Aemilius

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Plautus and Hannibal 3. The Captivi and the Paradoxes of Postliminium 4. City, Land, and Sea: New Comedy and the Discourse of Economies 5. Fatherhood and the Habit of Command: L. Aemilius Plautus and the Adelphoe

Abstract: The data which Beloch has collected for the population of Syria are very scanty, and his calculations are highly insecure. It is perhaps possible to reach a more certain result by a closer study of the most important piece of evidence on the topic that we possess. The census conducted by Sulpicius Quirinius as legatus of Syria in A.D. 6–7, which, owing to its mention in the Gospel of St. Luke (ii, I), has evoked endless controversy among commentators, is also referred to in an inscription, probably found at Beyrout and preserved since the eighteenth century at Venice, which supplies information of a precision unique of its kind. We read, in fact, in the epitaph of an officer, Q. Aemilius Secundus:—Iussu Quirini censum egi Apamenae civitatis millium hominum civium CXVII. To estimate the value of the figure 117,000, it is important to decide what the author of the inscription meant by homines cives.

Abstract: Les folies des spectacles etait une maladie de leurs tres grandes villes, Rome, Alexandrie ou Antioche. P. Veyne, Le Pain et le cirque , 696 A recent trend in Hellenistic studies has been to emphasise the importance of the indigenous peoples within the successor kingdoms to Alexander at the expense of the Greco-Macedonian element. Within limits this is to be welcomed, for there can be no doubt that in the past, for a combination of reasons, native influence on the life and culture of those states has been underestimated. With the exception of Macedonia itself, all these Hellenistic kingdoms contained ancient, alien structures, which the new Macedonian rulers in Persia, Babylonia and Egypt could not afford to ignore. Relations with their more numerous non-Greek subjects were always a central problem and one which changed over the years. In Egypt, for instance, Egyptian influence in the army and administration, as well as in everyday life, grew steadily from the end of the third century onwards. How indeed these Macedonian kings – and their subject populations – saw themselves in this multicultural world must form a matter of central interest. Despite this, however, it remains true that the cultural roots of the rulers and ruling castes, at any rate within the more important of the successor states, lay in a Hellenised Macedonia and that many of their institutions derived from Macedonia and the Greek polis. Ptolemy, Seleucus, Cassander, Antigonus, Lysimachus were all Macedonians.