Download or read book Three Political Voices from the Age of Justinian written by Agapetus (diacono.) and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This one-volume translation, with commentary and introduction brings together three important works. All three texts cast great, if generally neglected light on politics and ideology in early Byzantium. Agapetus wrote, c. 527-30CE, from a position sympathetic to Justinian, when he had still to consolidate his authority. He sets out what an emperor must do to acquire legitimacy, in terms of government's being the imitation of God. Read in context, his work is much more than a list of pious commonplaces. The Dialogue, written anonymously towards the end the same reign, comprises fragments from Books 4-5 of a philosophically sophisticated (lost) longer work, setting out requirements for the ideal polity, based on a similar concept of imperial rule, with extensive comment on matters of current political salience but from an implicitly hostile standpoint. Not only does the text reflect the nature of Neoplatonic political philosophy but it also penetrates with its ideas deep into the inner realities of the time, into the political problems of Constantinople during the first half of the sixth century. The third text was written by Paul the Silentiary to mark the rededication of the basilica Hagia Sophia, built thirty years earlier under the orders of Emperor Justinian I. Together the translations provide an important insight into the early Byzantine period.

Download or read book Three Political Voices from the Age of Justinian written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Theodora written by David Potter and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-07 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two of the most famous mosaics from the ancient world, in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna, depict the sixth-century emperor Justinian and, on the wall facing him, his wife, Theodora (497-548). This majestic portrait gives no inkling of Theodora's very humble beginnings or her improbable rise to fame and power. Raised in a family of circus performers near Constantinople's Hippodrome, she abandoned a successful acting career in her late teens to follow a lover whom she was legally forbidden to marry. When he left her, she was a single mother who built a new life for herself as a secret agent, in which role she met the heir to the throne. To the shock of the ruling elite, the two were married, and when Justinian assumed power in 527, they ruled the Eastern Roman Empire together. Their reign was the most celebrated in Byzantine history, bringing wealth, prestige, and even Rome itself back to the Empire. Theodora was one of the dominant political figures of her era, helping shape imperial foreign and domestic policy and twice saving her husband from threatened deposition. She played a central role trying to solve the religious disputes of her era and proactively assisted women who were being trafficked. An extraordinarily able politician, she excited admiration and hatred from those around her. Enemies wrote extensively and imaginatively about her presumed early career as a prostitute, while supporters elevated her, quite literally, to sainthood. Theodora's is a tale of a woman of exceptional talent who overcame immense obstacles to achieve incredible power, which she exercised without ever forgetting where she had come from. In Theodora: Actress, Empress, Saint, David Potter penetrates the highly biased accounts of her found in the writings of her contemporaries and takes advantage of the latest research on early Byzantium to craft a modern, well-rounded, and engaging narrative of Theodora's life. This fascinating portrait will intrigue all readers with an interest in ancient and women's history.

Download or read book How to Rule written by Grant Duncan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide through history for those perplexed about the fate of democracy and the government of diverse societies. In war and in peace, amid disruptive change and during reconstruction, a government of people and events will always be called for. But in this age of anxiety and uncertainty, people on the left and the right are losing confidence in governments, elections and politicians. Many ask whether democracy has failed, and ponder alternatives. Knowing how to govern, and how to be governed, are necessary for solving collectively our pressing social and ecological problems. This book rediscovers diverse models of government, including the successful statecraft and drastic mistakes of past rulers and their advisers. From ancient to modern times, what methods of government have arisen and succeeded, or what were their fatal flaws? What ethical and political ideas informed the rulers and the ruled? How have states dealt with unexpected calamities or with cultural and religious differences? And what kept things (more or less) running smoothly? Amid rapid change and political dissent, it’s timely to re-examine the ideas and practices that governed large populations and guided their rulers. In an age of political distrust, disruptive populism and global crises, we need to rearm ourselves with knowledge of history and diverse political ideas to better address contemporary problems. This book will appeal to students in political theory, political history, or history of government and public policy.

Download or read book The Lost History of Peter the Patrician written by Thomas M. Banchich and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lost History of Peter the Patrician is an annotated translation from the Greek of the fragments of Peter’s History, including additional fragments which are now more often considered the work of the Roman historian Cassius Dio's so-called Anonymous Continuer. Banchich’s annotation helps clarify the relationship of Peter's work to that of Cassius Dio. Focusing on the historical and historiographical rather than philological, he provides a strong framework for the understanding of this increasingly important source for the third and fourth centuries A.D. With an introduction on Peter himself - a distinguished administrator and diplomat at the court of Justinian – assessing his literary output, the relationship of the fragments of Peter's History to the fragments of the Anonymous Continuer, and the contentious issue of the place of this evidence within the framework of late antique historiography, The Lost History of Peter the Patrician will be an invaluable resource for those interested in the history of the Roman world in general and of the third and fourth centuries A.D. in particular.

