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Article

Acraephnium  

John Buckler

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography

Acraephnium (mod. Karditza), city in NE *Boeotia, located above a small bay of Lake *Copais; perhaps the Homeric Arne. Fortifications and cemeteries have been excavated, the latter revealing splendid examples of early painted pottery. It entered the Boeotian Confederacy in 447 bce, and by 395 bce joined with *Copae and *Chaeronea to form one unit. It provided the Thebans with shelter after *Alexander (3) the Great destroyed their city in 335 bce (see thebes (1)). In the wake of anti-Roman sentiment in 196 bce, Appius Claudius attacked the city. A long inscription details the benefactions of Epaminondas, a local magnate (mid-1st cent. ce), including repair of the Copais-dike protecting the civic land from flood. The *Ptoion was in Acraephnium's territory.

Article

Acragas  

Arthur Geoffrey Woodhead and R. J. A. Wilson

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Greek Material Culture
Was founded c.580 bce by the Geloans (see gela) in Sican territory in central southern Sicily. One of the most substantial Hellenic cities in size and affluence, it occupied a large bowl of land, rising to a lofty acropolis on the north and protected on the other by a ridge. Its early acquisition of power was owed to the tyrant *Phalaris. In 480*Theron was the ally of *Gelon in his victory at *Himera. After expelling Thrasydaeus, Theron's son, Acragas had a limited democratic government, in which *Empedocles, its most famous citizen, took part in his generation. Acragantine 6th- and 5th-cent. prosperity is attested by a remarkable series of temples, the remains of which are among the most impressive of any Greek city, and by its extensive, wealthy necropoleis. Sacked by the Carthaginians in 406, Acragas revived to some extent under *Timoleon and Phintias (286–280 bce), but suffered much in the Punic Wars.

Article

Acrisius  

Herbert Jennings Rose

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
Acrisius, in mythology, son of Abas, king of *Argos (1), and his wife Aglaïa, father of *Danaë and brother of *Proetus. After Abas' death the two brothers quarrelled; in their warfare they invented the shield. Proetus, defeated, left the country, returned with troops furnished by his father-in-law Iobates, and agreed to leave Argos to Acrisius, himself taking *Tiryns; both were fortified by the *Cyclopes.

Article

acrostic  

Don P. Fowler and Peta G. Fowler

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Latin Literature
Acrostic (Gk. ἀκροστιχίς, ἀκροστίχιον), a word or phrase formed from the initial letters of a number of consecutive lines of verse. Acrostics may occur by chance (Eust. Il. 24. 1; Gell.NA 14. 6. 4; Hilberg, Wien. Stud. (1899) 264–305, (1900) 317–18): whether they are accepted as significant will depend on their consonance with other aspects of the texts in which they occur. There are two broad types: proper names (especially the author's name as a kind of signature or *sphragis) and other words and phrases. Examples of the first type include *Nicander, Ther. 345–53 and Alex. 266–74 (inept or corrupt: cf. Lobel CQ1928, 114), Q. Ennius fecit in a work of *Ennius (Cic. Div. 2. 111: Epicharmus? cf. Diog. Laert. 8. 78), and Italicus…scripsit at the beginning and end of the *Ilias Latina. The second type is rarer: perhaps the most famous example is the Hellenistic watchword λεπτή, ‘fine’, at *Aratus (1)Phaen.

Article

acta  

John Percy Vyvian Dacre Balsdon and Andrew Lintott

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
Acta means ‘the things that have been done’ and has two specialized, overlapping senses in Roman history; one is a gazette, the other is official acts, especially of an emperor.The Acta diurna were a gazette, whose publication dates from before 59 bce (a 2nd-cent. bce example of these is quoted by Renaissance antiquarians but its authenticity has been doubted); from the late republic onwards it recorded not only official events and ceremonies, but lawsuits and public speeches, and was read both at Rome and in the provinces (Asc. 30–1 C; Tac. Ann. 16. 22). The Acta senatus (or Commentarii senatus) constituted the official record of proceedings in the senate, first published in 59 bce (Suet. Iul. 20). Under the Principate a senator was selected by the emperor to be responsible for the record (Tac. Ann. 5. 4). The proceedings were available to senators but *Augustus forbade their wider publication (Suet. Aug.

