Ex occidente imperium : Alexander the Great and the rise of the Maurya empire

Since the nineteenth century, many authors have seen the campaign of Alexander the Great in the Punjab as a pivotal moment in the history of the Indian subcontinent. British historians writing during the apex of Britain’s colonial rule perceived it as the coming of Western culture and civilisation. Nationalistic Indian historians saw the Maurya Empire, which was established shortly after Alexander’s incursion, as a patriotic reaction to the foreign oppressor. This paper discusses both historiographical interpretations and questions Alexander’s role in the emerging of the Maurya Empire, emphasising underlying structural reasons instead.status: publishe

Graeco-Roman merchants in the Indian Ocean : Revealing a multicultural trade

Fauconnier Bram. Graeco-Roman merchants in the Indian Ocean : Revealing a multicultural trade. In: Topoi. Orient-Occident. Supplément 11, 2012. Autour du Périple de la mer Érythrée

Achter de schermen van de festivalwereld : de verenigingen van atleten en artiesten in de Keizertijd

This paper discusses the two ‘international’ or ecumenical associations of athletes and artists in the Roman empire, the so-called xystic and thymelic synods. These associations played a key role in the world of Greek competitive festivals (agones). They not only provided practical assistance to their members and protected their professional and economic interests, they also contributed to the organisation of the competitions and supported the central authorities in keeping up an official festival calendar. Hence, they were not merely a side effect of the expansion of Greek festivals across the Roman empire, they were an important factor in making this expansion possible

Graeco-Roman merchants in the Indian Ocean : Revealing a multicultural trade

Fauconnier Bram. Graeco-Roman merchants in the Indian Ocean : Revealing a multicultural trade. In: Topoi. Orient-Occident. Supplément 11, 2012. Autour du Périple de la mer Érythrée

Ecumenical synods : the associations of athletes and artists in Roman Empire

In the first three centuries of the Roman imperial period, Greek festival culture flourished as never before. Hundreds of cities organised their own agones, competitions for athletes and artists, which were linked to each other in an official festival calendar. Successful athletes and artists spent their entire careers travelling from one agon to the next and from one province to the other. These wandering professionals were represented by two extraordinary associations or ‘synods’: the xystic synod of athletes and the thymelic synod of artists. They styled themselves ‘ecumenical’, as they were active in every city where agones were organised, in a region spanning from southern Gaul to Syria and Egypt. With headquarters in Rome and representatives travelling across the Mediterranean, they gave the ancient competitors a powerful lobby, and a bureaucracy typically associated with modern rather than ancient sports. This thesis is the first comprehensive monograph on the two ecumenical synods of the Roman Empire. Bringing together information from epigraphical, papyrological and literary sources, it tries to reconstruct their long-forgotten history from their emergence in the late first century BC until their final demise in the late fourth century AD. Not only their organisation and professional activities are dealt with, but also their particularly close connections with the imperial court and their ambiguous relationship with the Greek poleis. As such, this thesis vindicates the ecumenical synods as essential components of Graeco-Roman high culture in the Principate

Graeco-Roman Merchants in the Indian Ocean: Revealing a Multicultural Trade

This paper is a critical review of hypotheses concerning the presence of Greco-Roman traders in the Indian Ocean in the first two centuries A.D., based on an analysis of primary sources. Opinions about this subject are broadly divided in two camps. Whereas the first one stresses the dominant role of Western merchants in the Indian Ocean trade (see e.g. Raschke), the second one minimizes their impact, sometimes even denying that Mediterranean ships were able to sail to India (see e.g. Ball and Ray). In this paper, I argue that both approaches are in fact problematic, since neither of them is sufficiently supported by the primary sources. Hence, I propose a more cautionary approach. My arguments are based on an in-depth analysis of archaeological, epigraphical, papyrological and particularly literary sources, focusing on (a) the use of Graeco-Roman ships in the Indian Ocean and (b) the presence of Greco-Roman traders in India. Summing up, I show that it is wrong to perceive the Indo-Roman trade in terms of dominance. The sources show us a different picture: that of a dynamic, multicultural trade in which Romans, Arabs, Indians and Persians exchanged ideas and to a certain extent intermingled.status: publishe