Abstract: Clarke, Graeme Review(s) of: Engaging Rome and Jerusalem. Historical essays for our time, by Edwin Judge, selected and edited by Stuart Piggin, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2014, xxxiii + 371pp., ISBN 978-1-925003-95-6 (Hbk), $39.95.
Abstract: Sobotkova, Adela; Ross, Shawn The Tundzha Regional Archaeological Project (TRAP) was initiated in 2008 and is still ongoing. It is a collaborative, multidisciplinary project involving researchers, students, and volunteers from Australia, Bulgaria, the United States, and the Czech Republic. TRAP combines regional landscape archaeology with paleoecological studies to reconstruct and interpret habitation in the Tundzha River watershed in its environmental context. The project is diachronic in nature, investigating the long-term environmental change and social evolution from before the introduction of agriculture to the recent past. An Australian Research Council Linkage Project Award funded extensive fieldwork (archaeological survey, test excavations, and palaeoecology) from 2009 through 2011. This paper will examine the emergence and evolution of larger-scale social and political organisation in Thrace over the course of the first millennium BC (until the arrival of the Romans in the first century BC), a research priority during the ARC-funded phase of research (readers interested in the results related to earlier or later periods are directed to detailed presentations elsewhere). Contrary to expectations based on mortuary and urban archaeology (outlined below), and despite the claims made by Greek historians of the Classical era (also elaborated below), TRAP found little evidence for social complexity or state emergence in pre-Roman Thrace.
Abstract: Barker, Craig D 2015 marks the twentieth anniversary of the first time Sydney archaeologists dug a shovel into the ground at the World Heritage listed site of the ancient theatre at Nea Paphos in Cyprus. In those two decades the University of Sydney team has uncovered considerable evidence of the architectural development of a Hellenistic and Roman theatre, the nature of Late Antique destruction at the site, signs of prolific medieval activity in the area during the era of the Crusades and has posed several questions about the role of theatre in the urban context of an Eastern Mediterranean city that bridged the Classical Greek world with the older cultures of the east.
Abstract: Traviglia, Arianna 'Beyond the city walls: the landscapes of Aquileia' (henceforth, BCW) is an ongoing landscape archaeology project directed by the author and focused on the study of the suburban and peripheral spaces of ancient Aquileia (Italy) from Romanisation to late antiquity. In broad terms, this long-term project aims to contribute to a relatively recent debate on the nature of suburban and periurban spaces in the Roman world, which seeks to define the settlement organisation and institutional configuration of the edges of Roman cities. These spaces, which hold key insight into the nature of the society that produced them, are dynamic occupation zones on the fringes of a city that are neither fully urban nor fully rural in character. They are intrinsically connected with the city they depend on and physically bonded to it; they also adjoin, however, the rural space and, as such, they act as an interface between the urban and the rural zone. Hence, their definition remains somewhat subtle.
Abstract: Hillard, Tom; Beness, JLea This contribution stands apart from the other studies in this collection, and is offered as a companion to the preceding; in contrast to the other papers, it does not profess to present the results of fieldwork. It does, however, seek to put before teachers a good deal of Italian scholarship that is not available in English; and to supplement the brief history of Aquileia in the foregoing article and, by concentrating on the colony's foundation, to provide a case study in Roman imperialism that will illuminate the important institution of colonization. It also intends to demonstrate a number of the ways in which archaeological investigation can contribute to historical analysis and thus underline the importance of such survey exercises as Traviglia's 'Beyond the City Walls' Project.
Abstract: Mootz, Denis Review(s) of: The Romans and their world: A short introduction, by Brian Campbell, Yale University Press, London, 2011, 285 pp., ISBN 978-0-300-11795-0 (Pbk), $29.95.
Abstract: Gersbach, James Review(s) of: Rome. An empire's story, by Greg Woolf, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012, xvi + 366 pp., 24 b/w illustrations and 7 b/w maps, ISBN 978-0-19-967751-1, $24.95.
Abstract: Hodkinson, Stephen This article started life as a talk to the UK Joint Association of Classical Teachers, Ancient History INSET day, at University College, London in September 2012. I am grateful to the editor for inviting me to update and adapt it for the use of teachers and students of Ancient History in New South Wales. My article focuses upon a number of topics central to the NSW Ancient History Stage 6 Syllabus Part II: 'Ancient Societies', Option I 'Greece: Spartan society to the Battle of Leuctra 371 BC'. Some of the material on Spartan life may also be useful background for Part IV: 'Historical Periods', Option G 'Greece: The development of the Greek world 800 - 500 BC', section 2 'Athens and Sparta' (which embraces the emergence and development of the polis in Sparta).
