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The fourth century historian of the Roman Empire, Ammianus Marcellinus, focuses on attire and accessories that signify high rank, status and authority. In his narrative there are a number of cases where clothing and insignia feature in illegitimate or dangerous aspirations to power, and brought destruction upon the aspirants, or threatened to. An ongoing concern for Ammianus is how appropriately attired people are. He scorns the pretentious clothing of Roman nobles and bishops, took pleasure in retailing the reaction of the emperor Julian to his overdressed barber, and considered the craven Epigonius to be a philosopher only in his attire. Gallus Caesar's forced change from high to low status clothing portended his imminent execution. In his ethnographic excurses, Ammianus uses the attire of foreign peoples to define their otherness. The sixth century historian of Merovingian Gaul, Gregory of Tours, is largely oblivious to fine apparel unless it is the shining vestments of saints and angels. Humble and harsh clothing, such as skins and hair shirts denote spiritual commitment or reorientation, a change of "habit", a declaration that can be stripped away by enemies and persecutors while leaving the faith itself intact. Real ascetics eschew footwear in winter. The most striking feature of clothing in Gregory is the magical powers, to heal or punish, that it can absorb from the bodies of holy wearers. In both authors, clothes and character may be mismatched but Ammianus does not share Gregory's fondness for simple and uncomfortable attire, and certainly not his belief that a few threads from the clothing of someone long dead can work miracles.
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The paper deals with the question of research of Classical Antiquity in Austria, first of all at the University of Vienna, and also problems of "barbaricum" in the contemporary Austrian historiography. The emphasis is put on the role of G. Dobesch, Professor of the University of Vienna.
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The cognomen, mentioned only by Dio, which purports to be the original cognomen of the future emperor Augustus, apparently was not correctly transmitted and continues to puzzle scholars. This seems however to be a case in which knowledge of the numismatic sources helps solve a problem in a literary source, or rather, a case in which a familiarity on the part of ancient writers with still circulating coins deformed the literary tradition.
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Suetonius has become one of the most influential and important ancient sources for our understanding of the socio-political climate in First Century Imperial Rome and the personalities of its emperors. However, he has illustrated in his texts a bias, often in a subtle manner that illustrates the historical and cultural aspects of the literary climate during this period. One notable example is his Life of the Emperor Domitian, which corresponds well with the maturity of Suetonius' writings by this time, but is also unique because of its construction and personal attributes, being the most recent imperial life written by Suetonius. This life illustrates both the literary climate of this period (being clearly influenced by its Senatorial audience) as well as the damning and lasting impressions that the damnatio memoriae has had upon the historical sources on the Emperor Domitian.
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In the lines 93-94 of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, five goddesses (Artemis, Leto, Aphrodite, Themis and Athene) are enumerated. The reason why the poet of the hymn arranged them in that order has not been made clear yet. The purpose of this paper is to find a solution to this question.
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In this paper I present a synthetic overview of recent and ongoing research in the field of doxography, that is, the study of the nature, transmission and interrelations of sources for ancient Greek philosophy. The latest revisions of the theory of Hermann Diels (Doxographi Graeci 1879) regarding the historiography ought to be known more widely, as they still influence our understanding of the Presocratics and their reception. The scholarly study on the compilations of Greek philosophical views from Hellenistic and later periods has received a major boost by the first of a projected three-volume study by Mansfeld and Runia (1997). Taking their work as a firm basis I also describe my own work in this area and how it can be related to, and fitted into, this trend by outlining how two important sources for the historiography of Greek philosophy, Theophrastus (4th-3rd c. BCE) and Simplicius (early 6th c. AD) stand in a special relation to each other and form an important strand in the doxographical tradition.
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