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Antoninus Pius was Roman emperor from 138 to 161. He was the fourth of the Five Good Emperors from the Nerva–Antonine dynasty.
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, and was ruled by emperors. From the accession of Caesar Augustus as the first Roman emperor to the military anarchy of the 3rd century, it was a Principate with Italia as the metropole of its provinces and the city of Rome as its sole capital. The Empire was later ruled by multiple emperors who shared control over the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. The city of Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until AD 476 when the imperial insignia were sent to Constantinople following the capture of the Western capital of Ravenna by the Germanic barbarians. The adoption of Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire in AD 380 and the fall of the Western Roman Empire to Germanic kings conventionally marks the end of classical antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Because of these events, along with the gradual Hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire, historians distinguish the medieval Roman Empire that remained in the Eastern provinces as the Byzantine Empire.
Romulus Augustus, nicknamed Augustulus, was Roman emperor of the West from 31 October 475 until 4 September 476. Romulus was placed on the imperial throne by his father, the magister militum Orestes, and, at that time, still a minor, was little more than a figurehead for his father. After Romulus ruled for just ten months, the barbarian general Odoacer defeated and killed Orestes and deposed Romulus. As Odoacer did not proclaim any successor, Romulus is typically regarded as the last Western Roman emperor, his deposition marking the end of the Western Roman Empire as a political entity, despite the fact that Julius Nepos would continue to be recognised as the western emperor by the east. The deposition of Romulus Augustulus is also sometimes used by historians to mark the transition from antiquity to the medieval period.
Egypt was a subdivision of the Roman Empire from Rome's invasion of the Ptolemaic Egyptian Kingdom after the battle of Alexandria in 30 BC to its loss by the Byzantine Empire to the Islamic conquests in AD 641. The province encompassed most of modern-day Egypt except for the Sinai, and was bordered by the provinces of Crete and Cyrenaica to the west and Judea, later Arabia Petraea, to the East. Egypt came to serve as a major producer of grain for the empire and had a highly developed urban economy. Aegyptus was by far the wealthiest Eastern Roman province, and by far the wealthiest Roman province outside of Italy. The population of Roman Egypt is unknown, although estimates vary from 4 to 8 million. Alexandria, its capital, was the largest port and second largest city of the Roman Empire.
The cursus publicus was the state mandated and supervised courier and transportation service of the Roman Empire, later inherited by the Eastern Roman Empire. It was a system based on obligations placed on private persons by the Roman State. As contractors, called mancipes, they provided the equipment, animals, and wagons. In the Early Empire compensation had to be paid but this had fallen into abeyance in Late Antiquity when maintenance was charged to the inhabitants along the routes. The service contained only those personnel necessary for administration and operation. These included veterinarians, wagon-wrights, and grooms. The couriers and wagon drivers did not belong to the service: whether public servants or private individuals, they used facilities requisitioned from local individuals and communities. The costs in Late Antiquity were charged to the provincials as part of the provincial tax obligations in the form of a liturgy/munus on private individual taxpayers.
Fiscus, from which comes the English term "fiscal", was the name of the personal chest of the emperors of Rome.
The practices of ancient Roman finance, while originally rooted in Greek models, evolved in the second century BC with the expansion of Roman monetization. Roman elites engaged in private lending for various purposes, and various banking models arose to serve different lending needs.
Brent Donald Shaw is a Canadian historian and the current Andrew Fleming West Professor of Classics at Princeton University. His principal contributions center on the regional history of the Roman world with special emphasis on the African provinces of the Roman Empire, the demographic and social history of the Roman family, and problems of violence and social order.
The Patrimony of Saint Peter originally designated the landed possessions and revenues of various kinds that belonged to the apostolic Holy See i.e. the "Church of Saint Peter" in Rome, by virtue of the apostolic see status as founded by Saint Peter, according to Catholic tradition. Until the middle of the 8th century this consisted wholly of private property, but the term was later applied to the States of the Church, and more particularly to the Duchy of Rome.
In the late Roman Empire and the Early Middle Ages a colonus was a tenant farmer. Known collectively as the "colonate", these farmers operated as sharecroppers, paying landowners with a portion of their crops in exchange for use of their farmlands.
Slavery in ancient Rome played an important role in society and the economy. Besides manual labour, slaves performed many domestic services and might be employed at highly skilled jobs and professions. Accountants and physicians were often slaves. Slaves of Greek origin in particular might be highly educated. Unskilled slaves, or those sentenced to slavery as punishment, worked on farms, in mines, and at mills.
