Diachronicity and Metaphor in Roman Conceptions of Courage
By William Short
Recent scholarship on Roman conceptions of courage has focused on virtus and its role in the dynamics of elite social competition. For example, McDonnell (2006) has demonstrated how virtus served as a locus for competitive, individualistic expression among the aristocracy of the late Republican and early imperial periods. Understood as martial prowess displayed in the service of the state, elites vied to advertise their virtus through funerary inscriptions, temple dedications, and images on coins.
Paradigm Shifts in Archaic Rome’s ‘Social Life of Things’
By Cristiano Viglietti
One of the most enduring commonplaces about archaic Rome claims that until the third century BCE, the social and economic life of the city was characterized by a sort of unchanging “primitive” material simplicity (e.g. Mommsen 1866; Bang 2012). However, recent archaeological discoveries have shown that throughout the archaic age remarkable shifts in the material life of the Romans occurred (Smith 1996).
The Construction of Currency and Roman Imperialism
By Colin Elliott
Some of the most successful studies of the development of money in ancient Greek societies have been emic in nature (von Reden 1995, Kurke 1999, Seaford 2004). The situation with Roman money, however, is starkly different, as the numismatic record along with other bodies of evidence, is routinely mined for indicators of economic or monetary “performance” (the size of the money supply, prices, purchasing power, etc) or to confirm/falsify the application of various monetary theories.