epitaphs are considered in the overall context of the epigraphic tradition of seismic events. Against this background, other explanations are proposed. They are rooted in different mentalities in the Latin West and the Greek East, concomitant epigraphic habits, and the factors that determine the selection of memorable messages.

Xerxes suffered a serious defeat in Greece, but it seems that it had no resonance in Persia. A Persepolis inscription, however, contains an obscure formula, in which Xerxes apparently claims power over Greeks of the continent. Additionally, some Greek sources preserved portrayals of Xerxes’ victory in Greece: even if related to the context of rhetorical exercises, these sources are interesting in order to reflect about possible revisions, in Persia, of Xerxes’ Greek expedition

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the process of full integration of Acarnania in Greece from 5 th century BCE on. To analyze this process we shall study the political relations and cultural evolution attested in written sources.

This paper aims to re-examine the ancient evidences about the local historian Demetrius (FGrH 304), perhaps an Argive author who lived and wrote his Argolika in pre-Hellenistic age. Particularly, the date (to the end of the fifth century or most probably the fourth century B.C.) and the nationality (Argive) suggested by Felix Jacoby for the author, can be established better if linked up with some events of the Argive local history occurred during the middle and the late fifth century B.C. (as the capture and the destruction of the neighbours of Argos Tiryns and Mycenae, the Heraion in the plain of Argos coming under exclusive Argive control, the fire that destroyed the archaic temple of Hera at the Heraion in 423 B.C.). A new reading of the only fragment surely ascribed to Demetrius (F 1) gives some clues to the nature and the structure of his historical work and to the historiographical method through which he worked on the traditional account of the origins of some cultural institutes of his polis .

Historicity of the proclamation of Alexander the Great on the battlefield of Gaugamela as the King of Asia related by Plutarch should not be put in doubt. Quite numerous evidence speaks to the usage of this title by Alexander since at least the end of 333 BC. The overwhelming evidence of fifth and fourth c. BC sources demonstrates that for the Greeks (and Macedonians) at the age of Alexander the title King of Asia meant “the King of the Persian Empire”. This title was not related to any known title in use of the Persian King and reflected the Greek way of thinking about their eastern neighbours. Its selection by Alexander may have belonged to the realm of the war propaganda of Alexander as the leader of the League of Corinth waging a war of revenge on the Persian Empire.

Launching an offensive against Sinope and, shortly after, entering the war against Eumenes II, the Pontic king Pharnakes and his Gallatian allies challenged the newly established order in Asia Minor. The post Apamean territorial gains of Eumenes II were at stake, as in the previous war, in which Pharnakes had fought on the side of Prusias I. In the second campaign, Pharnakes besieged Tieion, the πολίχνιον under Eumenes’ control. It was the perfect opportunity for the Pergamene king to exercise his diplomatic abilities. At that moment, as can be deduced from scattered information, Eumenes transferred the possession of Tieion to his former enemy, Prusias II, who was eager, like Bithynian kings before him, to gain control over ports on the Black Sea shore. This maneuver brought the Bithynian king into the anti-pontic coalition.

The rulers of the Mithridatid dynasty claimed to descend from the Persian satraps of Dascylium. These kings recalled as their ancestor Artabazus, son of Pharnaces, who would have received that domain from Xerxes. The interests of the Mithridatid sovereigns in Northwestern Euxinus represented a vindication of the old rule of the satraps of Dascylium over these territories, considered by the Persians as “The country of (or beyond) the sea”. This would be the origin of the term “Kingdom of Pontus” which had been also applied to the domains of some Spartocid rulers. Thus, we can understand the sources which regarded this region as the ancestral realm of the Mithridatid dynasty. Besides this, some royal Pontic coins included an allusion to the legend of Telephus, the son of Heracles who was king of Mysia, the region where Dascylium and Cius were located. In regard with this dynastic perspective, Eupator claimed the province of Asia as a part of the ancient land of his ancestors.

