Suchergebnisse

The following article discusses the importance of the province of Fars/Persis as an important province and the Persian Gulf as an important entrep�t. The essay seeks to demonstrate that because of the Perso-Byzantine rivalry the amount of trade on the silk roads was reduced and consequently the amount of sea trade via the Persian Gulf was increased by the fifth and sixth centuries C.E. The campaign for controlling trade in silk and spices was taken to the seas, and Persian colonies were established as far away as Sri Lanka. Administrative seals and Sasanian silver coins also indicated a lively exchange of commodities and the presence of Persians in East Asia.

Abstract
In Renaissance Italy, the political power of authorities found one of its expressions in material symbols of sovereignty. The placing of inscriptions, sculptures and columns and the commissioning of frescoes in streets, piazzas and public spaces, for example, were essential ways of communicating political or spiritual authority to the populace. Sometimes perceived as representations of a top-down form of communication, in the urban context these same material emblems of power became political objects through which to express dissent, as in the case of public loggias, speaking statues or graffiti on walls and civic palaces. Presenting case-studies from various cities in northern Italy, this article investigates the dialectics between the people and the authorities in the urban fabric, especially in everyday life. Combining a spatial and a material approach to politics, this article reveals the dynamic and relational nature of political public spaces.

Pratik Chakrabarti, Inscriptions of Nature: Geology and the Naturalization of Antiquity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020, 280 pp.

Although much scholarly work has already been done on Roman marriage law, most of it deals with the classical era, and little has been done to explore the remarkably radical changes to marriage law in Roman law in late antiquity, that is, during the fourth and fifth centuries C.E. The Theodosian Code provides a unique and valuable source of information, despite the limitations evident in any legal text, on a wide range of legal issues pertaining to marriage: the necessity of marriage, the choice of marriage partner and consent to marriage, marriage payments, adultery and divorce, remarriage and inheritance, and even the marriages of slaves, soldiers, and clerics, and same-sex marriage. The extent of the changes revealed even demands new questions about the influence of Christian ideology on later Roman law.