SPQR

The present paper deals with the diversity between the crafts of painting and shield making, which overlapped in terms and final products. The paper follows the question of the emergence of armorial signs and the craft of shield-makers. The primary sources for the study are the statutes of the two mentioned craft associations and guilds from Prague, Florence, Siena and Vienna. Treaties about heraldry can help understand artisan practice, especially Bartolus de Sassoferrato's De insigniis et armis, which deals with armorial practice and law. By comparing these materials, the limits of a hypothesis are defined from which a general idea of the functioning of the workshops of painters and shield-makers can be drawn. The study is focused mainly on the Prague context in which painters and shield-makers participated and seeks the limits of hypotheses within the framework of European examples. Furthermore, we are looking for commonalities and dissimilarities that lead to a better understanding of the general phenomenon of producing and painting arms-whether on shields or other media.

Fino al secolo scorso l'Adige, privo di argini e sovralimentato dal Noce era soggetto a continue inodazioni e proprio la loro frequenza costringeva il viaggiatore a prendere la via alternativa per permettere di evitare gli impaludamenti per raggiungere Verona o Venezia. Nel 1494 il pittore tedesco Albrecht Dürer fece il suo primo viaggio in Italia, per recarsi a Venezia, in seguito alla documentata alluvione, dopo aver probabilmente sostato al "Klösterle" di San Floriano presso Egna (costruito nel XII secolo e legato alla accoglienza dei viandanti) dalla piazza di Laghetti (m. 213) deviò lungo il sentiero per Pochi. Superata la forra del rio Lauco attraversò il ponte detto 'romano' attraversò Pochi di Salorno, salì fino al passo del Sauch (m. 915), proseguì per il lago Santo (m. 1200) e scese a Cembra, Faver, Castello di Segonzano (nei luoghi dove eseguì i famosi acquarelli) fino ad arrivare alle Piramidi di Segonzano. Questo percorso storico, conosciuto oggi come ;il sentiero del Dürer; fa rivivere, a chi lo percorre, le emozionanti scoperte paesaggistiche dei viandanti di un tempo. Il territorio che il sentiero del Dürer attraversa abbraccia entrambe le province della regione Trentino Alto-Adige, quella di Bolzano e quella di Trento. Le due terre seppure confinanti e unite dai comuni principi che governano la vita in montagna, hanno maturato nei secoli caratteristiche linguistiche, culturali e paesaggistiche proprie ed uniche. E' quindi importante presentare ed introdurre a grandi linee le due macro aree interessate: la Bassa Atesina e la Val di Cembra. La Bassa Atesina: il giardino dell'Alto-Adige.

