Egeria, a late fourth century Christian pilgrim to Jerusalem, describes a dramatic ritual on the morning of Good Friday. This text is remarkable on several counts: it is written by a female, it has an early date (soon after Constantine’s initiatives in establishing Christian pilgrimage) and it provides a wonderfully detailed description of the areas visited in Jerusalem during Holy Week. She and the other pilgrims venerate the wood of the cross, the inscription over Jesus’s head, the horn used to anoint the kings of Israel, and the ring of Solomon. Throughout her account, Egeria stresses the importance of pilgrims being assured of the truth of their faith by encountering physical landscapes and tangible objects. Theatrical studies in dramaturgy and stagecraft affirm the role which props play in helping actors activate memory and achieve a rich performance. This chapter examines the network of symbols in these artifacts using ritual studies, theatre analysis and space and place theory, demonstrating how these objects were used as props in a complex ritual drama, which offered material, sensory and embodied experiences for religious pilgrims.

How can we use cognitive approaches to embed the dynamic and often variant outcomes of ritual experiences? Key themes that have emerged in both individual and communal rituals are the subjectivity and variation in these experiences: the role of physical and emotional interaction in shaping memory. The concluding chapter begins with a vivid discussion of cognition, sensation and experience, exploring how these elements function together, creating a spectrum of variable experiences and outcomes in modern and ancient ritual contexts. This section is used to further develop ideas, common themes and issues connecting the different chapters – the versatility of ritual experience(s), the role of embodied cognition in constructing ritual experience(s), the importance of the relationship between distributed cognition and ritual experience(s) - and how these themes help to expand disciplinary boundaries in the study of ancient religions and religious rituals. The concluding chapter also situates the themes of the volume within current cognitive science of religion research as well as broader disciplines such as art, heritage and museum studies. These discussions address how the study of ancient religions from a cognitive perspective can contribute to a number of disciplines, opening up new venues for research and interdisciplinary collaboration.

How should we perceive the relationship between Athenians and Boiotians in the Archaic and Classical periods (550–323 BCE)? Previous scholarship regarded it as rife with hostility, perpetually locked in mutual fear, only rarely interspersed with times of peace or alliance. In this introduction, the speech given by the Boiotian general Pagondas prior to the Battle of Delion (424 BCE) will be used to argue that his arguments about moralistic behaviour, commemoration and borderland interaction between the neighbours were an exception, rather than the rule, unlike conclusions of previous scholars. Following this speech, the chapter turns to a description of the geographical layout of both regions and how these were intertwined and connected. After this description, the three themes of the book – norms of interstate relations, geopolitical considerations and commemorative practices – are elaborated upon to show what the current state of scholarship on these issues is. It stresses that human experience and nature are complex and multifocal and should therefore treated as such, rather than aim for an overarching framework to capture the lived experience.

The abolition of the poll tax in Illyricum and Thrace made automatically the estate owner’s guarantee for this void and with that the census registration and the colonate. To prevent loss of labour in these war-stricken provinces the emperors introduced in 371 and 398 the rule that, although now free from subjection, former coloni had to remain on the estate and render services. This ‘free’ colonate, which must have existed before, was also introduced in Palestine in 386. The status of the ‘free’ coloni in Byzantium looks very similar to the status of the serfs, villeins, or Hörigen in medieval West-Europe, who also were tied to a plot of land. But there were differences too: unlike in some cases there, these coloni were not in any way subjected to the jurisdiction of their masters, nor required to ask permission for marriage, etc. Further, as far as we know, there is no link between the two phenomena. If we would call them nevertheless serfs, it should always be with the adjective Byzantine.

Nobody knows the identity or background of the Roman author Q. Curtius Rufus, or when he wrote his History of Alexander the Great. This text along with Arrian’s Anabasis, Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, Diodorus Siculus Book 17 and Justin’s Epitome of Trogus Books 11–12 and the Metz Epitome is one of the main ancient sources on the reign and campaigns of the Macedonian conqueror. This chapter surveys current thinking on Curtius’ history, including issues like the historian’s probable sources, his literary structure, intertexuality and his characterization of Alexander. In particular the chapter explores the historian’s excursuses – in which he appears to be speaking in propria persona on Alexander’s personality as well as his portrayal of Alexander’s relationships with women, including the Athenian courtesan, Thais ,and the Amazon queen, Thalestris, and especially, the Persian queen, Sisygambis, the mother of Darius III.

