Le forme della regalità nella Roma latino-sabina

The analysis of historical sources, onomastics data, and the festive calendar, shows that the most archaic Roman kingship was structured in the form of a diarchy between a lifelong king-priest and a temporary warrior-king: the latter ruled in the season of war, while in peacetime the city government was led in turn by the patres (interregnum). This diarchy could be the result of the influence, on Roman institutions, of the constitutional structures of the Greeks and of the Italic peoples, since among other Indo-European cultures, like Vedic India and the Celts, the pattern seems rather to be a triad — composed of a priest, a supreme king and a warrior king — surviving in Rome only at a theological level in the Pre-Capitoline triad Iuppiter Mars Quirinus. Given these premises, the subsequent Etruscan monarchy appears to be the result of the rising of the army commander to a tyrannical and lifelong power, and of the marginalization of the rex sacrorum, while the Republic seems a partial restoration of the oldest constitution

Antioxidant Effects of Xanthohumol and Functional Impact on Hepatic Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury

Therapeutic effects of dietary flavonoids have been attributed mainly to their antioxidant capacity. Xanthohumol (1), a prominent flavonoid of the hop plant, Humulus lupulus, was investigated for its antioxidant potential and for its effect on NF-kB activation. To examine the biol. relevance of 1, a hepatic ischemia/reperfusion model was chosen as a widely accepted model of oxidative stress generation. The impact of 1 on endogenous antioxidant systems, on the NF-kB signal transduction pathway as well as on apoptotic parameters, and on hepatic tissue damage was evaluated. Compd. 1 markedly decreased the level of reactive oxygen species in vitro. Furthermore, levels of enzymic and nonenzymic antioxidants were restored after pretreatment in postischemic hepatic tissue, and lipid peroxidn. was attenuated. NF-kB activity was reduced in vitro as well as in hepatic tissue after ischemia/reperfusion upon pretreatment with 1. In addn., the phosphorylation of Akt was markedly inhibited. Surprisingly, 1 decreased the expression of the antiapoptotic protein Bcl-X and increased caspase-3 like-activity, a proapoptotic parameter. Moreover, hepatic tissue damage as well as TNF-alpha levels increased in xanthohumol-pretreated liver tissue after ischemia/reperfusion. In summary, xanthohumol did not protect against ischemia/reperfusion injury in rat liver, despite its antioxidant and NF-kB inhibitory properties