A lo largo de los siglos Roma se ha constituido como un mito, un referente al que han acudido todos los poderes hegemónicos –o que aspiraban a serlo– de cada periodo histórico. El ideal romano se ha configurado como paradigma de potestas y sus símbolos han sido utilizados para legitimar los más diversos proyectos políticos. Los primeros ejemplos de esta tendencia los encontramos poco tiempo después de la desaparición formal del Imperio romano de Occidente, cuando los pueblos germanos tuvieron que justificar su nuevo dominio sobre las antiguas provincias.
La Roma medieval, con el pontificado al frente, no fue una excepción. Si bien los sucesores de Pedro basaron su poder durante los primeros siglos en los textos bíblicos y patrísticos, el final de las estructuras imperiales les permitió establecerse como el principal actor político de la urbe. Frente a esta tentativa se encontraron la aristocracia local, emperadores y otros monarcas europeos que deseaban controlar la ciudad para sus propios intereses. Cada uno de ellos tuvo que elaborar un discurso propio para legitimar sus aspiraciones, en los cuales el clasicismo desempeñó un importante papel. Es en este ámbito en el que desarrollaremos nuestro estudio.
La llegada de la Reforma de la Iglesia a Roma supuso el inicio de una nueva etapa en la que el pontificado se encaminó hacia un modelo teocrático. No fue un proceso sencillo, sino que los obispos romanos tuvieron que enfrentarse a numerosos enemigos políticos, como el Senado que se restauró en el siglo XII. Pese a los éxitos que obtuvieron algunos papas, la situación finalmente desembocó en un autoexilio en la ciudad francesa de Aviñón en 1304. Esta huida abre un periodo nuevo de la historia pontificia, en el que los discursos fueron diferentes al de nuestro trabajo.
En cuanto a los objetivos que nos hemos propuesto, el más importante es analizar la imagen y uso que se realizó del pasado clásico en Roma durante el periodo ya indicado. Principalmente nos centraremos en los discursos de poder elaborados por las principales facciones políticas: el pontificado y la nobleza local. Estos eran quienes poseían los medios necesarios para poder crear una ideología basada en la Antigüedad, al contrario que el pueblo romano. Los campesinos y agricultores no eran capaces de utilizar los monumentos antiguos o de crear una literatura propia reivindicando su posición debido a una evidente falta de recursos.
El segundo objetivo de nuestro trabajo se encuentra relacionado con el paisaje urbano y cómo las estructuras heredadas de época imperial se integraron en él. Muchos de estos edificios sufrieron un periodo de decadencia durante la Edad Media, hasta el punto de que gran parte de ellos se encontraban en ruinas o habían desaparecido. Sin embargo, otros se reutilizaron como templos o nuevos espacios de poder, en donde la Historia Antigua desempeñaba un papel importante.
Finalmente, también serán analizadas las historias y leyendas locales que hacían referencia a supuestos episodios ocurridos en el pasado. La mayor parte de ellas difieren de los acontecimientos reales, pero no por ello carecen de importancia. De hecho, conviene señalar que, pese a que nuestro punto de vista racional nos hace considerar estos relatos como mitos, fábulas o supersticiones, para la población de la época eran acontecimientos pretéritos. Por ello, consideramos que no sería útil señalar que se trata de episodios compuestos de manera literaria o mediante creencias, sino rastrear cuáles fueron las influencias del mundo clásico para la creación de estas historias.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, UNCED), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, held 3rd-14th June 1992, launched the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which operates through its annual roadshow the UN Conference of Parties (COP) that seeks to establish sustainable management of the global climate system.

The  'Earth Summit' by UN in 1992 brought the problems  in climate to the attention of even some of the world's most remote and isolated nations. One of these nations was the Hopi Nation in Arizona, a non-sovereign nation - which the UN labels as 'indigenous peoples'. In a long chain of events beginning from the League of Nations' decision in 1926 to deny the First Nations of Americas and the small island nations' representation in that international forum, its successor the United Nations, turned down four attempts by the Hopi Nation to raise the issue between 1948 and 1992. Finally, in the immediate aftermath of the Rio Earth Summit (1992), the United Nations Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar authorised the Hopi Nation to table the matter to the floor of UN General Assembly 10th-11th December 1992.

The First Nations of Americas Ethnoclimatology Motion and the Tradition-Keepers ('Faith-Keepers') background to that motion is elaborated here in this UNFCCC submission with further points were raised in 1st-2nd October 2018 at CRIAS conference. This contextualises the First Nations of Americas UN General Assembly Investigation Request 101292 which was the Concluding Plea of the World Indigenous Peoples' Joint Summit with the United Nations Parties ('Member States') Delegations to open the first UN Year of the Indigenous People (1993) to other ethnoclimatologies appearing world wide. The Geophysical Annotations were discussed at the Cochabamba-Tiquipaya Climate Summit (CMPCC1) in aftermath of the collapsed Copenhagen Climate Summit COP15 (2009) with the request from the UNESCO Delegation of the Plurinational State of Bolivia on 7th January 2010 and His Excellency President Evo Morales Ayma.

The key tenents of the Geophysical Annotations being:

(1) A signal noise from a substantial radiocarbon-dilution effect due to major sea level retreats and rises during the Ice Ages that depressurised methane clathrates - releasing copious amounts of methane and carbon dioxide into air from depressurised seabed clathrates and also from thawing terra firma permafrost; this results in regressive, or sideway, 14C  readings in tree rings ("tree rings in a wrong order"). Thus, the Ice Ages era (the last glacial maxium to holocene thermal maximum period) cores of the tree trunks can appear substantially 14C-younger than the tree trunks' latest (outermost) tree-rings which cannot be the case due to the extreme steadiness of the radiocarbon's decay rate.

