Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Commons^™

Moral Revision In Latin Ethnography: A Reassessment Of Tacitus’ Germania And Caesar’S Bellum Gallicum, Joseph D. Davis

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

ABSTRACT

The preponderance of interest in the Roman frontier and its peripheral non-Roman cultures has manifested itself in all aspects of the discipline of Classical Studies: from material archaeology to the social historian’s inquiry into the voiceless minorities in antiquity. Consequently, scholarship pertaining to the ethnography of those who inhabited the frontier has been made intrinsically more important. Nevertheless, outdated modes of inquiry and overly positivistic interpretations have dictated their study and, in some cases, stripped texts of their underlying significance. Tacitus’ Germania is one such text.

Within the ethnographic tradition, the Germania exists as a series of puzzling singularities: …

'Horae' In Roman Funerary Inscriptions, Simeon D. Ehrlich

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

References to hours on Roman tombstones, long assumed to be a means of displaying affection for children, are shown to be the basis for horoscopes of the afterlife. Statistical analysis argues for the accuracy of the figures of hours recorded. Close study of the inscriptions demonstrates that all references, whether to points in time or durations are records of times of death. Such inscriptions were set up from the first-sixth centuries CE and were most prevalent in Rome, Italy, and North Africa. Among both pagans and Christians these times allow for the casting of horoscopes of the afterlife. The individual …