Download or read book Fighting Hydra like Luxury written by Emanuela Zanda and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-11-20 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Old Testament to Elizabethan England, luxury has been morally condemned. In Rome, sumptuary laws (laws controlling consumption) seemed the only weapon to defeat 'hydra-like luxury', the terrible monster that was weakening even the strongest citizens. The first Roman sumptuary law, the Lex Appia, declared that no woman could possess more than a half ounce of gold, wear a dress of different colours, or ride in a carriage in any city unless for a public ceremony. Laws listed how many different colours could be worn by members of different social classes: peasants could wear one colour, soldiers in the army could wear two, army officers could wear three, and members of the royal family could wear seven. A law passed by Emperor Aurelian stated that men couldn't wear shoes that were red, yellow, green, or white, and that only the emperor and his sons could wear red or purple shoes. A variety of other laws limited how much people could spend on parties and how many people they could invite. In this book, Emanuela Zanda explores the purposes behind the enactment of such legislation in Rome during the Republic. She engages with the historical-literary polemic against luxury and focuses on government intervention in matters of extravagance by taking into consideration not only sumptuary laws but also other measures that dealt with self-indulgence. She addresses and answers a number of questions about what exactly the ruling class was trying to achieve, about its real motivations, and about the significance of the ideological discourse surrounding the enactment of these laws.
Download or read book Utopianism for a Dying Planet written by Gregory Claeys and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-12-10 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the utopian tradition offers answers to today’s environmental crises In the face of Earth’s environmental breakdown, it is clear that technological innovation alone won’t save our planet. A more radical approach is required, one that involves profound changes in individual and collective behavior. Utopianism for a Dying Planet examines the ways the expansive history of utopian thought, from its origins in ancient Sparta and ideas of the Golden Age through to today's thinkers, can offer moral and imaginative guidance in the face of catastrophe. The utopian tradition, which has been critical of conspicuous consumption and luxurious indulgence, might light a path to a society that emphasizes equality, sociability, and sustainability. Gregory Claeys unfolds his argument through a wide-ranging consideration of utopian literature, social theory, and intentional communities. He defends a realist definition of utopia, focusing on ideas of sociability and belonging as central to utopian narratives. He surveys the development of these themes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before examining twentieth- and twenty-first-century debates about alternatives to consumerism. Claeys contends that the current global warming limit of 1.5C (2.7F) will result in cataclysm if there is no further reduction in the cap. In response, he offers a radical Green New Deal program, which combines ideas from the theory of sociability with proposals to withdraw from fossil fuels and cease reliance on unsustainable commodities. An urgent and comprehensive search for antidotes to our planet’s destruction, Utopianism for a Dying Planet asks for a revival of utopian ideas, not as an escape from reality, but as a powerful means of changing it.
Download or read book Roman Luxuria written by Francesca Romana Berno and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-17 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In classical Latin, luxuria means 'desire for luxury'; it is linked with the ideas of excess and deviation from a standard. It is in most cases labelled as a vice which contrasts with the innate frugal nature of the Romans. Latin authors do not see it as endemic but as an import from the East in the aftermath of military conquests—and as a cause of fatal decline. Following these etymological and semantic origins, Roman Luxuria: A Literary and Cultural History discusses the influence of Greek culture on the Roman concept and the peculiar characteristics of Roman luxuria. It analyses Roman views on luxuria through close readings in historical order from Cato the Elder, who regards luxuria as the opposite of the ideal Roman way of life, to the Christian poet Prudentius, who represents it in an allegorical fight with Sobriety. The book attends both to key authors and to wider literary genres, such as historiography and satire. Particular consideration is given to the rhetorical device of personification, which can be traced from the first appearances of luxuria in Latin literature to those of late antiquity. Berno devotes detailed attention to Seneca the Younger, whose work is often preoccupied with this passion. Seneca both defends himself from the charge of luxuria and violently attacks it in others, describing it as the archenemy of a philosophical life. Along the centuries, the focus on luxuria shifts from the economic sphere (and the waste of money) to the erotic, to the extent that in the Christian world it becomes one of the Seven Capital Sins representing the vice of lust.