(2) Methane accumulates to upper troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere: hence any methane signature in the ice cores is only from methane-in-transit. Additionally the global warming episode that ended the ice ages had heavy methane loads that warmed and melted away most of the era's recent ice surfaces, thus obliterating the-then-most recently laid down snow stratum (leaving behind the earlier less methane rich snow layers). This caused incomplete records (time gaps) in the ice cores, and hence "global warming" always appears "before" higher atmospheric CO2 or CH4 levels (hence appearing as if them being 'respondents', rather than the drivers of climate warning).

(3) Noting that the partial melting equations can also be run inverse direction, it is proposed that the Pleistocene glaciations resulted in damage to Peridotite which partially melted producing basalt deposition in a large scale onto the seafloor in vast effusive eruptions with field emission of heat rather than radial spot emission of heat like in modern-day Surtseyan eruptions that have only a minimal heat crossing to sea surface due to small spatial extent of hot subsea surface. The vaporisation of sea water in field emission is vast due to spatial extent of hot subsea surface greatly exceeding the thickness of overlying water column, leading to runaway snowfalls. This caused an inflated size hydrological cycle which effectively washed out atmosphere-generated radiocarbon while geological seabed-associated depressurised carbon-12 was being released en masse leading to negligible carbon-14 readings (the radiocarbon-dilution effect by the Pleistocene's hydrological cycle / sea bed depressurisation).

On these three premises, the First Nations of Americans Ethnoclimatology Motion at the United Nations General Assembly on 10th-11th December 1992 is proposed as a variant possibility to the climate theories advocated aggressively by the Western Group of Nations and their influential academia. Its implications to present-day climate change suggest that the Polar Ice Caps will continue on their much-faster-than-anticipated loss trajectory to violent collapses. This aspect was highlighted in Sea Research Society's Evidence Giving at the UK Houses of Parliament in Environmental Audit Committee evidence giving on 5th and 24th April 2017. The urgency of situation is underlined by the fact that despite world-wide economic shut down by covid-19, carbon dioxide has continued its rapid rise to 417 parts per million indicating that time to act is running out as the remaining North Pole marine ice cap is soon to melt away and then destabilise the surrounding glaciers post Arctic sea ice (most notably the Greenland Ice Sheet).

This study stresses the necessity to separate the notion of dynasty from that of monarchy for speaking of the succession of Augustus. The concern of Augustus was not to hide his will to establish a dynasty but to achieve it in a legitimate way by associating in the designation the Senate and the populus Romanus. Indeed, the Augustan restoration implied that these two instances remained sovereign. A large part of the population supported the strategy of Augustus. Augustus had to take into account expectations partly related to the history of Rome from its origins.
Cette étude montre que, dans le cadre de la succession d’Auguste, il est impératif de détacher la notion de dynastie de celle de monarchie à laquelle elle ne renvoie que très partiellement. Le souci d’Auguste n’a pas été de masquer sa volonté d’instaurer une dynastie mais de parvenir à le faire en légitimant les prétentions de son successeur et en associant à la désignation le Sénat et le peuple romain qui, dans le cadre de la restauration augustéenne, demeuraient souverains. La stratégie d’Auguste a bénéficié d’un parti-pris favorable d’une grande partie de la population de l’empire mais a dû prendre en considération des attentes particulières en partie liées à l’histoire de Rome depuis ses origines.

