Patricia Langer-Dintrone

Bio: Patricia Langer-Dintrone is an academic researcher. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 23 citations.

Art and architecture

Abstract: Greek artefacts, craftsmen and artists had penetrated Rome since regal days; from the second century BC this trickle had become a continuing and influential flood, contributing together with Italic and Etruscan architecture and art, and the developing central Italian and Roman concrete architecture, to the rich tapestry of the art of the capital. Vespasian (69-79), founder of the Flavian dynasty, showed an astute pragmatism in his handling of architecture and art. In the provinces the architectural and art forms characteristic of the Flavian era continued to flourish. Dynamism returned to imperial commissions with the Romano-Spanish Trajan. The age of Hadrian (117-38) proved to be extraordinary, largely because of the extent to which he was able to impress upon it his own many-sided personality: ruler, philhellene, architect, dilettante, poet, traveller and romantic. The rich artistic harvest of the Flavian to the Antonine ages was not just an imperial, but a corporate achievement, one which offered a worthy inheritance to following generations.

Rebels and outsiders

Abstract: Formal status, more precisely the degrees of generosity in the dispensation of citizenship to the various peoples of the empire, offers only one measurement of membership in that larger city, the patria communis, that the empire pretended to be. The spread of citizenship, and of Roman-style urban communities with which citizenship was correlated, was an uneven process. The extension of citizenship and urban developments of Roman-type in the western Mediterranean was marked by considerable successes in the plains regions of the general geographic area. As with all historical portraits of the 'barbarian', the negative side of the Roman image of the foreigner was rooted in the proven inferiority of the external society. Surrounded by the twin worlds of ethnicity and rusticity were the urban centres that constituted the core of Roman society. Each town and village, depending on the wider regional and ethnic context in which it was embedded, had its own spectrum of unacceptable persons, of social outcasts.

Hadrian to the Antonines

Abstract: Hadrian's position as emperor was apparently far from secure. Hadrian is said to have played a personal role in the temple's design, one of many examples of his vaunted omniscience. Only Antoninus Pius' insistence that failure to deify would involve the annulling of Hadrian's acts, including his own adoption, enabled him to overcome. In 143 or 144 the young orator from Hadriani in Mysia, Aelius Aristides, delivered at Rome his famous speech in praise of the empire, which has largely contributed to the favourable verdict of posterity on the Antonine era. With Pius' death Marcus lacked only the name Augustus and the position of pontifex maximus, having held imperium and tribunician power for nearly fourteen years: there was no doubt that he was emperor. Out of respect for Pius, Marcus assumed the name Antoninus, while Lucius gave up the name Commodus, which he had borne from birth, and took instead Marcus' name M. Annius Verus.

Local and provincial institutions and government

Abstract: Government and administration today are somewhat different concepts, the one meaning more or less policy-making, the other the implementation of government decisions. There is no such difference in Roman political thinking and vocabulary, but in the world of facts there is something not exactly similar but going in the same direction. Administration was made easier for those responsible because its aims were fairly restricted: economy and transport, culture, education and science, social relations and welfare were not targets of state intervention. Day-to-day administration was probably not very different between the various types of province. The governor's main job was always to keep the peace of the province against the ubiquitous robbers: curare, ut pacata atque quieta provincia sit quam regit. Another important job of the governor, to ensure that taxes were paid, involved deciding beforehand how many people there were and how much they had to pay.