Herod, Agrippa, and Power Dynamics in the East
By Katheryn Whitcomb (Haverford College)
Josephus famously noted that, “Καῖσαρ μὲν οὐδένα μετὰ Ἀγρίππαν Ἡρώδου προετίμησεν, Ἀγρίππας δὲ μετὰ Καίσαρα πρῶτον ἀπεδίδου φιλίας τόπον Ἡρώδῃ.” (AJ 16.361; BJ 1.400). Indeed, based on Josephus’ account of their interactions, many scholars have adopted the view that Agrippa was a significant figure in Herod’s personal and political life.
Crisis and Consensus: Provincial Images of Trajan amidst Roman-Eastern Conflict
By Timothy F Clark (Boston University)
An Epigraphic View on the Dynamics of Amastrian Peripheral Integration in the "Amastriane"
By Ching-Yuan Wu (Peking University)
In literary sources we find Amastris a thriving second-century civitas with a much frequented port and an intellectual community (cf. Plin. Ep. 10.98; Luc. Alex. 26ff; Luc. Tox. 57ff), but what of the land that supported it? The Amastriane, as Strabo calls it (Ἀμαστρίανη", Strab. 12.3.10), had a lot of good boxwood, but beyond this much is unclear. This paper takes an epigraphic perspective to discuss observable dynamics in the Amastriane, in two steps.