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• From Father to Son: Multi-Generational Service in Legio II Adiutrix

  29–70.

  Gábor Berecz

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  This study investigates the patterns of multi-generational military service and the accumulation of social capital within Legio II Adiutrix, primarily based on 38 inscriptions found in Pannonia. The research identifies the father-son relationship as the most common kinship structure, though several families maintained military traditions across three generations. A significant portion of these multi-generational lineages consists of families of Oriental origin, specifically from Hemesa, Syria, for whom migration to the Danubian frontier and enlistment constituted a well-established career path.
  The analysis explores how military service provided substantial socio-economic advantages, including honesta missio, economic security, and social prestige. These benefits often served as a foundation for descendants to transition into civilian spheres, attaining positions in municipal administration. Despite the high risks of the profession—with epigraphic evidence recording soldiers falling in Parthian, Germanic, and Dacian campaigns—the persistent intergenerational transmission of the military career suggests that the long-term social and economic rewards outweighed the inherent dangers.

• Magic in the Cosmopolis of Rome

  71–97.

  Richard Gordon

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  1

  Using examples from anthropological studies of radical shifts in the imaginaire of magic in modern African and Asian societies, this paper outlines the consequences both for small time ritual practitioners themselves and for the stereotypes of a specifically urban magic that followed the decision to move to the megacity of Rome, taken as emblematic of the case with other large cities in the ancient Mediterranean world. Given the highly dispersed nature of religious authority in the Greek and Roman political formations, and the attraction of religious entrepreneurship in hierarchically-organised societies with very limited social mobility, the religious field of larger conurbations was characterised by competition for social and religious capital between official and unofficial ritual practitioners, whereby the former were in a position to dominate the relevant discourse in their own interests. This domination produced new accusations of misuse of religious symbols associated with specifically urban magic, focused on the manipulation of emotions, child-snatching, and the use of human body-parts for nefarious ends. Historically, however, the major significance of the transition from the rural to the complex urban world was increased competition between practitioners, leading to innovation in methods and media, above all in the production of new types of protective amulet, and recourse to textuality.