1. New Testament, Luke, 10.30 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • bandits • robbers and bandits
Found in books: Esler (2000), The Early Christian World, 462; Huebner (2013), The Family in Roman Egypt: A Comparative Approach to Intergenerational Solidarity and Conflict. 110
sup>
10.30 ὑπολαβὼν ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν Ἄνθρωπός τις κατέβαινεν ἀπὸ Ἰερουσαλὴμ εἰς Ἰερειχὼ καὶ λῃσταῖς περιέπεσεν, οἳ καὶ ἐκδύσαντες αὐτὸν καὶ πληγὰς ἐπιθέντες ἀπῆλθον ἀφέντες ἡμιθανῆ.'' None | sup>
10.30 Jesus answered, "A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. '' None |
|
2. Lucian, Alexander The False Prophet, 2 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Kleon, ex-brigand, founder of Juliopolis, and priest of Komana Pontica • bandits
Found in books: Marek (2019), In the Land of a Thousand Gods: A History of Asia Minor in the Ancient World, 430; Stephens and Winkler (1995), Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary, 317, 409
| sup>
2 I confess to being a little ashamed both on your account and my own. There are you asking that the memory of arch scoundrel should be perpetuated in writing; here am I going seriously into an investigation of this sort — the doings of a person whose deserts entitled him not to be read about by the cultivated, but to be torn to pieces in the amphitheatre by apes or foxes, with a vast audience looking on. Well, well, if any one does cast reflections of that sort upon us, we shall at least have a precedent to plead. Arrian himself, a disciple of Epictetus1, distinguished Roman, and product of lifelong culture as he was, had just our experience and shall make our defence. He condescended, that is, to put on record the life of the robber Tilliborus
2. The robber we propose to immortalize was of a far more pestilent kind, following his profession not in the forests and mountains, but in cities; he was not content to overrun a Mysia or an Ida3; his booty came not from a few scantily populated districts of Asia; one may say that the scene of his depredations was the whole Roman Empire. 1 Arrian … Epictetus | Arrian wrote down the Stoic philosophy of Epictetus. He was also author of famous biographies and histories.
2 Tilliborus | This text by Arrian is no longer extant.6) 3 a Mysia or an Ida | Mysia - region near Troy; Ida - mountain near Troy.'' None |
|
3. Tertullian, Apology, 2.8 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • brigands • social bandit theory
Found in books: Tacoma (2016), Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla, 262; Williams (2023), Criminalization in Acts of the Apostles Race, Rhetoric, and the Prosecution of an Early Christian Movement. 72
| sup>
2.8 If, again, it is certain that we are the most wicked of men, why do you treat us so differently from our fellows, that is, from other criminals, it being only fair that the same crime should get the same treatment? When the charges made against us are made against others, they are permitted to make use both of their own lips and of hired pleaders to show their innocence. They have full opportunity of answer and debate; in fact, it is against the law to condemn anybody undefended and unheard. Christians alone are forbidden to say anything in exculpation of themselves, in defense of the truth, to help the judge to a righteous decision; all that is cared about is having what the public hatred demands - the confession of the name, not examination of the charge: while in your ordinary judicial investigations, on a man's confession of the crime of murder, or sacrilege, or incest, or treason, to take the points of which we are accused, you are not content to proceed at once to sentence - you do not take that step till you thoroughly examine the circumstances of the confession - what is the real character of the deed, how often, where, in what way, when he has done it, who were privy to it, and who actually took part with him in it. Nothing like this is done in our case, though the falsehoods disseminated about us ought to have the same sifting, that it might be found how many murdered children each of us had tasted; how many incests each of us had shrouded in darkness; what cooks, what dogs had been witness of our deeds. Oh, how great the glory of the ruler who should bring to light some Christian who had devoured a hundred infants! But, instead of that, we find that even inquiry in regard to our case is forbidden. For the younger Pliny, when he was ruler of a province, having condemned some Christians to death, and driven some from their steadfastness, being still annoyed by their great numbers, at last sought the advice of Trajan, the reigning emperor, as to what he was to do with the rest, explaining to his master that, except an obstinate disinclination to offer sacrifices, he found in the religious services nothing but meetings at early morning for singing hymns to Christ and God, and sealing home their way of life by a united pledge to be faithful to their religion, forbidding murder, adultery, dishonesty, and other crimes. Upon this Trajan wrote back that Christians were by no means to be sought after; but if they were brought before him, they should be