Cette contribution s’intéresse aux grands individus qui, de Marius et Sylla à Octavien-Auguste, ont marqué l’histoire des guerres civiles de la fin de la République, et traite en particulier des rapports que ces chefs militaires entretenaient avec les armées sur lesquelles ils s’appuyaient pour soutenir leur position politique. L’hypothèse mise à l’épreuve est que les conflits civils furent pour ainsi dire le laboratoire d’une nouvelle norme régissant le comportement des 'imperatores' vis-à-vis des soldats. La première partie de l’article rappelle en quoi les développements du IIe siècle a.C. préparèrent les innovations de l’époque des guerres civiles, et souligne que la soi-disant “réforme” de Marius ne fut à l’origine d’aucune norme nouvelle. Est ensuite analysé le développement d’une nouvelle 'ars imperatoria' de la part de Sylla, lequel instaure avec les troupes un rapport démagogique qui apparaît à la fois comme un développement et un dévoiement de la forme de commandement mise en œuvre par Marius. Ce modèle allait devenir contraignant pour les générations suivantes. La dernière partie de cette étude examine l’intégration de cette “norme impératoriale” héritée des guerres civiles dans le régime augustéen, où l’indispensable “proximité affective” avec les troupes n’est plus assurée par Auguste lui-même, lequel se donne à voir comme un 'princeps' davantage que comme un 'dux'. // [ENGLISH] This paper is dedicated to the great figures who, from Marius and Sulla to Octavian-Augustus, have left their mark on the history of the civil wars at the end of the Republic. It deals in particular with the relationship these commanders had with the armies which supported their political position. Our hypothesis is that the civil war was so to say a laboratory for the creation of a new norm governing the behaviour of the 'imperatores' towards the soldiers. In the first part of the paper it is reminded that the developments of the 2nd cent. B.C. prepared the innovations of the time of the civil wars, and that the so-called Marian “reform” was not the cause of any new norm. Next, we analyze how Sulla developed a new 'ars imperatoria' by establishing with his soldiers a demagogical relationship, which appears to be a development as well as a corruption of Marius’ style of command. This became a compelling model for the next generations. The last part of the paper examines the integration of the “imperatorial norm”, inherited from the civil wars, into the Augustan Principate. The essential “affective proximity” with the troops was then no more provided by Augustus, who presented himself much more as a 'princeps' than as a 'dux'.

The Augustan principate has many elements of a monarchical system. However, this does not allow to question the reality of the Augustan restoration and to emphasize the ambiguity of the regime. The hypotheses such as “monarchy with republican façade” or a “republican fiction” are misleading. Indeed, the restoration of res publica hasn’t prevented institutional developments or monarchical inclinations. The whole basis of res publica was the respect of “ways of doing” and procedures, a frame considered as immutable. Augustan restoration didn’t aim to restore a prior state but to restore this frame (that of senatus populusque romanus). And this could be done with the establishment of a new political regime. Therefore, the Augustan principate cannot be considered as a cover intented to give a republican façade to a monarchical power.

Le fait que le principat augustéen ait une composante monarchique marquée appelée à s’affirmer de plus en plus avec le temps n’autorise pas à douter de la réalité de la restauration augustéenne et à dénoncer l’ambiguïté du régime. L’hypothèse d’une « monarchie à façade républicaine » ou d’une« fiction républicaine » est trompeuse dans la mesure où le rétablissement de la res publica n’interdisait ni les évolutions institutionnelles ni les velléités monarchiques. C’était dans les « manières de faire », dans le respect de certaines procédures, que résidait la res publica. La restauration augustéenne ne visa pas à rétablir dans le détail un état ante mais à restaurer un cadre (celui du senatus populusque romanus) considéré, lui, comme immuable mais qui n’interdisait pas l’établissement d’un régime nouveau. Le principat augustéen ne saurait donc être entendu comme un simple habillage destiné à donner une « façade républicaine » à un régime en réalité monarchique.

The well-known classical abbreviation SPQR has acquired many spurious expansions over the centuries. One version popular with resentful locals in the early nineteenth century was soli preti qui rregneno, or “only priests reign here” in the local dialect; and even today non-Romans like to claim it means sono pazzi, questi Romani, or “they're crazy, these Romans.” The more canonical explanation is that SPQR stands for senatus populusque Romanus, “the Roman Senate and people,” which was the traditional description of the state in imperial as well as republican ancient Rome. The phrase is attested in classical authors such as Cicero, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus; it appears in numerous official acts and in Augustus's Res gestae. The popularity of the abbreviation beyond that of the phrase from which it derives is most likely the result of its use in epigraphy and numismatics, since senatus populusque Romanus appeared in initial form, that is, SPQR, in monumental inscriptions throughout the city, as well as on the Roman coinage.