Brill’s New Pauly

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(275 words)

Author(s): Garozzo, Bruno (Pisa)
[German version] This item can be found on the following maps: Villa | Italy, languages Town in  Campania near  Nola on the road from  Capua to  Abellinum (Ἀβέλλα; Abélla, Abellae, Str. 5,4,11; Plin. HN 3,63; Ptol. 3,11; Charisius, gramm. 1,35), modern Avella, founded by settlers from  Chalcis (Just. Epit. 20,1); its mythological name is Moera, its mythological founder Muranus (Serv. Aen. 7,740). During the  Social Wars, A. paid for its loyalty to Rome in 87 BC with pillage by  Nola (Granius Licinianus 35,20,8). A Roman   colonia before 73 BC (Sall. Hist. 3, fr. 97), it became a   municipium


(169 words)

Author(s): Uggeri, Giovanni (Florence)
[German version] This item can be found on the following maps: Coloniae Town of the  Hirpini in  Campania, on the border of southern Samnium ( Samnites), close to the modern Cività. A colonia under Sulla, Augustus, and Severus Alexander, it rose to   civitas , tribus Galeria. A. is situated on a terrace on the left bank of the Sabato river, west of Atripalda. Two wall circuits are preserved ( opus quadratum, 3rd cent. BC, opus reticulatum with towers and moats of the Augustan colony), also baths, houses, an amphitheatre south of the town outside the walls; aqueduct to …


(82 words)

[German version] Roman ‘special deity’ which according to Varro (ant. rer. div. 116 Cardauns) is mentioned in Christian polemic (Tert. Ad nat. 2,11; Aug. civ. 4,21) together with Adeona, and is derived from abire or adire. According to Varro both are deities of childhood; the etymological derivation probably refers to the first attempts to walk. The problems associated with all   indigitamenta apply to the name. Graf, Fritz (Columbus, OH) Bibliography B. Cardauns, M. Terentius Varro. Antiquitates rerum divinarum II (commentary), 1976, 206.

Ab epistulis

(6 words)

see  Epistulis, ab


(191 words)

Author(s): Schottky, Martin (Pretzfeld)
The name of several kings of Osroene in the era from 94 BC to AD 244. Worthy of notice are: [German version] [1] II. Ariamnes bar Abgar (68-53 BC) A. II Ariamnes bar Abgar, reigned 68-53 BC. He was accused by the Romans of having caused the catastrophe of Crassus. Schottky, Martin (Pretzfeld) [German version] [2] V Ukkāmā (the Black) (4BC to 50 AD) A. V Ukkāmā (the Black), 4 BC - AD 7 and AD 13-50; played a dubious role in the Parthian struggle for the throne between Gotarzes II and Meherdates. Schottky, Martin (Pretzfeld) [German version] [3] VIII, the Great (77-212 AD) A. VIII, the Great, 177-21…

Abgar Legend

(327 words)

Author(s): Markschies, Christoph (Berlin)


(122 words)

Author(s): Lafond, Yves (Bochum)


(154 words)

Author(s): Tokhtas'ev, Sergej R. (St. Petersburg)
[German version] (Ἄβιοι; Ábioi). According to Hom. Il. 13,5 f. a tribe in northern  Thrace who, with the Glactophagi and Hippemolgi were the justest of mankind. Identical with Aeschylus' Γάβιοι ( Gábioi) ( Prometheus Lyomenos fr. 196,3, TGF 3). In later literature, they became the subject of etymological and idealizing speculations (e.g. FGrH Ephoros 70 fr. 42). Together with the Hippemolgi (as early as Ps.-Hesiod, Katalogos Gynaikon fr. 150,15 f. M.-W.) and Glactophagi (cf. loc. cit. fr. 151), they were identified as  Scythian…


(244 words)

Author(s): Leisten, Thomas (Princeton)
[German version] This item can be found on the following maps: Pompeius Town (mod. Quwailibeh) 15 km north-west of Irbid (Jordan). The ruins of A. cover an area of c. 1.5 km × 0.5 km, which comprises two hills, Tell A. and Khirbat Umm al-Amad [1. 1 f.] to the south. The settlement, which had been continuously settled from the 3rd millennium BC to the Iron Age, was refounded under the Seleucids. Polybius (5,69-70) noted its conquest by Antiochus III in 218 BC. Its inclusion in the  Decapolis occurred no later than at that time. Remains of a street grid with cardo and decumanus, a theatre and aq…

Abinnaeus Archive

(128 words)

Author(s): Redies, Michael (Berlin)
[German version] Papyrus collection of Flavius Abinnaeus, who was praefectus alae in Dionysia (Egypt) between AD 342 and 351. This collection contains letters, contracts, invoices, and tax and other rolls, which are, at least in part, well-preserved and provide excellent insight into daily life in Egypt in the fourth century. The papyri are collected in Bell [1] (additions in [2; 3] and [4]). Redies, Michael (Berlin) Bibliography 1 H. I. Bell et al., The Abinnaeus Archive, 1962 2 R. Rémondon, Militaires et civils dans une campagne Égyptienne au temps de Constance II,…