As the principal sources of Arrian, Ptolemy and Aristobulus occupy a privileged position in the historiographical tradition on Alexander, although their histories survive only in fragments. Both wrote eyewitness accounts of Alexander’s expedition, and offer valuable insight as to how Alexander spun some of the more controversial aspects to his contemporaries. Ptolemy was a high-ranking officer, and so his history focused on the military events, in which he exaggerated his own contributions in order to portray himself as a worthy successor to Alexander. He also emphasized his close association with Alexander (reconfigured as a Ptolemaic predecessor) in order to legitimate the foundation of his future dynasty in Egypt. Aristobulus’ role on the expedition, on the other hand, appears not to have been a military one. His generally eulogistic treatment of Alexander focuses upon his clemency, although occasionally overt criticisms of his ruthless imperialism and increasing megalomania can be discerned. Because Aristobulus is largely unknown apart from the authorship of his history, it is difficult to ascertain in whose interest he manipulated the figure of Alexander, whose memory had become hotly contested in the turbulent years after his premature death.

This chapter investigates names making a reference to the king or royal power, in particular names that contain the element šarru ‘king’. After elucidating the typology of these names and the changing conceptions of royalty that are reflected in them, it turns to the question, based on prosopography, of how such typological ‘Beamtennamen’ are actually represented among the names of officials, and to which degree names of this type are indicative of a specific socio-economic and administrative collocation of the name-bearers.

The chapter considers the motivation for Alexander the Great’s expedition to India, which took him beyond the limits of the Persian Empire he had set out to conquer. Ambition (pothos) is seen as more probable than either strategic necessity or scientific curiosity. The course of the campaign from November 326 to July 325 BC is outlined, and the reasons for the savagery of the fighting during the journey down the Indus are considered. The chapter also reviews the impact of Alexander’s encounter with the ‘naked philosophers’ of Taxila. One of them, Calanus, travelled with Alexander until his death, and it is suggested that his conversation made an impression on another of Alexander’s companions, the philosopher Pyrrho, who became known as the founder of scepticism. The paper also reviews the legacy of Alexander in India. Foremost is the detailed account of India written by Megasthenes, a former member of Alexander’s army and ambassador from Seleucus to Candragupta. Indo-Greek dynasties persisted in north-west India for two centuries after Alexander’s death, but to narrate this history would go beyond the subject. The chapter looks briefly at the evidence for other Greeks who left records of their residence in India.

After discussing the historical processes that led to Arabian names being recorded in Babylonian texts, especially during the reign of Nabonidus in the mid-sixth century BCE, the chapter offers an extensive overview of the Arabian toponyms, ethnonyms, and anthroponyms that are attested in these records.

Alexander’s treaties and dealings with the Greek poleis mainly followed the path set by his father’s military success and diplomatic skills. The League of Corinth, an alliance between the states of the Common Peace with the aim of revenge against the Persian invasion of 480–79 BC was renewed by Alexander just after he became king. But the destruction of Thebes in 335 BC soon showed the Greeks that Alexander was ruthless in his authority, and it left a deep impression on them, for the only rebellion against Macedon with was the monor one of Agis III of Sparta, who failed to subdue Antipater’s armies. In Asia Minor, Alexander treated the Greek poleis as it suited him, with rewards for friends and punishments and for foes. During the conquest of the Achaemenid Empire, Alexander settled Greek populations in the new spear-won landscapes, spreading the Greek culture as he travelled, surrounded in his court by artists, philosophers and many other Greek intellectuals.

This chapter discusses the crises Alexander faced leading up to his succession to his father, Philip II: his dispute with Attalus at Philip’s wedding to Cleopatra, its causes, significance and aftermath; and the Pixodarus affair. It then turns to the crisis of the succession itself: the circumstances of Philip’s assassination at the hands of Pausanias, Alexander’s movements at the time of it, and the steps by which he secured the throne himself and legitimated himself as Philip’s successor.

In Babylonia, the name was used to establish the social identity of its bearer. Names attested to the piety of the family through frequent references to the protection of the divinity of the city or country. The name also marked the place of an individual within their kinship group. The frequent use of family names by the urban elite of the first millennium BCE, often referring to a prestigious ancestor, made it possible to mark a person as belonging to a well-recognised family group. By contrast, slaves, oblates, and other dependents often only had their personal name and their social qualification.

A construction like the colonate is known in the Heroninos archive (249–268). It is the paramonè agreement, where the estate owner grants credit and the debtor provides labour at the wish of the creditor, as a kind of interest. For the period from 364 to 293 constitutions are considered as issued originally. Retrogradely, several additions become visible. In the middle of the fourth century the coniugium non aequale is applied to coloni and some groups of workers, as is the senatusconsultum Claudianum. In 319 the coloni on imperial estates may be recalled: the essential mark of subjection. The same is shown in 332 for coloni on private lands: they are alieni iuris, may be recalled, and tax must be paid for them. Connected with the similar condicio for monetarii in 319, the colonate may have existed essentially in the beginning of the fourth century and can now be connected with a rescript of 293/4.