Greek Romans and Roman Greeks

In its first three centuries the Roman Empire expanded politically at the same time as Greek culture was enjoying its heyday. While this created tensions, it also occasioned many productive impulses, which were mirrored in different branches of cultural life. In this collection of papers an assembled team of international scholars from the fields of philology, the history of ideas, literature, epigraphy, archaeology and history explores the intercultural aspects of that thriving period. Lisa Nevett looks at the extent to which individual households and especially attitudes to women changed under Roman control. She presents archaeological evidence of patterns of social behaviour and concludes that a relaxation of restrictions on women took place from the later Hellenistic period onwards, prior to the arrival of the Romans. Paolo Desideri surveys Greek historiographical literature of the second century AD to find a key to Greek mentality and political ideology in the late Roman Empire. The Greeks did not have to give up their civilization and identity; Appian and Cassius Dio even created the idea of a Hellenistic rather than a Roman Empire. Philip Stadter argues that Plutarch in Lives is counseling the elite class of the Roman Empire and that Tiberius Gracchus in particular would have provided a useful lesson, e.g., for the emperor Hadrian. Ewen Bowie explores the literary tastes of Hadrian in Latin and, particularly, Greek poetry, including an examination of ancient sources to gain insight into his preferences, his own compositions and some of the poems composed by his friends or ministers.