Rule and frontier. The Asia Minor-Mesopotamian Limes in the light of new finds
December 02, 2014
On Tuesday, 2 December, the ancient historian Prof. Dr. Engelbert Winter from the Asia Minor Research Centre at the Department of Ancient History at Münster University will give a lecture on the Asia Minor-Mesopotamian Limes of the Roman Empire as reflected in new finds. The event is part of the lecture series of the Department of Ancient History at Osnabrück University and the Research Center Rome and Germania in cooperation with the Varus Society and begins at 18:00 s.t. in the main building of Osnabrück Castle, Room 11/115, Neuer Graben, 49074 Osnabrück. Guests are welcome, admission is free.
From its beginnings in the 1st century BC to the 7th century AD, Rome's relations with Iran were characterized by numerous wars and severe military defeats. Parallel to these conflicts, Rome always endeavored to secure its borders on the easternmost periphery of the empire. From the 1st century AD, therefore, Rome's efforts to establish a linear border defense in the Orient can be observed. The aim of the lecture is to clarify the special character of this Roman eastern frontier. The speaker will place particular emphasis on the influence of geographical conditions on Roman military and border policy in this region. At the same time, he will present new tasks and perspectives on the Roman military history of the Near East on the basis of inscriptional and archaeological evidence newly discovered in recent years on the Euphrates and Tigris.
Prof. Dr. Winter has been a permanent research associate at the Asia Minor Research Centre in the Department of Ancient History at the WWU Münster since 2011, after having held several professorships. He is a proven expert on the Asia Minor region, the eastern half of the Mediterranean and Iran in antiquity. In the numerous third-party funded projects he has led on these regions, he combines the perspectives of ancient history and archaeology. The same applies to many of his publications, some of which have been translated into Turkish and Persian.