The equestrian statue of Q. Marcius Tremulus, who as consul in 306 BC had celebrated a triumph over the Hernici, was still standing in its highly visible place centuries later: in the Forum Romanum, in front of the temple of the Dioscuri. The monument, the occasion of its erection und its prominent position in the densely interconnected political and sacral topography of the urbs Roma , which at the same time functioned as a ‘memorial landscape’ of the populus Romanus and its glorious history, on the one hand and the myths and legends around the beginnings of Rome’s hegemony in Latium and central Italy on the other formed a particular “web of significance(s)” in the Geertzian sense of the term, which could be ‘read’ on several different, but closely interrelated levels.

Before coming to its main topic, the practice of crucifixion in Roman high-treason tribunals, the study outlines the antique roots of this high sentence. Mommsen’s investigation concerning crucifixion in his Roman Criminal Law is then extensively reflected. The practice of executions following the ancestral custom, which is, unlike Mommsen’s deductions suggest, not to be seen as proper crucifixions especially when it comes to judging free Roman Citizens, is closely analyzed. This paper rather votes for the widely discussed opinion that crucifixion was reserved for barbarians and slaves in Roman penal practice. The study deals in depth with the crucifixion practice at the times of Jesus. As before, Mommsen’s view is not supported by the sources at hand due to a certain lack of distinction between crucifixion and furca on his side. The practice of flagellation as a punishment that was often combined with crucifixion is then closely examined. An extreme punishment in itself, it frequently preluded crucifixion. At the conclusion of the essay the crucifixion of Jesus is reconstructed and examined in its historical and sociological context of Roman capital punishment.

In spite of his short reign Maximinus Thrax is one of the most often discussed, but also particularly disputed emperors of the so-called ‘Soldatenkaiser’. This concerns especially his origin and career. The records found in Herodian and in the vita of Maximinus in the Historia Augusta show inaccuracies, errors and gaps which have led to considerable disagreement among historians. Making use of more recent findings, especially inscriptions, and modern insight into the rules of one’s cursus this paper tries to fathom out the possibility of a proper reconstruction of the vita of the future emperor. Special interest concerns the question, whether a legio IIII Italica existed as early as the time of Severus Alexander, in which Maximinus is said to have served as a tribune. In the present state of our knowledge this cannot be verified and moreover this is considered unlikely.

In this article, the author examines how imperial investiture rituals, which normally served to boost the prestige of aspiring rulers, could be turned against them by hostile authors. In their descriptions, these authors deviated from the ideal patterns to make imperial candidates look bad or ridiculous. The focus is on the period AD 284–395. Three cases are analyzed in detail, namely those of Maximinus Daia (AD 305), Jovian (AD 363) and Procopius (AD 365), followed by an analysis of negative descriptions of investitures in late antiquity in general. Contrary to accounts from the principate, when criticism focussed on a candidate’s immoral behaviour during his investiture, negative descriptions from the late third and fourth centuries also put great emphasis on uninspired acclamations and the use of improper attributes to signal that someone was/would be a bad ruler. Thus authors not only questioned a candidate’s morality, but his legitimacy as well.

This paper reconstructs, by reconsidering all known evidence, the life of Helvius Vindicianus. He was court physician, most likely under the emperor Valentinian I, to whom he dedicated the Epistula comitis archiatrorum . That means Vindicianus lived and exercised at least part of his professional activity not only in Africa Proconsularis (as the critics generally thought), where he was probably born and educated, but also, approximately during the sixties and seventies of the 4 th century A. D., in Trier, imperial seat of Valentinian I. In fact the doctor is mentioned as addressee in a rescript promulgated in the same city on September 14 th 379, when the famous poet Ausonius was consul there. Perhaps soon afterwards his experience in Trier, Vindicianus came back to Carthage, where he became Proconsul Africae on 380/381. In this period he met the young Augustine, whose “Confessions” are a very important source for a correct dating of the former. Last of all the paper proposes to date Vindicianus’ Epistula to 371–375, i.e. between the birth of Valentinian II and the death of Valentinian I.