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That inscriptions are not only texts but also material objects of specific materiality and presence is one of the recent central insights of ancient epigraphy. This understanding is applied here for the first time systematically, across different regions and over an entire epoch, by examining the change in the inscriptions culture in late antiquity with a view of the Italian peninsula.

"Late Antiquity was particularly fertile in regard to the development of religion and philosophy; both what was propounded by scholars and what people throughout society thought and believed. The competition and cross-pollination between traditional Greco-Roman religion, Middle and Neo-Platonist philosophy, and Christian theology of the Patristic era created a feast for researchers that is both interesting and interdisciplinary. Current narratives of both peaceful competition and violent struggle between Christianity and Paganism (for lack of a better term) are reductive and incomplete. Greenwood's research, published between 2013 and 2018 in the fields of history, divinity, and philosophy, demonstrates the complexity of that era and provide a more fully-orbed picture of major actors including the Emperor Julian, Porphyry of Tyre, and Celsus. From the second to the fourth centuries, these were some of the major players in attempting to define the terrain in the conflict between their philosophies and the Christian religion. While the timeframe remains consistently within the late second to the mid-fourth centuries A.D., the evidence ranges between inscriptions, literature, and historical accounts. The particular focus of Greenwood's research is the emperor Julian (Flavius Caludius Julianus, d. 363), a figure of perennial interest, as not only the last pagan emperor, but the last anti-Christian polemicist of real significance in antiquity. This volume builds upon numerous recent articles offering a new perspective on Julian, bringing together research from ancient history, Neoplatonist philosophy, and patristic theology, and will be useful to students and scholars alike from these disciplines"--

This collection of papers, arising from the Late Antique Archaeology conference series, explores war and warfare in Late Antiquity. Papers examine strategy and intelligence, weaponry, literary sources and topography, the West Roman Empire, the East Roman Empire, the Balkans, civil war, and Italy

Material is the substance of the world of things. Literary sources suggest that materiality was part of aesthetic perception, loaded with meaning and bound to function even in antiquity. To date, this complex reading of material has not been adequately represented in archaeological research. The present volume addresses this oversight by examining the decorative use of material in Roman Italy between the Late Republic and Early Imperial period.

In Late Antiquity, people commonly sought to acquire knowledge about the past, the present, and the future, using a variety of methods. While early Christians did not doubt that these methods worked effectively, in theory they were not allowed to make use of them. In practice, people responded to this situation in diverse ways. Some simply renounced any hope of learning about the future, while others resorted to old practices regardless of the consequences. A third option, however, which emerged in the fourth century, was to construct divinatory methods that were effective yet religiously tolerable. This book is devoted to the study of such practices and their practitioners, and provides answers to essential questions concerning this phenomenon. How did it develop? How closely were Christian methods related to older, traditional customs? Who used them and in which situations? Who offered oracular services? And how were they treated by the clergy, intellectuals, and common people?

"Written by an international cast of experts, The Materiality of Text showcases a wide range of innovative methodologies from ancient history, literary studies, epigraphy, and art history and provides a multi-disciplinary perspective on the physicality of writing in antiquity. The contributions focus on epigraphic texts in order to gauge questions of their placement, presence, and perception: starting with an analysis of the forms of writing and its perception as an act of physical and cultural intervention, the volume moves on to consider the texts' ubiquity and strategic positioning within epigraphic, literary, and architectural spaces. The contributors rethink modern assumptions about the processes of writing and reading and establish novel ways of thinking about the physical forms of ancient texts"--