Article

Actaeon  

Herbert Jennings Rose and Jenny March

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
Actaeon, in mythology son of *Aristaeus and Autonoë, daughter of *Cadmus, and a great huntsman. Ovid gives the most familiar version of his death (Met. 3. 138 ff.): one day on Mt. Cithaeron he came inadvertently upon *Artemis bathing, whereupon the offended goddess turned him into a stag and he was torn apart by his own hounds. Other versions of his offence were that he was *Zeus' rival with *Semele (our oldest authorities: Stesichorus fr. 236 Davies, PMGF; Acusilaus fr. 33 Jacoby), or that he boasted that he was a better huntsman than Artemis (Eur. Bacch. 339–40), or that he wished to marry Artemis (Diod. Sic. 4. 81. 4). After his death his hounds hunted for him in vain, howling in grief, until the *Centaur Chiron made a lifelike image of him to soothe them (Apollod. 3. 4. 4).Actaeon torn by hounds is found in many works of art from the 6th cent. In earlier pictures he sometimes wears a deerskin (as apparently in Stesichorus), but the first vases on which he sprouts antlers are after the middle of the 5th cent. Artemis surprised bathing appears first in Pompeian paintings. See L.

Article

actio  

Thomas Rüfner

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 November 2016
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
In Roman law, the word actio refers to a civil lawsuit. At first sight, it seems obvious that actio derives from the verb ago, which has the basic meaning “to drive,” “to urge,” or simply “to act.” The Roman jurists themselves clearly regarded ago as the verb corresponding to the noun actio and meaning “to conduct a lawsuit” (cf. Festus, Gloss. Lat. 21, l. 15, s.v. agere). Hence, actio may be explained as referring to the claimant urging the judge (and/or the adversary) to do something,1 or simply to the claimant’s actions in court.2 Some scholars have proposed different etymologies. It seems possible that actio is not a derivative of ago (“to drive, to urge”), but of a root agjō meaning “to speak” (cf. the verb aio), and that the word was only later associated with ago.3 Alternatively, it has been argued that ago and aio have a common root that, in the context of archaic law, refers to a performative utterance which affects the Roman citizens collectively.

Article

Actium  

W. M. Murray

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Geography
  2. Roman History and Historiography
Actium (Ἄκτιον), a flat sandy promontory at the entrance to the Ambracian Gulf, forming part of the territory of Anactorium, as well as the NW extremity of *Acarnania. A cult of Apollo was located here as early as the 6th cent. bce to judge from the torsos of two archaic kouroi found on the cape in 1867. At this time, or soon thereafter, a temple stood on a low hill near the tip of the promontory where games were celebrated in honour of the god as late as the end of the 3rd cent. bce. In 31 bce the cape was the site of M. *Antonius (2)'s camp, and gave its name to the naval battle, fought just outside the gulf, in which he was defeated by *Octavian (2 September). A few years later, when Octavian founded *Nicopolis (3) on the opposite (northern) side of the strait, he took care to enlarge Apollo's sanctuary at Actium by rebuilding the old temple and adding a monumental naval trophy (not to be confused with the naval trophy he dedicated at Nicopolis). In ship-sheds constructed in the sacred grove at the base of the hill, he dedicated a set of ten captured warships, one from each of the ten classes that had fought in the battle (Strabo 7. 7. 6). Although the ships and their ship-sheds were gone (destroyed by fire) by the time Strabo composed his account, recent excavations have located the site where the kouroi were found in 1867 and have confirmed the location of the temple, obscured for many years.

Article

Acts of the Apostles  

Christopher Rowland

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Christianity
The second of two volumes which continues the story of the rise and spread of *Christianity begun in the gospel of Luke. Its textual history poses peculiar interpretative problems as it is extant in two versions, the longer in Codex Bezae. Its narrative starts with Jesus' ascension in Jerusalem and ends with *Paul preaching in Rome, where he had been taken after his appeal to Caesar (i.e. the emperor). The focus of the material on the earliest Jerusalem church around Peter and, later in the book, on the Christian career of Paul shows the concern of the author to relate the Jewish and Gentile missions and to demonstrate their basic unity. Only occasional glimpses are offered of the conflict in early Christianity which is evident in the Pauline corpus (e.g. Acts 6: 1 and 15). Acts has for a long time been a cause of great controversy between those who maintain the substantial authenticity of its historical account (while allowing for its apologetic interests) and those who see the document as a work of skilful narrative propaganda whose historical value is negligible. Knowledge of contemporary Graeco-Roman institutions should not mask the difficulties in accepting the historicity of Acts, a particular problem being the reconciliation of the accounts of Paul's career in Acts, Galatians 1 & 2, and the Corinthian correspondence. The references to Paul's theology indicate a markedly different set of ideas from what we find in the letters to the Romans and Galatians. For this and other reasons Acts has proved to be disappointing to the historian of Christian origins as a source for early Christian history. The history of the Jerusalem church after the start of the Pauline mission is only touched on in so far as it helps the author explain Paul's career as apostle to the Gentiles. Whereas Luke's gospel portrays Jesus as a Palestinian prophet with a controversial, indeed subversive, message for Jewish society, there is little in Acts (apart from the idealized accounts of the common life of the Jerusalem church) of that radicalism. The antagonism to *Jews and the sympathetic account of Roman officials evident in the gospel of Luke is continued in Acts, and a conciliatory attitude towards Rome has been suggested.

