Julia’s Nuptials: Free, Freed, and Slave Marriage in Late Fifth Century Roman Law

In 468 AD, a certain woman named Julia went to the Roman Emperor Anthemius to declare that she had married her former slave, her freedman. Roman law on the matter had previously stated that free women who knowingly cohabited with slaves would relinquish their freedom along with the freedom of any children resulting from such a union, and they would all become slaves of the master of the slave to whom she married. The law avoided any mention of marriages to freedmen. Marriages resembling Julia’s then, occupied a grey area in Roman law for over four hundred years. In response to Julia’s inquiry, Anthemius declared Julia’s marriage, as well as all other marriages that had occurred in the same manner up to that point, legal and their children also legitimate. However, he prohibited all similar marriages from that point on. Previous scholarship on this law has emphasized the light it sheds on the place of slaves in Roman society, the State’s attempt to preserve the slave population, and the implications of the law on traditional Roman values. The objective of this paper is to offer an alternative interpretation of Anthemius’s motivation for issuing this law. Anthemius, an outsider from Greece, was foisted on the western senatorial aristocracy at a time when the relationship between the eastern and western courts was complicated and strained. It was imperative for Anthemius to project his appreciation for traditional Roman values to the western senate. This paper will focus on the political opportunity Anthemius recognized in Julia’s case. It will argue that this law provided him with an opportunity for self-representation in order to solidify his relationship with the western senatorial aristocracy

Characterising the trophic niches of stocked and resident cyprinid fishes: consistency in partitioning over time, space and body sizes.

Hatchery-reared fish are commonly stocked into freshwaters to enhance recreational angling. As these fishes are often of high trophic position and attain relatively large sizes, they potentially interact with functionally similar resident fishes and modify food web structure. Hatchery-reared barbel Barbus barbus are frequently stocked to enhance riverine cyprinid fish communities in Europe; these fish can survive for over 20 years and exceed 8 kg. Here, their trophic consequences for resident fish communities were tested using co-habitation studies, mainly involving chub Squalius cephalus, a similarly large-bodied, omnivorous and long-lived species. These studies were completed over three spatial scales: pond mesocosms, two streams and three lowland rivers, and used stable isotope analysis. Experiments in mesocosms over 100 days revealed rapid formation of dietary specialisations and discrete trophic niches in juvenile B. barbus and S. cephalus. This niche partitioning between the species was also apparent in the streams over two years. In the lowland rivers, where fish were mature individuals within established populations, this pattern was also generally apparent in fishes of much larger body sizes. Thus, the stocking of these hatchery-reared fish only incurred minor consequences for the trophic ecology of resident fish, with strong patterns of trophic niche partitioning and diet specialisation. Application of these results to decision-making frameworks should enable managers to make objective decisions on whether cyprinid fish should be stocked into lowland rivers according to ecological risk

HADRIAN THE TRAVELER: Motifs and Expressions of Roman Imperial Power in the Vita Hadriani

ABSTRACT This paper explores the links between travel and power that the journeys of Hadrian in the Vita Hadriani reveal, and suggests that these links have broader implications for our interpretation of the Historia Augusta as a whole, and of its author's literary skill and political awareness. It offers a close reading of the contexts in which Hadrian is depicted traveling in the Vita Hadriani, and argues that they may be interpreted as part of an internal dialog over alternate strategies for expressing and legitimating imperial power. It suggests that it is the moments when Hadrian is in the act of traveling that provide the clearest clues as to our author's attitude towards appropriate behavior by an emperor