Tag: James Jeffers
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Household: Isis, Christians, and Social Change in the Empire
We naturally tend to look back on the Roman era as a more static period than it was. As I have been showing in recent posts, the first century B.C.E was a period of considerable turmoil that culminated in the establishment of the Roman Empire and the Pax Romana. Augustus sought to solidify his control…
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Household: Voluntary Associations
Up to this point, we have focused almost exclusively on the two institutions of the household and the state. Roman mythology suggests Rome was founded and ruled by kings in the 8th Century B.C.E., but the aristocrats unseated the king and formed a Republic in the late sixth century. That Republic prevailed until the mid-first…
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Household: The Household of Caesar (Part 2)
So how did the household of Caesar work? In the era of the Roman Republic, there was a degree of local autonomy in the provinces. Governors (proconsuls) had considerable freedom so long as taxes were paid and they suppressed insurrections. There was no fixed Roman bureaucracy in the various regions. When a governor left, he…