Article

Acts of the Pagan (or Heathen) Martyrs  

Edith Mary Smallwood and M. T. Griffin

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Latin Literature
Is the name given by modern scholars to about a dozen fragments of Alexandrian nationalist literature, preserved on papyri mostly written in the 2nd or early 3rd cent. ce. The majority of the fragments give, in dramatic form, reports of the hearing of Alexandrian embassies and of the trials of Alexandrian nationalist leaders before various Roman emperors. The episodes related, of which the dramatic dates range from the time of *Augustus to that of *Commodus, are probably basically historical and the accounts appear to be derived to some extent from official records. But they have been coloured up, more in some cases than in others, for propaganda purposes, to caricature the emperors, to stress the fearless outspokenness of the Alexandrians, who are sometimes surprisingly rude to the emperors, and to represent their punishment, usually execution, as martyrdom in the nationalist cause. This literature is in general bitterly hostile to Rome, reflecting the tensions between *Alexandria (1) and her overlord during the first two centuries of Roman rule.

Article

Acusilaus  

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature

Acusilaus, of Argos, lived ‘before the *Persian Wars’ (Joseph. Ap. 1–13) and compiled *genealogies, translating and correcting *Hesiod, with ingenious conjectures but no literary merit.

Article

Ada  

Simon Hornblower

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Near East

Ada, *satrap (see mausolus) of the Persian province of *Caria, youngest child of *Hecatomnus, sister of *Mausolus and of *Idrieus, to whom she was incestuously married and with whom she was co-ruler of Caria until his death in 344 bce. (See L. Robert, Hellenica 7 (1947), 63 ff., an interesting inscription from *Sinuri, which also shows that the Ptolemaic tax called the apomoira was of *Achaemenid Persian origin.) She then ruled alone (344–341) until displaced by her brother *Pixodarus. But *Alexander (3) the Great reinstated her in 334, and she adopted him as her son: Arr. Anab. 1. 23. Remarkably, he entrusted to her the siege of *Halicarnassus (Strabo 14. 2. 17).

Article

adaeratio  

Arnold Hugh Martin Jones and Michael Crawford

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Ancient Economy
  2. Roman Law
Adaeratio, the procedure whereby dues to the Roman state in kind were commuted to cash payments. The related word adaerare first appears in ce 383 (Cod. Theod. 7. 18. 8) and the practice is characteristic of the later Roman empire. But it is attested for certain dues supplementary to the standard form of *taxation in Cicero's Verrines and Tacitus' Agricola, along with its attendant abuses. In the later Roman empire the procedure was also applied to distributions by the Roman state in kind. The transaction was sometimes official, sometimes unofficial, and might be made on the initiative of the government, the tax-collector (see publicani), or the taxpayer in the case of levies, or of either party in the case of distributions. The rate might be settled by bargaining, or fixed by the government at the market price or at some arbitrary sum. The range of commodities involved was large. Just as dues and distributions in kind had assumed greater importance because of the collapse of the coinage system in the 3rd cent. ce, so a consciousness of the existence of a stable gold coinage after Constantine led to a slow move back to transactions in money, normally gold, over the late 4th and 5th cents.

Article

Adamklissi  

John Wilkes

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Roman Material Culture
Adamklissi, the site of three Roman monuments in the Dobrudja plain (South Romania): (1) an altar (16.2 m. (53 ft.) square and c.6 m. (20 ft.) high) recording legionary and auxiliary casualties, probably from *Trajan's first Dacian campaign (ce 101/2) rather than that of *Domitian; (2) a circular mausoleum or tropaeum (c.40 m. (131 ft.) diam.) standing on the crest of the hill, built of the same local stone as the altar, and perhaps also linked with Trajan's first Dacian war (ce 101/2); (3) a circular tropaeum (c.30 m. (100 ft.) diam.) in the better-quality Deleni stone dedicated in ce 108/9 (CIL 3. 12467; cf. E. Doruţiu-Boilă, Dacia (1961), 345 ff.) surmounted by a hexagonal column and victory tropaeum, dominating the hill and visible from the Danube more than 40 km. (25 mi.) away. See trophies.

