Whilst the enforced movement of enslaved workers was by far the largest example of economic mobility in the ancient world, there is also plenty of evidence for more voluntary economic movement. This relates particularly to traders and skilled workers, for whom mobility could provide specific economic benefits, opening up new markets, enabling further training, increasing prestige, and maximizing income by moving to wherever their skills or goods were most in demand. Less positively, mobility could also be a necessity when work such as construction was episodic and, to a certain extent, seasonal. Other economic opportunities, such as agricultural labour at harvest time, or porterage in maritime and riverine harbours and cities, were also seasonal, with demand for labour following a relatively predictable annual schedule, whilst extractive industries such as mining and quarrying typically had to bring in workers from elsewhere. Much of this movement was temporary in nature, and so is best thought of as mobility rather than migration, although movement likely ranged from permanent migration at one extreme to near-constant itinerancy at the other.
Article
mobility, economic
Claire Holleran
Article
environment
Rebecca Futo Kennedy and Katherine Blouin
Article
Near Eastern Myths, Sumerian-Akkadian
J. Cale Johnson
Article
Cayster River
Marijana Ricl
Article
landscapes, Roman
Kim Bowes
Roman landscapes exhibited enormous diversity, from the rolling hills of the Mediterranean heartland, to Nile marshlands, Apennine mountain pastures, and African pre-deserts. New work on this diversity has demonstrated the intensive methods with which they were managed for agriculture and artisanal output, as well as their highly periodized histories. While much debate in the study of these landscapes has revolved around ancient climate change, more apparent is robust human intervention, which often reached a peak during the Roman period. Romans thought deeply about landscapes, and their literature and religious rituals used landscape to frame moral, religious, and political values.
Unlike the landscapes of the Greek city states, those encompassed by the Roman empire at its height were diverse in the extreme. Among the empire’s territories were the pre-desert regions of Tripolitania and the Syrian frontier, the mountain pastures of the Apennines, and the marshes of the Egyptian oases, not to mention the rolling limestone landscapes of the Mediterranean heartland. Even within smaller slices of these territories (and even within tiny micro-regions), new work has revealed the remarkable diversity of vegetation, sunlight, rainfall, and topography. It is the plurality of these landscapes that gave Romans material for a rich tradition of literary and religious expression as well as a vast and intensive apparatus for economic exploitation.
Article
Marcian of Heraclea
Bianca Maria Altomare
Article
underworld
Radcliffe G. Edmonds III
Depictions of the underworld, in ancient Greek and Roman textual and visual sources, differ significantly from source to source, but they all draw on a common pool of traditional mythic motifs. These motifs, such as the realm of Hades and its denizens, the rivers of the underworld, the paradise of the blessed dead, and the places of punishment for the wicked, are developed and transformed through all their uses throughout the ages, depending upon the aims of the author or artist depicting the underworld. Some sources explore the relation of the world of the living to that of the dead through descriptions of the location of the underworld and the difficulties of entering it. By contrast, discussions of the regions within the underworld and existence therein often relate to ideas of afterlife as a continuation of or compensation for life in the world above. All of these depictions made use of the same basic set of elements, adapting them in their own ways to describe the location of, the entering into, and the regions within the underworld.
Article
Vibius Sequester
David Paniagua
Article
wetlands (bog, marsh)
Giusto Traina
The most common words to designate a marsh, a swamp, or a bog are helos in ancient Greek and palus in Latin; beside these terms, less common words were also employed. Literary and epigraphic texts give evidence for marshlands in the countryside, in the coastal areas, and also close to urban agglomerations. The sources often give evidence for drainage activity, but cases of extensive drainage are rare. In fact, they were possible only at public expense, by employing free or slave labor. On the other hand, several territories were characterized by a sort of marsh economy. Although rarely portrayed in literature, and despite the risk of malaria, marshy areas presented some economic potential: fishing, hunting, salt extraction, and farming. In many respects, the negative image of wetlands is a modern invention. The contrast between the rational order of the Roman countryside and the “barbaric” medieval landscape was introduced by the Enlightenment, and must be treated with caution.
Article
changing landscapes, human impact on
John Bintliff
The Classical world witnessed many forms of physical landscape change due to long-term and short-term geological and climatological processes. There have also been alterations to the land surface resulting from an interaction between human impact and these natural factors. Cyclical changes in land use, agricultural technology, economy, and politics have continually transformed the rural landscapes of the Mediterranean and the wider Classical world and their mapping, in turn, can shed light on fundamental aspects of ancient society that are not always documented in Classical texts.
As with natural causes of landscape change (see
