This study presents a comparative treatment of four East Roman provinces in the period 50 BC-AD 250 (Aphrodisias and Ephesos in Turkey, Athens in Greece, and Gerasa in Jordan), and it examines the instrumental factors behind regional and local urban developments. It argues that local communities were responsible for the organization and development of public space and buildings, which lends itself to an understanding of self-knowledge in these communities. Through a discussion of the interaction between architectural developments and historical and regional factors, this compelling study examines the interaction between the built environment, the social/political culture, and the urban identity in the eastern Roman Empire.

The colonnaded axes define the visitor's experience of many of the great cities of the Roman East. How did this extraordinarily bold tool of urban planning evolve? The street, instead of remaining a mundane passage, a convenient means of passing from one place to another, was in the course of little more than a century transformed in the Eastern provinces into a monumental landscape which could in one sweeping vision encompass the entire city. The colonnaded axes became the touchstone by which cities competed for status in the Eastern Empire. Though adopted as a sign of cities' prosperity under the Pax Romana, they were not particularly 'Roman' in their origin. Rather, they reflected the inventiveness, fertility of ideas and the dynamic role of civic patronage in the Eastern provinces in the first two centuries under Rome. This study will concentrate on the convergence of ideas behind these great avenues, examining over fifty sites in an attempt to work out the sequence in which ideas developed across a variety of regions-from North Africa around to Asia Minor. It will look at the phenomenon in the context of the consolidation of Roman rule.

Contributions in honour of John J. Dobbins, Professor of Roman Art and Archaeology at the University of Virginia, offers new readings of archaeological data and art, illustrating the impact that one professor can have on the wider field of Roman art and archaeology through the continuing work of his students.

Discover a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary handbook exploring several sub-regions and key themes perfect for a new generation of students A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East delivers the first complete handbook in the area of Hellenistic and Roman Near Eastern history. The book is divided into sections dealing with interdisciplinary source material, each with a great deal of regional variety and engaging with several key themes. It integrates discussions of the classical Near East with the typical undergraduate teaching syllabus in the Anglo-Saxon world. All contributors in this edited volume are leading scholars in their field, with a combination of established researchers and academics, and emerging voices. Contributors hail from countries across several continents, and work in various disciplines, including Ancient History, Archaeology, Art History, Epigraphy, Numismatics, and Oriental Studies. In addition to furthering the integration of the Levantine lands in the classical periods into the teaching canon, the book offers readers: The first comprehensively structured Companion and edited handbook on the Hellenistic and Roman Near East Extensive regional and sub-regional variety in the cross-disciplinary source material A way to compensate for the recent destruction of monuments in the region and the new generation of researchers’ inability to examine these historical stages in person An integration of the study of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East with traditional undergraduate teaching syllabi in the Anglo-Saxon world Perfect for undergraduate history and classics students studying the Near East, A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East will also earn a place in the libraries of graduate students and scholars working within Near Eastern studies, as well as interested members of the public with a passion for history.

This lavishly illustrated volume presents a comprehensive architectural study of 87 individual temples and sanctuaries built in the Roman East between the end of the 1st century BCE and the end of the 3rd century CE, within a broad region encompassing the modern states of Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan. Religious architecture gave faithful expression to the complexity of the Roman East and to its multiplicity of traditions pertaining to ethnic and religious aspects as well as to the powerful influence of Imperial Rome. The source of this power lay in the uniformity of the architectural language, the inventory of forms, the choice of styles and the spatial layout of the buildings. Thus, while temples have an eclectic character, there is an underlying unity of form comprising the podium, the stairway between the terminating walls (antae) and the columns along the entrance front - in other words, the axiality, frontality and symmetry of the temple as viewed from outside. The temples and sanctuaries studied in this volume demonstrate individual nuances of plan, spatial design, location in the sanctuary and interrelations with the immediate vicinity but can be divided into two main categories: Vitruvian temples (derived from Hellenistic-Roman architecture) and Non-Vitruvian temples (those with plans and spatial designs that cannot be analysed according to architectural criteria such as those defined by Vitruvius). The individual descriptions presented focus solely upon the analysis of the external and internal space of the temples of all types and do not involve any cultural or ethnic discussion.

Water is a global resource for modern societies - and water was a global resource for pre-modern societies. The many different water systems serving processes of urbanisation and urban life in ancient times and the Middle Ages have hardly been researched until now. The numerous contributions to this volume pose questions such as what the basic cultural significance of water was, the power of water, in the town and for the town, from different points of view. Symbolic, aesthetic, and cult aspects are taken up, as is the role of water in politics, society, and economy, in daily life, but also in processes of urban planning or in urban neighbourhoods. Not least, the dangers of polluted water or of flooding presented a challenge to urban society. The contributions in this volume draw attention to the complex, manifold relations between water and human beings. This collection presents the results of an international conference in Kiel in 2018. It is directed towards both scholars in ancient and mediaeval studies and all those interested in the diversity of water systems in urban space in ancient and mediaeval times.

The Roman Empire was home to a fascinating variety of different cults and religions. Its enormous extent, the absence of a precisely definable state religion and constant exchanges with the religions and cults of conquered peoples and of neighbouring cultures resulted in a multifaceted diversity of religious convictions and practices. This volume provides a compelling view of central aspects of cult and religion in the Roman Empire, among them the distinction between public and private cult, the complex interrelations between different religious traditions, their mutually entangled developments and expansions, and the diversity of regional differences, rituals, religious texts and artefacts.

In Memory and Identity in the Syriac Cave of Treasures, Sergey Minov analyses the role played by the pseudepigraphic work known as the Cave of Treasures in the formation of cultural memory and collective identity among Syriac Christians of Iran during Late Antiquity.

This study constitutes the first comprehensive examination of rabbinic body language represented in Palestinian rabbinic sources of late antiquity. Catherine Hezser examines rabbis’ appearance and demeanor, spatial movement, gestures, and facial expressions on the basis of literary and social-anthropological methods and theories. She discusses the various forms of rabbis’ non-verbal communication in the context of Graeco-Roman and ancient Christian literary sources and in connection with the material culture of Roman and early Byzantine Palestine. Catherine Hezser convincingly shows that in rabbinic literature body language serves as an important means of rabbis’ self-fashioning. Rabbinic texts create the image of a particularly Jewish type of intellectual who functioned and competed for adherents within the highly visual and body-conscious environment of late antiquity.

This book proposes a new means of identifying how Greek and Syrian identities were expressed in the Hellenistic and Roman Near East.