punished. O miserable deliverance - under the necessities of the case, a self-contradiction! It forbids them to be sought after as innocent, and it commands them to be punished as guilty. It is at once merciful and cruel; it passes by, and it punishes. Why do you play a game of evasion upon yourself, O Judgment? If you condemn, why do you not also inquire. If you do not inquire, why do you not also absolve? Military stations are distributed through all the provinces for tracking robbers. Against traitors and public foes every man is a soldier; search is made even for their confederates and accessories. The Christian alone must not be sought, though he may be brought and accused before the judge; as if a search had any other end than that in view! And so you condemn the man for whom nobody wished a search to be made when he is presented to you, and who even now does not deserve punishment, I suppose, because of his guilt, but because, though forbidden to be sought, he was found. And then, too, you do not in that case deal with us in the ordinary way of judicial proceedings against offenders; for, in the case of others denying, you apply the torture to make them confess - Christians alone you torture, to make them deny; whereas, if we were guilty of any crime, we should be sure to deny it, and you with your tortures would force us to confession. Nor indeed should you hold that our crimes require no such investigation merely on the ground that you are convinced by our confession of the name that the deeds were done - you who are daily wont, though you know well enough what murder is, none the less to extract from the confessed murderer a full account of how the crime was perpetrated. So that with all the greater perversity you act, when, holding our crimes proved by our confession of the name of Christ, you drive us by torture to fall from our confession, that, repudiating the name, we may in like manner repudiate also the crimes with which, from that same confession, you had assumed that we were chargeable. I suppose, though you believe us to be the worst of mankind, you do not wish us to perish. For thus, no doubt, you are in the habit of bidding the murderer deny, and of ordering the man guilty of sacrilege to the rack if he persevere in his acknowledgment! Is that the way of it? But if thus you do not deal with us as criminals, you declare us thereby innocent, when as innocent you are anxious that we do not persevere in a confession which you know will bring on us a condemnation of necessity, not of justice, at your hands. I am a Christian, the man cries out. He tells you what he is; you wish to hear from him what he is not. Occupying your place of authority to extort the truth, you do your utmost to get lies from us. I am, he says, that which you ask me if I am. Why do you torture me to sin? I confess, and you put me to the rack. What would you do if I denied? Certainly you give no ready credence to others when they deny. When we deny, you believe at once. Let this perversity of yours lead you to suspect that there is some hidden power in the case under whose influence you act against the forms, against the nature of public justice, even against the very laws themselves. For, unless I am greatly mistaken, the laws enjoin offenders to be searched out, and not to be hidden away. They lay it down that persons who own a crime are to be condemned, not acquitted. The decrees of the senate, the commands of your chiefs, lay this clearly down. The power of which you are servants is a civil, not a tyrannical domination. Among tyrants, indeed, torments used to be inflicted even as punishments: with you they are mitigated to a means of questioning alone. Keep to your law in these as necessary till confession is obtained; and if the torture is anticipated by confession, there will be no occasion for it: sentence should be passed; the criminal should be given over to the penalty which is his due, not released. Accordingly, no one is eager for the acquittal of the guilty; it is not right to desire that, and so no one is ever compelled to deny. Well, you think the Christian a man of every crime, an enemy of the gods, of the emperor, of the laws, of good morals, of all nature; yet you compel him to deny, that you may acquit him, which without him denial you could not do. You play fast and loose with the laws. You wish him to deny his guilt, that you may, even against his will, bring him out blameless and free from all guilt in reference to the past! Whence is this strange perversity on your part? How is it you do not reflect that a spontaneous confession is greatly more worthy of credit than a compelled denial; or consider whether, when compelled to deny, a man's denial may not be in good faith, and whether acquitted, he may not, then and there, as soon as the trial is over, laugh at your hostility, a Christian as much as ever? Seeing, then, that in everything you deal differently with us than with other criminals, bent upon the one object of taking from us our name (indeed, it is ours no more if we do what Christians never do), it is made perfectly clear that there is no crime of any kind in the case, but merely a name which a certain system, ever