Buildings or Festivals?

Marco Vitale ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter in Alter Geschichte (Epigraphie, Numismatik) in Basel und Zürich. Er wurde 2010 promoviert mit einer Untersuchung zur Verwaltung der hellenistischen und römischen Asia Minor (Eparchie und Koinon). Er veröffentlichte eine weitere Monografie zum antiken Syrien (Koinon Syrias). Seine jüngste Veröffentlichung, die Habilitationsschrift, erschien 2017 (Das Imperium in Wort und Bild)

Maritime Indonesia and the Archipelagic Outlook; Some Reflections From a Multidisciplinary Perspective on Old Port Cities in Java

The present paper reflects on Indonesia\u27s status as an archipelagic state and a maritime nation from a historical perspective. It explores the background of a multi-year research project into Indonesia\u27s maritime past currently being undertaken at the Humanities Faculty of Universitas Indonesia. The multidisciplinary research uses toponymy, epigraphy, philology, and linguistic lines of analysis in examining old inscriptions and manuscripts and also includes site visits to a number of old port cities across the archipelago. We present here some of the core concepts behind the research such as the importance of the ancient port cities in a network of maritime trade and diplomacy, and link them to some contemporary issues such as the Archipelagic Outlook. This is based on a concept of territorial integrity that reflects Indonesia\u27s national identity and aspirations. It is hoped that the paper can extend the discussion about efforts to make maritime affairs a strategic geopolitical goal along with restoring Indonesia\u27s identity as a maritime nation

Who Are Herodotus\u27 Persians?

In analyzing how Herodotus\u27 descriptions of foreign societies reflect Greek assumptions and prejudices, we have sometimes failed to recognize the extent to which he reports persuasive and historically valid information. This is particularly true of the Persians for whom Herodotus appears to have had access to very good sources, especially perhaps among Medes and Persians living in Asia Minor. This paper argues that Herodotus\u27 representation of Persian character and customs and his understanding of the relationship between the king and his subjects is based on genuine native traditions that reflect an internal debate within Persian elites in the aftermath of their war against Greece

The experience of pilgrimage in the Roman Empire: communitas, paideiā, and piety-signaling

Pilgrimage of various types is well attested in the pre-Christian religions of the Roman Empire, but there is comparatively little evidence for the personal experiences of pilgrims. Some recent studies have argued that typical pilgrims of this period were members of the intellectual elite highly versed in literary culture (paideia) who saw sacred places as museums of Greek culture. In this paper, I try to reconstruct what we can about the experience of pilgrimage in early Roman Empire, looking at three cases studies: a. Philo’s somewhat idealized account of Jewish pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which stresses intense common feeling (or communitas, to use Victor Turner’s term) between participants; b. Pilgrimage to the oracle of Apollo at Claros, to which cities of Asia Minor and elsewhere sent sacred delegations, largely made up choirs of children who performed hymns at the sanctuary. It may be suggested that the experience of the pilgrimage was in large part an educative one - learning about Greek culture and learning how to behave in public; itmight even be seen as a sort of rite of passage. c. The healing-pilgrimages of Aelius Aristides to Pergamum and elsewhere. Aristides’ experience at Pergamum is full of paideia, though that was not the primary motivation, and it sometimes approaches communitas, though in the end the presence of other people tends to serve the purpose of an audience and foil for his own brilliance. Key aspects of his experience seem to be: a) suffering and b) a feeling of closeness to the god, sometimes bordering on identification with him

Layers of powers: societies and institutions in Europe

Historians and social scientists have offered many and varied definitions of the term “community”. This chapter focuses on specific examples of face-to-face or local communities in order to test the possibilities and limits of the two major analytical approaches to communities: an anthropological approach which identifies ‘community’ as an organic entity, and a symbolic one which considers feelings of belonging and self-identification as constitutive aspects of a community. In this quest, close attention is paid to the question of the stabilization of community’s structures through legislation and institutions, a process that integrates such micro-societies into broader networks of power, and renders them visible to historians. In the first section we examine what we have called a “world of communities”, from periods when communities constituted the dominant element of social structure. Examining ancient Jewish and medieval Icelandic communities, and then early modern Irish and Scottish clans, we try to identify their basic characteristics and to reconstruct the way they related to the rest of the social structure. The second section analyzes the emergence of new loyalties and models of social membership from the 19th century onwards, emphasizing how the discourse on communities played a crucial role in the construction of these diverse patterns of identification and differentiation. Finally, we explore the permanence of the communitarian world supposedly replaced by nationalism and other major modern ideologies along with the new meanings and uses of communities in the 20th and 21st centuries. In sum, this broad overview provides a preliminary narrative of the changes in the structures of communities and their shifting position within wider patterns of social organizations while drawing attention to parallel transformations in theoretical reflection on communities

Franz Cumont’s Syrian tour: a Belgian archaeologist in the Ottoman empire

This paper highlights the Western scientific traveller as an intermediary between Orient and Occident around the turn of the nineteenth century by presenting a case study on the Belgian archaeologist and historian of religions, Franz Cumont (1868-1947), and the dossier of the journey he undertook in Northern Syria, May 1907. After a discussion of this classicist's relation to the Orient, I give an account of Cumont's Syrian tour, based on three different writing contexts: the academic output of the expedition in Northern Syria, Cumont's private travel notes, and both his active and passive correspondence. Still focusing on the case of Franz Cumont and the dossier of his archaeological journey in 1907, in a third and fourth section I examine two ways in which the Orient was brought to the Occident by the scientific traveller. Firstly, by the acquisition and transfer of archaeological material from the Orient to the Occident, providing Western institutions with Eastern artefacts. Secondly, by the transfer of ideas and images: how did the Occidental scientific traveller, the archaeologist, convey his experiences with the "real" Orient to the European readership? I will disclose how Franz Cumont expressed his evaluation of the ancient Orient, which he studied, and the contemporary Orient, which he experienced during his travels

At the crossroads of different traditions. Social and cultural dynamics in Roman Thrace through the epigraphic practice

Il presente articolo studia i processi di integrazione della Tracia nel mondo romano attraverso l'analisi di tre fenomeni tra loro correlati: diffusione della lingua latina; diffusione della cittadinanza romana; diffusione dei nomi romani. Per illustrare questi fenomeni il contributo prende in considerazione la produzione epigrafica di tre centri urbani della 'provincia Thracia': Maroneia, Perinthos e Philippolis. Data la loro posizione geografica (rispettivamente nella Tracia egea, nel Chersoneso tracico e nell'entroterra), questi tre centri possono fornire un quadro indicativo delle dinamiche socio-culturali indotte dalla presenza romana nel territorio trace.This paper deals with the integration of Thrace into the Roman world through the analysis of three interrelated phenomena: the diffusion of the Latin language; the diffusion of Roman citizenship; the diffusion of Roman names. To highlight these phenomena the present contribution analyses the epigraphic production of three urban centres of the 'provincia Thracia': Maroneia, Perinthos, and Philippolis. Due to their geographical position (in Aegean Thrace, Thracian Chersonesos, and mainland Thrace respectively), these three cities can provide an indicative picture of the social and cultural dynamics induced by the Roman presence in the Thracian territory