Download or read book Philosophy Rights and Natural Law written by Hunter Ian Hunter and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over his long and illustrious career, Knud Haakonssen has explored the role of natural law in formulating doctrines of obligation and rights in accordance with the interests of early modern polities and churches. The essays collected in this volume range across this exciting and contested field. These 13 new essays acknowledge Haakonssen's immense academic achievement and give us new insights into the cultural and political role of law and rights in a variety of historical contexts and circumstances.
Download or read book Risk in the Roman World written by Jerry Toner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Risk is everywhere in the modern world. The Roman world was no different but its solutions were very different.
Download or read book A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in Antiquity written by Mary Harlow and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whilst seemingly simple garments such as the tunic remained staples of the classical wardrobe, sources from the period reveal a rich variety of changing styles and attitudes to clothing across the ancient world. Covering the period 500 BCE to 800 CE and drawing on sources ranging from extant garments and architectural iconography to official edicts and literature, this volume reveals Antiquity's preoccupation with dress, which was matched by an appreciation of the processes of production rarely seen in later periods. From a courtesan's sheer faux-silk garb to the sumptuous purple dyes of an emperor's finery, clothing was as much a marker of status and personal expression as it was a site of social control and anxiety. Contemporary commentators expressed alarm in equal measure at the over-dressed, the excessively ascetic or at 'barbarian' silhouettes. Richly illustrated with 100 images, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in Antiquity presents an overview of the period with essays on textiles, production and distribution, the body, belief, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, visual representations, and literary representations.
Download or read book Infamy written by Jerry Toner and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2019-07-04 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rome is an empire with a bad reputation. From its brutal games to its depraved emperors, its violent mobs to its ruthless wars, its name resounds down the centuries like a scream in an alley. But was it as bad as all that? Join the historian Jerry Toner on a detective's hunt to discover the extent of Rome's crimes. From the sexual peccadillos of Tiberius and Nero to the chances of getting burgled if you left your apartment unguarded (pretty high, especially if the walls were thin enough to knock through) he leaves no stone unturned in his quest to bring the Eternal City to book. Meet a gallery of villains, high and low. Discover the problems that most exercised its long-suffering citizens. Explore the temptations of excess and find out what desperation can make a pleb do. What do we see when we look at Rome? A hideous vision of ancient corruption - or a reflection of our own troubled age?
Download or read book Rome Empire of Plunder written by Matthew Loar and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An interdisciplinary exploration of Roman cultural appropriation, offering new insights into the processes through which Rome made and remade itself.
Download or read book The Censors as Guardians of Public and Family Life in the Roman Republic written by Anna Tarwacka and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-08 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the effects of the Roman censorial mark (nota censoria) and the influence of censorial regulations on the development of written law in ancient Rome. The censor was one of the most fascinating legal institutions of Republican Rome. One of the most colourful and anecdotal areas of censorial activities was in the upkeep of public morals (regimen morum) through which censors controlled private, even intimate, aspects of Roman life. Although the office of the censor has been studied by various scholars from prosopographical, historical, and social perspectives, there has been no comprehensive study of its impact on the development of written law. This book aims to full the gap by providing an overview of the applications of the nota censoria to demonstrate its impact on the development of numerous regulations in the field of private and public laws during the Republican and Imperial periods. This book explores the relationship between magistrate law (ius honorarium) and regimen morum, and how the activities of the censors in this area influenced the formation of praetorian edicts and later legislation during the Principate period, most notably the marriage laws of Augustus. By examining the influence of the censor and the censorial nota in these spheres, readers will gain a new understanding of the overall significance of the censor's office in shaping the Roman legal order. The Censors as Guardians of Public and Family Life in the Roman Republic will be of interest to students and scholars of Roman law in both the Republican and Imperial periods, as well as to those interested in Roman moral attitudes and society more broadly.
Download or read book The Right to Dress written by Giorgio Riello and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-17 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a global history of dress regulation and debates around how human life and societies should be visualised and materialised.
Download or read book Architectural Restoration and Heritage in Imperial Rome written by Christopher Siwicki and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging the idea that heritage is a purely modern phenomenon, this volume addresses how historic buildings were treated in Imperial Rome, examining the way in which the ancients restored the monuments they inherited from earlier generations and developing our understanding of the Roman concept of built heritage.