working against the truth, pursues with its enmity, doing this chiefly with the object of securing that men may have no desire to know for certain what they know for certain they are entirely ignorant of. Hence, too, it is that they believe about us things of which they have no proof, and they are disinclined to have them looked into, lest the charges, they would rather take on trust, are all proved to have no foundation, that the name so hostile to that rival power - its crimes presumed, not proved- may be condemned simply on its own confession. So we are put to the torture if we confess, and we are punished if we persevere, and if we deny we are acquitted, because all the contention is about a name. Finally, why do you read out of your tablet-lists that such a man is a Christian? Why not also that he is a murderer? And if a Christian is a murderer, why not guilty, too, of incest, or any other vile thing you believe of us? In our case alone you are either ashamed or unwilling to mention the very names of our crimes - If to be called a Christian does not imply any crime, the name is surely very hateful, when that of itself is made a crime. "" None |
|
4. None, None, nan (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • bandits • brigands
Found in books: Esler (2000), The Early Christian World, 462; Fletcher (2023), The Ass of the Gods: Apuleius' Golden Ass, the Onos Attributed to Lucian, and Graeco-Roman Metamorphosis Literature, 76, 132, 152, 153; Ker and Wessels (2020), The Values of Nighttime in Classical Antiquity: Between Dusk and Dawn, 243; Konig (2022), The Folds of Olympus: Mountains in Ancient Greek and Roman Culture, 167; König (2012), Saints and Symposiasts: The Literature of Food and the Symposium in Greco-Roman and Early Christian Culture, 284; Pinheiro et al. (2012a), Narrating Desire: Eros, Sex, and Gender in the Ancient Novel, 60, 242, 243; Stephens and Winkler (1995), Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary, 323, 422; Tacoma (2016), Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla, 262; Thonemann (2020), An Ancient Dream Manual: Artemidorus' the Interpretation of Dreams, 206
|
5. None, None, nan (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • bandits
Found in books: Pinheiro et al. (2012a), Narrating Desire: Eros, Sex, and Gender in the Ancient Novel, 109; Stephens and Winkler (1995), Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary, 348
|
6. None, None, nan (2nd cent. CE - 4th cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • bandits • bandits, cave of • brigands
Found in books: Bowie (2023), Essays on Ancient Greek Literature and Culture, Volume 2: Comedy, Herodotus, Hellenistic and Imperial Greek Poetry, the Novels. 462, 646; König (2012), Saints and Symposiasts: The Literature of Food and the Symposium in Greco-Roman and Early Christian Culture, 271; Pinheiro et al. (2012a), Narrating Desire: Eros, Sex, and Gender in the Ancient Novel, 60, 64, 72, 170, 175; Repath and Whitmarsh (2022), Reading Heliodorus' Aethiopica, 34, 37, 52, 66, 130, 133, 139, 186, 192, 217, 218; Stephens and Winkler (1995), Ancient Greek Novels: The Fragments: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary, 320
|
7. None, None, nan (5th cent. CE - 5th cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Bandits • bandits
Found in books: Konig (2022), The Folds of Olympus: Mountains in Ancient Greek and Roman Culture, 303; Pinheiro et al. (2018), Cultural Crossroads in the Ancient Novel, 285
|
8. Strabo, Geography, 14.5.6
Tagged with subjects: • Kleon, ex-brigand, founder of Juliopolis, and priest of Komana Pontica • bandits
Found in books: Konig (2022), The Folds of Olympus: Mountains in Ancient Greek and Roman Culture, 189; Marek (2019), In the Land of a Thousand Gods: A History of Asia Minor in the Ancient World, 316
| sup>
14.5.6 Then, after Corycus, one comes to Elaeussa, an island lying close to the mainland, which Archelaus settled, making it a royal residence, after he had received the whole of Cilicia Tracheia except Seleuceia — the same way in which it was obtained formerly by Amyntas and still earlier by Cleopatra; for since the region was naturally well adapted to the business of piracy both by land and by sea — by land, because of the height of the mountains and the large tribes that live beyond them, tribes which have plains and farm-lands that are large and easily overrun, and by sea, because of the good supply, not only of shipbuilding timber, but also of harbors and fortresses and secret recesses — with all this in view, I say, the Romans thought that it was better for the region to be ruled by kings than to be under the Roman prefects sent to administer justice, who were not likely always to be present or to have armed forces with them. Thus Archelaus received, in addition to Cappadocia, Cilicia Tracheia; and the boundary of the latter, the river Lamus and the village of the same name, lies between Soli and Elaeussa.'' None |
|
9. None, None, nan
Tagged with subjects: • bandits • brigands
Found in books: Bruun and Edmondson (2015), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy, 666; Tacoma (2016), Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla, 261
|