(184 words)

[German version] Indian prince named after his tribe (the Abhisari), who was allied with  Poros. His territory reached from the southern chain of the Karakorum to Kashmir in the east and Hazera (near Rawalpindi) in the west. He supported the resistance to  Alexander [4] in Swat (Arr. Anab. 4,27,7; 30,7), but then sent him presents at Taxila (loc. cit. 5,8,3; in Curt. 8,13,1 false: homage). He was absent from the battle of the Hydaspes ( Hydaspes) even though it was expected that he would support P…


(56 words)

Author(s): Karttunen, Klaus (Helsinki)
[German version] Called Abhisāra in Old Indian, a mountain people of northern Pakistan (Megasthenes at Arr. Ind. 4,12), on the Soanos river, an eastern tributary of the Indus River (nowadays called Sohan or Suwan [1. 1100 f.]), with King  Abisares. Karttunen, Klaus (Helsinki) Bibliography 1 G. Wirth, O. by Hinüber, (ed. and trans.) Arrian, Der Alexanderzug - Indische Geschichte, 1985.


(185 words)

Author(s): Paulus, Christoph Georg (Berlin)
[German version] A lawsuit brought before the praetor concerning credited money or some other res certa could be concluded before the   litis contestatio if the plaintiff made the defendant take an oath on the validity of the claim involved in the suit. The defendant hereupon had the choice of paying or denying the claim; the latter is the abiuratio (Isid. Orig. 5,26,21). If he abjured, the plaintiff's   actio was denied; sometimes instead of this the defendant was granted an exceptio iurisiurandi (Dig. 12,2,9 pr.), if, for instance, the existence and content of the oath gave…


(329 words)



(189 words)

Author(s): Strunk, Klaus (Munich)
[German version] (technical term coined by Jacob Grimm) refers to a system of vowel alterations within inflectional or derivational word and form groups that originates in proto-Indo-Germanic, effected for the most part through early accent alternation. To be distinguished are (1) ‘quantitative Ablaut’ (‘Gradation’) and (2) ‘qualitative Ablaut’ (‘Gradation’). With (1), e alternated (in ‘stressed syllables’) with Ø (in ‘unstressed syllables’) and, if necessary, with ē (in ‘expanded syllables’) as, for example, in the suffix of the Greek vowel πά-τερ, Latin Iu-p(p)i-ter: genit…

Abnoba mons

(154 words)

Author(s): Dietz, Karlheinz (Würzburg)
[German version] Black Forest, German Schwarzwald, mountain region in south-western Germany, possibly including also the low mountain ranges of the Odenwald and Rothaargebirge to the north. In 15 BC,  Tiberius paid a visit there to see the sources of the Danube. From the late Tiberian/early Claudian period (2nd half of the 1st cent. AD), there was a Roman-influenced population on the eastern bank of the upper Rhine region; under the Flavians (2nd half of 1st cent. AD), the wooded mountain area und…

Abodah Zara

(6 words)

see  Rabbinical literature


(135 words)

Author(s): Dietz, Karlheinz (Würzburg)
[German version] This item can be found on the following maps: Raeti, Raetia Modern Epfach, district of Landsberg am Lech, Germany (CIL III 2,5780); Roman garrison from just before BC to about AD 50, late antique fortifications along the long, steep-sided, island-like Lorenzberg in a bow of the river Lech. 300 m away, underneath the village of Epfach, there is a Flavian road- vicus on the   via Claudia , north-east of the turn-off to Gauting. Building remains on Epfach hill dating from the 3rd and 4th cents. AD; possibly late antique/early Chri…


(109 words)

Author(s): Schiemann, Gottfried (Tübingen)
[German version] The abolitio, which has come down to us in the Digest title 48,16, is in Roman law discontinuation of criminal proceedings, often with the effect of a pardon (  indulgentia ), but mainly with the possibility of renewing the charge, as with the abolitio publica, ordered by the Senate or in exceptional cases by the emperor, and the abolitio privata, pronounced by the judge at the request of a private prosecutor. The abolitio ex lege, for example, takes effect on the death of the prosecutor. In any event this first appears under the designation abolitio in the imperial period…


(209 words)

Author(s): Hurschmann, Rolf (Hamburg) | Manganaro, Giacomo (Sant' Agata li Battiata)
[German version] [1] Roman cloak Roman cloak of unknown form; known from literary sources but not identifiable with certainty from monuments. In contradistinction to the  toga, the abolla is the costume of the farmer and the soldier (Non. 538,16), and to satirists it is the cloak favoured by philosophers of the Cynic and Stoic schools (Mart. 4,53; Juv. 3,115). The abolla was evidently similar to the   chlamys , both in form and in the way it was worn (Serv. Verg. Aen. 5,421). Abolla is possibly a general term for the shoulder-cloak (cf. Juv. 4,76, mentioned as the cloak of the praefectus urbi). …
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