The alimenta was a Roman welfare program that existed from around 98 AD to 272 AD. According to most modern historians, including Nerva biographers Nathan Elkins and John Grainger, it was initiated by emperor Nerva and expanded by Trajan. It helped orphans and poor children throughout Italy. It provided general funds, as well as food and subsidized education. The program was supported out of Dacian Wars booty and by a combination of estate taxes and philanthropy. In general terms, the scheme functioned by means of mortgages on Italian farms (fundi), through which registered landowners received a lump sum from the imperial treasure, being in return expected to pay yearly a given proportion of the loan to the maintenance of an alimentary fund. The program was likely terminated by emperor Aurelian following his triumph.
Rome's military was always tightly keyed to its political system. In the Roman Kingdom the social standing of a person impacted both his political and military roles, which were often organised into familial clans such as the Julia. These clans often wielded a large amount of power and were huge influences through the Roman Kingdom into the Roman Republic. The political system was from an early date based upon competition within the ruling elite, the patricians. Senators in the Republic competed fiercely for public office, the most coveted of which was the post of consul. Two consuls were elected each year to head the government of the state, and would be assigned a consular army and an area in which to campaign. From Gaius Marius and Sulla onwards, control of the army began to be tied into the political ambitions of individuals, leading to the First Triumvirate of the 1st century BC and the resulting Caesar's civil war. The late Republic and Empire was increasingly plagued by usurpations led by or supported by the military, leading to the Crisis of the third century in the late empire.
The constitution of the late Roman Empire was an unwritten set of guidelines and principles passed down, mainly through precedent, which defined the manner in which the late Roman Empire was governed. As a matter of historical convention, the late Roman Empire emerged from the Roman Principate, with the accession of Diocletian in AD 284, his reign marking the beginning of the Tetrarchy. The constitution of the Dominate outrightly recognized monarchy as the true source of power, and thus ended the facade of dyarchy, in which emperor and Senate governed the empire together.
Procurator was a title of certain officials in ancient Rome who were in charge of the financial affairs of a province, or imperial governor of a minor province.
Tymion was an ancient town in Phrygia, Asia Minor. Its site is located at the Turkish village of Şükraniye. From the middle of the 2nd century CE to the middle of the 6th century CE, Tymion was an important town for the ancient Christian church of Montanism. The Montanists, whose church spread all over the Roman Empire, expected the New Jerusalem to descend to earth at Tymion and the nearby town of Pepuza; Pepuza was the headquarters of Montanism and the seat of the Montanist patriarch. One of the founders of Montanism, Montanus, called both towns "Jerusalem." In late antiquity, both places attracted crowds of pilgrims from all over the Roman Empire. Women played an emancipated role in Montanism. They could become priests and also bishops. In the 6th century CE, this church became extinct.
The Apion family was a wealthy clan of landholders in Byzantine Egypt, especially in the Middle Egyptian nomes of Oxyrhynchus, Arsinoe and Heracleopolis Magna. Beginning as a local aristocracy, it rose to prominence in the 5th, 6th and early 7th centuries when several successive heads of the family occupied high imperial offices, including the consulship. After the Sasanian conquest of Egypt, the family disappeared.
Buruni is an ancient city of the Maghreb, in North Africa. The city has been identified with ruins at Henchir-El-Dakhla in Tunisia.
A contubernium was a quasi-marital relationship in ancient Rome between a free citizen and a slave or between two slaves. A slave involved in such relationship was called contubernalis.
The Curator Aquarum was a Roman official responsible for managing Rome's water supply and distributing free grain. Curators were appointed by the emperor. The first curator was Agrippa. Another notable Curator Aquarum was Frontinus, a Roman engineer.
References
- 1 2 3 Burton, Graham (2016). "patrimonium and res privata". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics. Oxford Classical Dictionary. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.4783. ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5 . Retrieved Feb 12, 2021.
- ↑ Tacoma, Laurens E. (2012). "Imperial estates, Egypt". The Encyclopedia of Ancient History. Wiley Online Library. doi:10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah07044. ISBN 9781444338386 . Retrieved Feb 11, 2021.
- ↑ Boissier, Gaston (1899). Roman Africa. G.P.Putnam's sons. pp. 184–185.
- ↑ Clausing, Roth (1925). The Roman Colonate: The Theories of Its Origin. Columbia University. pp. 139–144. Retrieved Feb 12, 2021.
- ↑ Crawford, Dorothy J. (1976). Finley, Moses I (ed.). Imperial Estates (PDF). Studies in Roman Property. Cambridge University Research Seminar in Ancient History. pp. 35–70. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107297920. ISBN 9780521211154 . Retrieved Feb 11, 2021.
- ↑ Duncan-Jones, R.P. (1976). Finley, Moses I (ed.). Some Configurations of Landholding in the Roman Empire (PDF). Studies in Roman Property. Cambridge University Research Seminar in Ancient History. p. 4. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107297920. ISBN 9780521211154 . Retrieved Feb 12, 2021.
