The lines between death and life were neither fixed nor finite to the peoples of the ancient Mediterranean. For most, death was a passageway into a new and uncertain existence. The dead were not so much extinguished as understood to be elsewhere, and many perceived the deceased to continue to exercise agency among the living. Even for those more…[Read more]

In the turmoil around the turn of the fifth century, controversy over the legacy of Origen took center stage, and questions regarding the nature of the resurrection were among the main points of contention. What was the nature of the resurrection body? In what sense will post-resurrection life represent a continuation or a break with the present…[Read more]

Poster presentation.

A sense of an ending dominates accounts of African Christianity after the Vandal conquest of the 430s, not least as a result of the apparent disappearance of the Donatists in an Africa now ruled by Homoian Christians. In fact, the transfer from Donatist schism to new ‘Arian controversy’ more closely resembles the broader picture of Vandal Afr…[Read more]

Publication of a recently discovered, wooden wax tablet (tabula cerata) from Augustobona Tricassium (Troyes, F). The writing tablet was part of a vadimonium deed, which was issued to an inhabitant with the Celtic name Nerta in the second half of the 1. century AD. The document sheds light on the question of the diffusion and usage of Roman civil…[Read more]

The aim of this paper is to explore and call into question the account of the insurrection of a number of Germanic tribes against the Huns, in the so called Battle of Nedao River (second half of the fifth century). The testimony of this battle, recorded by Jordanes, represents the end of the submission of many Germanic and nomadic groups and the…[Read more]

Monstrous omens appear four times in Herodotus: a concubine of the king of Sardis gives birth to a lion (1.84), a donkey is born with male and female genitalia (7.57), a horse gives birth to a hare (7.57) and fish come back to life whilst being cooked (9.120). These omens are the only occasions when monsters appear in close proximity to Greece;…[Read more]

The unexpected return of Lucan’s Pompey to civil war as a ghost (9.1–18) leads to newfound success vis-à-vis enemies and allies alike. The language and imagery of this postmortem narrative revisits the portrait of Pompey’s decline in Books 1–2, where it activates a latent theme of victorious return in spite of death. Pompey’s acts of possession…[Read more]

Die Analyse der epigraphischen Kultur der römischen Koloniestadt Augusta Raurica ist geprägt von der prekären Überlieferungslage der inschriftlichen Monumente. Erhalten haben sich primär diejenigen Inschriften, welche noch in der Spätantike ins Castrum Rauracense oder im Mittelalter und vor allem in der Frühen Neuzeit nach Basel verschleppt und an…[Read more]

Holztafeln fanden in der römischen Antike weite Verbreitung als Schriftträger. Nichtsdestotrotz sind materielle Überreste von solchen Schreibtafeln bis heute vergleichsweise rar. Dies ist vor allem auf die prekären Überlieferungskonditionen von Holz zurückzuführen. Insbesondere in Mittel- und Westeuropa sowie in Britannien fanden und finden sich b…[Read more]

Article (in Greek) on the historiography of Early Byzantine urbanism and the example of Messene, an important Roman city in the Peloponnese that changes radically during the Early Byzantine and Byzantine Early Medieval period.

Pelagios is a community-driven initiative that facilitates better linkage between online resources documenting the past, based on the places that they refer to. Our member projects are connected by a shared vision of a world – most eloquently described in Tom Elliott’s article “Digital Geography and Classics” (Elliot and Gillies, 2009) – in which…[Read more]

During the Persian wars, poikilia refers to the gaudy fabrics worn by the Persians ; however, these were not rejected by the Athenian society, since, among the elite’s imported oriental luxury goods, were the heavily embroidered garments they had adopted. Their democratization at the end of 5th c. BC was more concerned with civic imagination t…[Read more]

Writer-director Terrence Malick makes the character of Pocahontas in The New World (2005) deliver several lines from Sappho as her own thoughts and words. These quotations, in conjunction with allusions to Vergil and other sources, open narrative directions that enable Pocahontas to emerge within a film that begins as an epic of European…[Read more]

List of “Gospel Thrillers” as part of work in progress

List of “Gospel Thrillers” as part of work in progress

Lecture delivered to near eastern studies and religious studies programs.