Abstract: Sampson, Margaret Review(s) of: Clio among the muses: Essays on History and the Humanities, by Peter Charles Hoffer, New York University Press, New York and London, 2014, pp. 196, ISBN 9781479832835 (Hbk), $43.95.
Abstract: Stevenson, Tom Ridley Scott's Gladiator, released in 2000, proved to be a critical and commercial success. It was widely lauded for its computer-generated special effects, especially its sweeping panoramas of ancient Rome, and its dramatic performances. It won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Russell Crowe). A new era in epic cinema set in the ancient world had begun. Various claims to historical accuracy were made on the film's behalf. Classical scholars studied these claims closely, with mixed reactions. The film's historical advisor, Prof. Kathleen Coleman, emphasised the limited degree of input she had into the final product, given practical and artistic considerations weighing upon the director. It is quite remarkable that a concern for historical fidelity is regularly advertised by those who create historical fiction - as though at some basic level of persuasion or impression, the fictional element is inferior to the historical, upon which it is ultimately dependent. Nevertheless, Gladiator owes much less to academic histories than it does to a series of imaginations of ancient Rome, which extend back to Hollywood films of, for example, Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith, to 'toga' plays of the early 20th and late 19th centuries, and finally to historical novels of the 19th century. The imaginations of ancient Rome contained in these novels, and elements of them which continued to exert influence into the 20th century, are the subject of this paper.
Abstract: Plant, Ian Plutarch expresses a sentiment common in Graeco-Roman literature, that women should keep their voices private. A virtuous woman should not expose herself to men outside her close family. Plutarch explains that a woman should not say anything in public as this would reveal her feelings, character and temperament to the world; it would be as if she had stripped off her clothes and shown herself to the world naked. Yet despite such prejudice, and the perception it produces that all Greek and Roman literature had to be written by men, we find that from the seventh century BC through to the sixth century AD women did compose works on a wide variety of topics, including travel, philosophy, musical theory, grammar, literary criticism, astronomy, medicine, mathematics, and alchemy. Women were perceived to be holders of mysterious knowledge: experts in magic, medicine, alchemy and sex. The highest praise was awarded to women poets such as Sappho, Anyte, Moero, Nossis and Erinna. However, women in the ancient world have not been recognised as historians, making the first widely acknowledged woman historian the Byzantine Anna Comnena, who completed the Alexiad in 1148.
Abstract: Kelly, Doug A well-organized and well-stocked Roman triumph was a noisy and colourful celebration. The holiday crowd could enjoy the spectacle of captives paraded through the streets, floats and displays representing captured cities and battles won, wagonloads of spoils, and as well could laugh at the songs that the parading troops sang making fun of their commander. The anthropological explanation of these songs is that they are ritual acts designed to prevent the malign working of hostile powers which are attracted to any manifestation of great good fortune. The same goes for such possible features of a triumph as the slave in the triumphant general's chariot whispering to him that he is only a mortal and the small image of the phallus-like deity suspended under the chariot. In Roman superstition, meaning deeply held beliefs ingrained since childhood, the best ways to keep sinister powers away is to pretend that things are going badly and, for good measure to ward off the sinister powers, to make a suitable gesture, such as imitating a phallus with the fingers, or better still, to have a phallus-like object where it was needed.
Abstract: Pritchard, David The study of the women of classical Athens involves an evidentiary paradox. Women and their pastimes were prominent subjects in this state's literature and the pictures on its painted pottery, while its comedies and tragedies regularly had articulate and forthright female characters. But none of this gives us access to the ways in which women conceived of their own lives; for they were - as the late John Gould explained so well - "the product of men and addressed to men in a male dominated world". What is more we lack any works from democratic Athens by female writers to counter this persistently male perspective. Two further biases complicate the study of Attic women. What evidence we have focuses almost without exception on the girls and the wives of Athenian citizens and so provides limited insight into the different circumstances of female slaves and female resident aliens. Typically this evidence also presents the life of wealthy females as the norm for every Attic woman, hampering our ability to reconstruct how exactly the daughters and the wives of poor citizens lived their lives.
Abstract: Keegan, Peter Review(s) of: Pompeii and Herculaneum: A sourcebook, 2nd ed., by Alison E. and M.G.L. Cooley, Routledge, London and New York, 2014, xiv + 338 pp., ISBN 9780415666800 (Pbk), $49.95.