Download or read book Christianity Democracy and the Shadow of Constantine written by George E. Demacopoulos and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2017 Alpha Sigma Nu Award The collapse of communism in eastern Europe has forced traditionally Eastern Orthodox countries to consider the relationship between Christianity and liberal democracy. Contributors examine the influence of Constantinianism in both the post-communist Orthodox world and in Western political theology. Constructive theological essays feature Catholic and Protestant theologians reflecting on the relationship between Christianity and democracy, as well as Orthodox theologians reflecting on their tradition’s relationship to liberal democracy. The essays explore prospects of a distinctively Christian politics in a post-communist, post-Constantinian age.

Download or read book The Cambridge World History of Sexualities Volume 3 Sites of Knowledge and Practice written by Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-04-30 with total page 1066 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume III provides in-depth analyses of specific times and places in the history of world sexualities, to investigate more closely the lived experience of individuals and groups to reveal the diversity of human sexualities. Comprising twenty-five chapters, this volume covers ancient Athens, Rome, and Constantinople; eighth- and ninth-century Chang'an, ninth- and tenth-century Baghdad, and tenth- through twelfth-century Kyoto; fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Iceland and Florence; sixteenth-century Tenochtitlan, Istanbul, and Geneva; eighteenth-century Edo, Paris, and Philadelphia; nineteenth-century Cairo, London, and Manila; late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lagos, Bombay, Buenos Aires, and Berlin, and twentieth-century Sydney, Toronto, Shanghai, and Rio de Janeiro. Broad in range, this volume sheds light on continuities and changes in world sexualities across time and space.

Download or read book Caesar Rules written by Olivier Hekster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-08 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries, Roman emperors ruled a vast empire. Yet, at least officially, the emperor did not exist. No one knew exactly what titles he possessed, how he could be portrayed, what exactly he had to do, or how the succession was organised. Everyone knew, however, that the emperor held ultimate power over the empire. There were also expectations about what he should do and be, although these varied throughout the empire and also evolved over time. How did these expectations develop and change? To what degree could an emperor deviate from prevailing norms? And what role did major developments in Roman society – such as the rise of Christianity or the choice of Constantinople as the new capital – play in the ways in which emperors could exercise their rule? This ambitious and engaging book describes the surprising stability of the Roman Empire over more than six centuries of history.

Download or read book Time History and Political Thought written by John Robertson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-06-22 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the multiple ways in which different conceptions of time and history have been used to understand politics since late antiquity, showing that no conception of politics has dispensed altogether with time, and many have explicitly sought legitimacy in association with forms of history.

Download or read book Procopius of Caesarea Literary and Historical Interpretations written by Christopher Lillington-Martin and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume aims to encourage dialogue and collaboration between international scholars by presenting new literary and historical interpretations of the sixth-century writer Procopius of Caesarea, the major historian of Justinian’s reign. Although scholarship on Procopius has flourished since 2004, when the last monograph in English on Procopius was published, there has not been a collection of essays on the subject since 2000. Work on Procopius since 2004 has been surveyed by Geoffrey Greatrex in his international bibliography; Peter Sarris has revised the 1966 Penguin Classics translation of, and introduced, Procopius’ Secret History (2007); and Anthony Kaldellis has edited, translated and introduced Procopius’ Secret History, with related texts (2010), and revised and modernised H.B. Dewing’s Loeb translation of Procopius’ Wars as The Wars of Justinian in 2014. This volume capitalises on the renaissance in Procopius-related studies by showcasing recent work on Procopius in all its diversity and vibrancy. It offers approaches that shed new light on Procopius’ texts by comparing them with a variety of relevant textual sources. In particular, the volume pays close attention to the text and examines what it achieves as a literary work and what it says as an historical product.

Download or read book Politics and Tradition Between Rome Ravenna and Constantinople written by M. Shane Bjornlie and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revealing study of the Variae of Cassiodorus and the insight that the epistolary collection can provide into sixth-century Italy.