Download or read book The Reception of Jewish Tradition in the Social Imagination of the Early Christians written by John M.G. Barclay and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributors to this volume take as their theme the reception of Jewish traditions in early Christianity, and the ways in which the meaning of these traditions changed as they were put to work in new contexts and for new social ends. Special emphasis is placed on the internal variety and malleability of these traditions, which underwent continual processes of change within Judaism, and on reception as an active, strategic, and interested process. All the essays in this volume seek to bring out how acts of reception contribute to the social formation of early Christianity, in its social imagination (its speech and thought about itself) or in its social practices, or both. This volume challenges static notions of tradition and passive ideas of 'reception', stressing creativity and the significance of 'strong' readings of tradition. It thus complicates standard narratives of 'the parting of the ways' between 'Christianity' and 'Judaism', showing how even claims to continuity were bound to make the same different.
Download or read book A Cultural History of Shopping in Antiquity written by Mary Harlow and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-02 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022. Covering the period from 500 BCE to 500 CE, this is the first book to address the cultural history of shoppers and shopping in antiquity. Evidence for the existence of shops has been found across many archaeological sites in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East but the study of shops and retailing in antiquity is a relatively new subject. From Classical Greece through to the Late Roman Empire, shopping shifted from being a means to an end – a method of supplementing the family diet or providing material goods the household could not manufacture itself – to a form of experience where the processes of browsing and not purchasing became as important as buying. This dramatic transformation is a reflection of the changing material desires of these societies and their perspectives on the ways in which the fulfilment of those desires could be achieved. Recurring themes in this interdisciplinary volume include the lives of 'ordinary' people; the relationship between gender and shopping; the contrast between Greece and Rome; the attitudes towards shopkeepers; the placing of shops in the cityscape; and the zoning of particular crafts and products. A Cultural History of Shopping in Antiquity presents an overview of the period with themes addressing practices and processes; spaces and places; shoppers and identities; luxury and everyday; home and family; visual and literary representations; reputation, trust and credit; and governance, regulation and the state.
Download or read book A Companion to Roman Art written by Barbara E. Borg and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-12-21 with total page 671 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to Roman Art encompasses various artistic genres, ancient contexts, and modern approaches for a comprehensive guide to Roman art. Offers comprehensive and original essays on the study of Roman art Contributions from distinguished scholars with unrivalled expertise covering a broad range of international approaches Focuses on the socio-historical aspects of Roman art, covering several topics that have not been presented in any detail in English Includes both close readings of individual art works and general discussions Provides an overview of main aspects of the subject and an introduction to current debates in the field
Download or read book Roman Frugality written by Ingo Gildenhard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-09 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores frugal thought and practice in Roman history, from the archaic period to the early empire and beyond.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World written by Paul Turquand Keyser and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 1065 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a focus on science in the ancient societies of Greece and Rome, including glimpses into Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China, 'The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World' offers an in depth synthesis of science and medicine circa 650 BCE to 650 CE. 0The Handbook comprises five sections, each with a specific focus on ancient science and medicine. The Handbook provides through each of its approximately four dozen essays, a synthesis and synopsis of the concepts and models of the various ancient natural sciences, covering the early Greek era through the fall of the Roman Republic, including essays that explore topics such as music theory, ancient philosophers, astrology, and alchemy.
Download or read book Museum Archetypes and Collecting in the Ancient World written by Maia Wellington Gahtan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-03-20 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Museum Archetypes and Collecting in the Ancient World offers a broad, yet detailed analysis of the phenomenon of collecting in the ancient world through a museological lens. In the last two decades this has provided a basis for exciting interdisciplinary explorations by archaeologists, art historians, and historians of the history of collecting. This compendium of essays by different specialists is the first general overview of the reasons why ancient civilizations from Archaic Greece to the Late Classical/Early Christian period amassed objects and displayed them together in public, private and imaginary contexts. It addresses the ranges of significance these proto-museological conditions gave to the objects both in sacred and secular settings.