Abstract: Westcott, Alexander Toomey Review(s) of: Alexander the great: Themes and issues, by Edward M. Anson, Bloomsbury, London and New York, 2013, 226 pp., ISBN 9781441193797 (Pbk), $34.95.
Abstract: Lieu, Samuel NC When (Hon.) Prof. Richard Stoneman, the well-known British Classical scholar and publisher, learned that I had for some time been engaged in collecting material for a major study on the Classics and the Dardanelles Campaign of 1915, he kindly sent me an article of his which he published in German translation entitled 'Die Idee Trojas. Resonanzen in England und Deutschland im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert', and which was then unknown to me. He also kindly furnished me with the English original of his article which he has also posted on the Internet. In this rich and learned study, Stoneman made a passing reference to a hauntingly beautiful poem entitled 'The Graves of Gallipoli' which will undoubtedly sound familiar to many Australian ears.
Abstract: Pearson, Warwick Of the personalities available for study in the New South Wales Higher School Certificate Ancient History course, one of the most popular is the Pharaoh Akhenaten. His appeal to students lies not least in his somewhat forbidding and unusual appearance, but also in the mystery and intrigue surrounding the tumultuous and revolutionary events of his reign. Understandably, chapters on Akhenaten are in all the most popular textbooks for the senior course. The content of these chapters follows closely the parameters for study set in the Board of Studies Syllabus, including: - historical context. - background and rise to prominence. - career. - evaluation.
Abstract: Taylor, Tristan Review(s) of: Reading Herodotus: A guided tour through the wild boars, dancing suitors and crazy tyrants, by Debra Hamel, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2012; 329 pp.; ISBN 978-1-4214-0656-5 (Pbk) $43.95.
Abstract: Stockdale, Elizabeth Review(s) of: The heroic rulers of archaic and classical Greece, by L. Mitchell, Bloomsbury, London 2013; viii +207 pp., ISBN 978-1-472-50596-5 (Hbk) $130; ISBN 978-1-472-51067-9 (Pbk) $45.
Abstract: Ayer, Kavita The exempla tradition in Rome will be well known to readers. Nancy Mitford said of the English aristocracy "the purpose of the aristocrat is to lead, therefore his functions are military and political". Donald Earl found that aphorism a convenient starting point for his work on the moral and political tradition of Rome, suggesting that her words "might with equal justice be applied to the nobility of the Roman Republic ...". In that case, the assertion might be slightly tweaked. The purpose of the Roman aristocracy was to lead by example. And that, without denying such aspirations on the part of Roman nobility, might be augmented with a supplementary observation: "the Roman aristocracy sought to be led by example."
Abstract: Plant, Ian It is widely accepted that the fifth-century historian Thucydides made an important contribution to the development of the art of history writing. One of the most significant things he did was to determine and reflect on his historical methodology. Simon Hornblower pointed out the significance of this intellectual achievement. The key passage on his methodology is chapter 22 of Book One. Here Thucydides interrupts his narrative of the past to outline and discuss his methodology:
Abstract: Powell, Anton To understand Spartiate society and its education system, we should recognize that our literary sources, the ancient texts, are too respectful. True, the ancient authors very often criticise the Spartans. But this criticism is embedded in the context of a profound admiration. By being slightly less admiring, slightly more suspicious, we can discover a great deal that Sparta wished to hide.
Abstract: Bridge, Edward When two ancient written sources refer to the same events, historians and archaeologists become excited. If one of those sources is literary and the other epigraphic (e.g. an inscription, a government administrative document, or a business document), the epigraphic text can affirm the events portrayed in the literary text and may also show how events are interpreted in the literary text. One problem with comparing two texts that report the same events is that they may contradict one another. If this happens, trying to ascertain which text reports the events most accurately can be difficult. For example, a monumental inscription is probably biased to present in the best possible light the person who commissioned it, and a religious text may be biased in favour of the vested interests that lie behind the writing of the text. It is rare to have extant independent witnesses to help us decide between accounts.
Abstract: Leadbetter, Bill Review(s) of: Christians and their many identities in late antiquity: North Africa, 200 - 450 CE, by Eric Rebillard, Cornell University Press, 2012; 144 pp., ISBN 978-0-8014-5142-3 (Hbk) $67.
Abstract: Hayes, Michael Review(s) of: The mind of thucydides, by Jacqueline de Romilly, (trans. Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings), Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2012; 216 pp., ISBN 978-0-801-45063-1 (Hbk) $47.95.
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