Article

adeia  

Arnold Wycombe Gomme and P. J. Rhodes

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Law
Adeia, ‘immunity’, sometimes in Greece offered to men accused of involvement in a crime who were willing to inform on others (e.g. *Andocides in Athens' religious scandals of 415 bce). In Athens the term is used also of a special vote by the assembly permitting itself to discuss a subject which otherwise it would be forbidden to discuss (e.g. to levy the tax called *eisphora) or more generally to override an ‘entrenchment clause’ in an earlier decree forbidding discussion of a matter without a vote of immunity.

Article

Adiabene  

Margaret Stephana Drower, Eric William Gray, and Susan Mary Sherwin-White

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Near East
Adiabene (mod. Halab), district of the two Zab rivers in north *Mesopotamia. Possibly a Seleucid hyparchy, it became a vassal kingdom, later a satrapy, of *Parthia, and was constantly involved in her internal disputes and her wars with Rome. One of the dynasties of Adiabene embraced Judaism (Joseph. AJ 20.

Article

adlection  

John Percy Vyvian Dacre Balsdon and Barbara Levick

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
A man acquired the right of speaking in the Roman senate (ius sententiae dicendae; see senate) by holding a magistracy, the quaestorship; he became a full member when his name was placed on the senatorial roll (*album) (‘a censoribus…allectum’, Val. Max. 2. 2. 1). *Caesar, *dictator or praefectus morum (overseer of public morals), and the *triumvirs adlected men directly into the senate, presumably as quaestorii. (Adlection into the patriciate began with Caesar (Suet. Iul. 41. 2).) This unpopular proceeding was avoided by emperors until *Claudius, *censor in ce 47–8, admitted men inter quaestorios and tribunicios (ILS968); *Vespasian anticipated his censorship (Tac. Hist. 2. 82), but in 73–4 did the same (ILS 1024 = MW 321, inter praetorios). After *Domitian (life censor) men were routinely adlected. Adlection inter consulares first appears in ce 182, was practised by *Macrinus, and disliked (Cass.

Article

Adonis  

V. Pirenne-Delforge and André Motte

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
Name given by the Greeks to a divine personage whom they thought to be eastern in origin (Semitic Adon = ‘Lord’), but whose eastern prototypes (Dumuzi, Tammuz, Baal, Ešmun) are very different from the picture which became established in Greece. In mythology, Adonis is born from the incest of an easterner, whose name is variously given as Agenor, Cinyras, Phoenix, and Theias, and of *Myrrha or Smyrna. He aroused the love of *Aphrodite, who hid him in a chest and entrusted him to *Persephone, but she, captivated in her turn, refused to give him back. Then *Zeus decreed that the young man should spend four months of the year in the Underworld (see hades) and four months with Aphrodite—whom Adonis chose also for the final four months, left to his own decision. He was born from a myrrh tree, and dying young in a hunting accident, was changed into an anemone, a flower without scent ([Apollod.] 3. 14. 3–4; Ov. Met.

Article

adoption, Greek  

Pietro Cobetto Ghiggia

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Law

The article examines the institution of adoption in classical Greece. Although it has been a widespread practice since the most archaic times, the most complete sources are related to Athens, thanks to the oratory of the 4th century bce and to Gortyn, where the adoption procedure is preserved in an epigraphic document. In Athens, adoption is the main tool for the citizen to allow, in the absence of natural children, the safeguarding of his household (oikos), which is the basic unit of society. There were three methods of adoption: (a) inter vivos; (b) through a will (testamentary); (c) posthumously (the next of kin could obtain the recognition of the rights to become the heir of the deceased for himself or one of his descendants on the deceased’s oikos by addressing the archon). The procedure envisaged the presentation of the adopting to the phratry: it expressed a vote which, if favourable, then had to be approved at a public level with the enrolment in the deme.

Article

adoption, Roman  

Adolf Berger, Barry Nicholas, and Susan M. Treggiari

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Roman Law
Adoptio is a legal act by which a Roman citizen enters another family and comes under the *patria potestas of its chief. Since only a paterfamilias (see patria potestas) could adopt, women could not (except in later law by imperial grant). When the adopted person, male or female, was previously in the paternal power of another, the act was adoptio; when a male who was not in paternal power but himself the head of a family, it was adrogatio. Women could not be adrogated. Both acts involved a deminutio capitis minima, a reduction of legal status.Adrogatio fused two families, for with the adoptee (adrogatus) all under his power (potestas, manus) and his property pass into the family of the adopter (adrogator). In early times adrogatio was publicly validated by a vote of the curiate assembly, preceded (since it extinguished a family and its cult) by an investigation by the pontiffs; by the time of Cicero, 30 lictors represented the curiae (see curia (1)).