Roman History

    Metrological standardization in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East has often been understood as a gesture of political domination (e.g. Cuomo 2007; Chambon 2011; Fanton 2019).  Alternatively, it has been treated as a quasi-natural trend towards increased economic efficiency (e.g.

In 58 BCE, aedile Marcus Aemilius Scaurus minted a coin which named “Rex Aretas” and depicted him in a submissive posture. The image includes a camel standing in the background, confirming the foreign and exotic nature of King Aretas and his Nabataean Arabs (Figure 1).  The intent of this iconography was to illustrate the victory of Pompey and Scaurus over the Nabataean King, Aretas III, during their campaigns in the Near East in the late 60s BCE. However, the supplicandus is absent, leaving viewers unclear as to whom Aretas is supplicating. 

Portoria or customs duties are well attested throughout the Roman principate as is their operation at various levels across the empire (De Laet; Matthews; Ørsted; France; Kritzinger). This research has established that while there does not appear to have been a universal customs regime for the whole empire, there was some standardization of practices and rates, which varied internally between 1% and 5% (typically 2.5%) and externally at 12.5% or 25%.

Modern scholarship often presents the ancient Cisalpine region, between the Alps and the Apennines, as a controlled and rationalized space. According to this standard narrative, from the second century B.C. Rome transformed a wild, Gallic world of forests and marshes into drained, arable, and geometrically ordered land through processes of colonization and centuriation (e.g. Purcell 1990). This narrative, however, sits in tension with the local literary record. None of the Po Valley’s many significant first century B.C.

From Parthica Capta to Rex Parthiis Datus: Crisis and Flexibility in Trajanic Imperial Ideology

Concordia Tiberiana: The Temple of Concord on Late-Tiberian Sestertii

This paper reassesses the earliest evidence for the levying of fees on town magistrates entering local offices, a practice commonly referred to as the summa honoraria, in the Late Republic and its perceived role as a major factor in Italian urbanization. It argues that such an interpretation anachronistically retrojects the institution as it existed in the empire onto this earlier period and does not provide a satisfactory explanation for its origins.

The role of Roman magistrates, particularly aediles, in administering ludi associated with civic festivals is well attested. However, questions remain regarding the financing of ludi during the Mid-Republic. This paper argues that the practice of magistrates using their personal wealth to supplement the funds allocated by the senate for ludi, well attested in the Late Republic, operated during the 3^rd and 2^nd centuries BCE as well.

The Roman unification of the Italian peninsula was more than just a military process. The integration of its fractious nations and disconnected regions into a common polity required an imaginative shift as well as political transformation. Recently, scholars have connected this process to the explosion of literary interest in the Italian countryside during the first century B.C.

This paper will examine the praetorian prefect’s transition from a military to an administrative role. The prefects started out as simply the commanders of the praetorian guard and among the emperor’s chief generals. However, by late antiquity the prefects were among the most powerful civil officials in the state. As second only to the emperor in judicial, administrative, and land tax matters they were able to exert their authority over all areas in their quarter of the empire.