Download or read book Imperial Tragedy written by Michael Kulikowski and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2019-10-03 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries, Rome was one of the world's largest imperial powers, its influence spread across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle-East, its military force successfully fighting off attacks by the Parthians, Germans, Persians and Goths. Then came the definitive split, the Vandal sack of Rome, and the crumbling of the West from Empire into kingdoms first nominally under Imperial rule and then, one by one, beyond it. Imperial Tragedy tells the story of Rome's gradual collapse. Full of palace intrigue, religious conflicts and military history, as well as details of the shifts in social, religious and political structures, Imperial Tragedy contests the idea that Rome fell due to external invasions. Instead, it focuses on how the choices and conditions of those living within the empire led to its fall. For it was not a single catastrophic moment that broke the Empire but a creeping process; by the time people understood that Rome had fallen, the west of the Empire had long since broken the Imperial yoke.

Download or read book Tradition and Power in the Roman Empire written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-04-08 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume focuses on the interface between tradition and the shifting configuration of power structures in the Roman Empire. By examining various time periods and locales, its contributions show the Empire as a world filed with a wide variety of cultural, political, social, and religious traditions. These traditions were constantly played upon in the processes of negotiation and (re)definition that made the empire into a superstructure whose coherence was embedded in its diversity.

Download or read book Roman Political Thought written by Jed W. Atkins and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-12 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thematic introduction to Roman political thought that shows the Romans' enduring contribution to key political ideas.

Download or read book The Bronze Horseman of Justinian in Constantinople written by Elena N. Boeck and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Justinian's triumphal column was the tallest free-standing column of the pre-modern world and was crowned with arguably the largest metal equestrian sculpture created anywhere in the world before 1699. The Byzantine empire's bronze horseman towered over the heart of Constantinople, assumed new identities, spawned conflicting narratives, and acquired widespread international acclaim. Because all traces of Justinian's column were erased from the urban fabric of Istanbul in the sixteenth century, scholars have undervalued its astonishing agency and remarkable longevity. Its impact in visual and verbal culture was arguably among the most extensive of any Mediterranean monument. This book analyzes Byzantine, Islamic, Slavic, Crusader, and Renaissance historical accounts, medieval pilgrimages, geographic, apocalyptic and apocryphal narratives, vernacular poetry, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Italian, French, Latin, and Ottoman illustrated manuscripts, Florentine wedding chests, Venetian paintings, and Russian icons to provide an engrossing and pioneering biography of a contested medieval monument during the millennium of its life.

Download or read book Spaces in Late Antiquity written by Juliette Day and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-26 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Places and spaces are key factors in how individuals and groups construct their identities. Identity theories have emphasised that the construction of an identity does not follow abstract and universal processes but is also deeply rooted in specific historical, cultural, social and material environments. The essays in this volume explore how various groups in Late Antiquity rooted their identity in special places that were imbued with meanings derived from history and tradition. In Part I, essays explore the tension between the Classical heritage in public, especially urban spaces, in the form of ancient artwork and civic celebrations and the Church's appropriation of that space through doctrinal disputes and rival public performances. Parts II and III investigate how particular locations expressed, and formed, the theological and social identities of Christian and Jewish groups by bringing together fresh insights from the archaeological and textual evidence. Together the essays here demonstrate how the use and interpretation of shared spaces contributed to the self-identity of specific groups in Late Antiquity and in so doing issued challenges, and caused conflict, with other social and religious groups.

Download or read book Reading the Bible in the Middle Ages written by Jinty Nelson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-09-24 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For earlier medieval Christians, the Bible was the book of guidance above all others, and the route to religious knowledge, used for all kinds of practical purposes, from divination to models of government in kingdom or household. This book's focus is on how medieval people accessed Scripture by reading, but also by hearing and memorizing sound-bites from the liturgy, chants and hymns, or sermons explicating Scripture in various vernaculars. Time, place and social class determined access to these varied forms of Scripture. Throughout the earlier medieval period, the Psalms attracted most readers and searchers for meanings. This book's contributors probe readers' motivations, intellectual resources and religious concerns. They ask for whom the readers wrote, where they expected their readers to be located and in what institutional, social and political environments they belonged; why writers chose to write about, or draw on, certain parts of the Bible rather than others, and what real-life contexts or conjunctures inspired them; why the Old Testament so often loomed so large, and how its law-books, its histories, its prophetic books and its poetry were made intelligible to readers, hearers and memorizers. This book's contributors, in raising so many questions, do justice to both uniqueness and diversity.