Editorial

Abstract

The first issue of Mare Nostrum brings together articles, reviews and essays produced in the second half of 2009, whose themes, objects and research problems are associated with research experiences geared, to a greater or lesser extent, to issues related to integration processes in the Old Mediterranean. This first issue has as its main objective to begin a long-term debate with scholars on the question of the role of the Ancient Mediterranean in studies on antiquity. Most of the texts published here, created in the midst of the research work and discussions in the Laboratory of Studies of the Roman Empire, do not have as main object the problem of the integration of the Mediterranean, however, in one way or another, this problem is present in them tangentially, implicitly or even explicitly. This is the spirit with which Mare Nostrum Magazine will seek to address its central issue: as a space for the publication of studies of various natures and forms on antiquity, which may contribute directly or indirectly to the conduct of debates and to the understanding of the processes of integration of ancient Mediterranean societies. The seven articles can be divided into two groups: historiographical studies and textual source analyzes. In the first group we find the article by Joana Campos Clímaco, which analyzes some debates of contemporary historiography on the city of Alexandria, particularly as regards the Greek, Egyptian, syncretic or "original" nature of its insertion in the Egyptian world and in the Mediterranean as one all; also on historiography is the article by Bruno dos Santos Silva, which seeks to summarize the most recent studies about the work of Strabo and to point out some research paths, especially on the classification methods of the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula; the article by Fábio Augusto Morales analyzes the way in which contemporary historiography interpreted the nature and social insertion of the Metecs in the polis of Athens during the classical period, criticizing the economist visions and proposing a properly political approach; Finally, Deivid Valério Gaia's article seeks to reflect on the investigation of the Old Economy, reviewing the debate between primitivists and modernists and the need for a spatialization of the concepts of economic history. In the second group of articles is that of Rafael Costa Campos, about the characterization of the emperor Tiberius in the Annals of Tacitus, discussing the narrative format of the source in the light of contemporary historiographic polemics; the text of Gustavo Junqueira Duarte Oliveira, on the other hand, studies the relations between the hero and the crowd in the Iliad in the light of the categories of "identity" and "audience effect", thus reflecting on the active character of the "warriors" are the best "(the audience of heroic deeds) in the identification and judgment of heroes; the article by Victor Sá Ramalho Antonio, in turn, proposes a discussion of Roman baths and public baths in terms of identity construction processes, conducting a comparative study of three Pompeian cases and the validity of the use of the concept of romanization. Then, in the section "Laboratory", dedicated to experimental texts, we have an essay by Norberto Guarinello. In this essay is developed an angle of view of the Roman Empire that attempts to associate long-term understanding with the need to understand Roman social reality as a process under construction and reconstruction, but which is also based on relations of domination and exploitation. To do so, it rescues the main interpretations that modern historians have presented about the Roman Empire (as well as its modern development conjunctures), and then propose the use of notions of order, frontiers and integration as a response to the recent interpretation based on the concepts of connectivity and flows so in tune with the modality of Globalization experienced since the 1990s. The Journal closes with three reviews: Fábio Augusto Morales analyzes the work of Kostas Vassopoulos, Unthinking the Greek Polis; the review by Victor Sá Ramalho Antonio analyzes Pompeii, the life of a Roman town by Mary Beard; the review of Uiran Gebara da Silva analyzes the work of Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire. We hope, therefore, that this modest initial number will be followed by others with more varied contributions and guided by actual debates and intellectual experiments on the problem of processes of social integration of the Ancient Mediterranean.