History of the Ancient World

Geospatial modeling enables us to relate the maritime freight charges imposed by the tetrarchic price controls of 301 CE to simulated sailing time. This exercise demonstrates that price variation is to a large extent a function of variation in sailing time and suggests that the published rates are more realistic than previously assumed.

‘ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World’ simulates the time and price costs of travel by land, river and sea across the mature imperial transportation network, notionally approximating conditions around 200 CE. In the version used for this paper, the model links some 750 sites (mostly cities but also some landmarks such as passes and promontories) by means of c.85,000 kilometers of Roman roads selected to represent the principal arterial connections throughout the empire.

The real question is not what the data reveal about change over time: it is what we would need to know in order to determine whether these data reflect extensive or intensive economic growth; why any such growth occurred, abated, and ceased; and how it related to the distribution of incomes.

This paper surveys textual and physical evidence of disease and mortality in the city of Rome in the late republican and imperial periods. It emphasizes the significance of seasonal mortality data and the weaknesses of age at death records and paleodemographic analysis, considers the complex role of environmental features and public infrastructure, and highlights the very considerable promise of scientific study of skeletal evidence of stress and disease.

The peasant is often defined as a small self-sufficient producer who employs family labour to work a mixed farm. Living in little rural communities and a specific tradi- tional culture constitute other aspects of his specific situation. Agrarian societies often present social differentiations and involve several rapports between cultivators and the landed gentry.

The tradition of writing curses on lead tablets appears to have originated in Greece, with the earliest examples having been discovered in Sicily, Olbia and Attica dated to the fifth century B.C., and by the second century AD they were being written throughout Western Europe, with this practice continuing throughout the Mediterranean until at least the sixth century A.D.

An analysis of Book VIII of Vergil’s Aeneid will result in the observation that this book forms a cyclus in the way that it ends as it starts, the preparations being underway for the war against Mezentius. Inside this frame, two units, the first larger than the second, concentrate on the topics of Hercules’ connection with Rome and the shield of Aeneas.