Language and Power in the Roman Empire and Early India
Hierarchy, Ambiguity, and the Art of Reading the Signs in Cosmopolitan Cultures
By (author) Karsten Johanning
Paperback (Published)
(July 2026)
ISBN: 9783515141536
6.69 x 9.49 inches
Price: $84.00
In stock
Attempting to bypass earlier and present discussions about Romanization, identity, and globalization, this book confronts the issue of cultural elite integration in the early Roman Empire in a new way by focussing on prestige language as a connecting factor in a Eurasian context. Thus, through a comparison with a central period in early Indian history (around 300 BC–AD 600), Karsten Johanning seeks to add perspectives from Sanskrit to the Greco-Roman cosmopolitanism of both emperors and intellectuals.
Four case studies are structured around different types of signs: on the body, in fictitious literature, in religious discourse, and in topography. Drawing on these, Johanning shows that for cosmopolitans in Rome and India, the ability to read and interpret signs in different contexts was essential for creating both cosmopolitan life-worlds, distinction, and social boundaries. Ancient cosmopolitans, well versed in different intertextual systems, were therefore able to make the most out of the complex hierarchies and inherent ambiguities of the premodern world. Yet the social stakes were always high, especially at the competitive and volatile imperial courts of universal rulers.
Originally trained as a classical guitarist, Karsten Johanning started studying history at the University of Copenhagen at a mature age. He specialized in the cultural history of the Roman Empire, and his book is the revised version of his Ph.D. thesis from 2018. Karsten Johanning teaches history, ancient culture, and Latin at Birkerød Gymnasium (high school), north of Copenhagen.
- By (author) Karsten Johanning
Other Titles in this Series
Göttliche Kinder
Ikonographische Untersuchung zu den Darstellungskonzeptionen von Gott und Kind bzw. Gott und Mensch in der griechischen Kunst
Aspects of Roman Dance Culture
Religious Cults, Theatrical Entertainments, Metaphorical Appropriations
Zur literarischen Fiktion von Kindheit
Überlegungen zu den apokryphen Kindheitsevangelien Jesu im Rahmen der antiken Biographie
Rom – Die antike Seerepublik
Untersuchungen zur Thalassokratie der res publica populi romani von den Anfängen bis zur Begründung des Principat
Drum bietet zum Bunde die Hände
Rechtssymbolische Akte in zwischenstaatlichen Beziehungen im orientalischen und griechisch-römischen Altertum
Peripherie-Denken
Transformation und Adaption des Gottes Silvanus in den Donauprovinzen (1.–4. Jahrhundert n. Chr.)
Imperator et Episcopus
Zum Verhältnis von Staatsgewalt und christlicher Kirche zwischen dem 1. Konzil von Nicaea (325) und dem 1. Konzil von Konstantinopel (381)
Squalor
Symbolisches Trauern in der Politischen Kommunikation der Römischen Republik und Frühen Kaiserzeit
The Christian Mystery
Early Christianity and the Ancient Mystery Cults in the Work of Franz Cumont and in the History of Scholarship
Zwischen Krise und Alltag / Conflit et normalite
Antike Religionen im Mittelmeerraum / Religions anciennes dans l'espace mediterraneen
Volume 1
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