Browsing by Author "Murray, Jeffrey"

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    Classical coins at the Cape: a history and catalogue of the Greek and Roman numismatic collections in Iziko Museums of South Africa
    (2025) Nissen, Leigh; Murray, Jeffrey
    The collection of ancient Greek and Roman coins held by Iziko Museums of South Africa has been a part of the museum's primary collections since the South African Museum's inception in 1825. Over the years, this numismatic collection has developed via donations (for example those by Hajee Sullaiman Shah Mahomed); loans (such as the Mann Collection), and by various purchases made by the curators of the numismatic department itself. To date no complete catalogue or sylloge exists. Based upon the museum's own accession registers, archival research, and physical examination of the collection, this dissertation provides the first complete catalogue of the Greek and Roman coins in the museum's holdings. In doing so, a brief history of the establishment of the museum is given, along with its collecting practices of ancient coinage; a history of the numismatic department; and a history of numismatic display and curation in the museum, as far as this has been possible from the museum's own archival records, letters, and unpublished notes. In providing the first, accessible catalogue and history of the Greek and Roman coins in the museum, this dissertation also enters current conversations around curation, conservation, and display within museum spaces in South Africa and suggests future possibilities for antiquities collections of this nature within museum spaces in the country more generally.
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    Studies in Cornelius Nepos’ Eumenes
    (2025) Innes, Stewart; Wardle, David; Murray, Jeffrey
    This dissertation presents the first examination and analysis of Cornelius Nepos' Eumenes on its own terms and in its own right. Although Nepotian studies have experienced a revival, for example, in the form of the two recent monographs by Rex Stem (2012) and John Lobur (2021), as well as Francesco Ginelli's (2022) commentary, Nepos' Eumenes has received comparatively little individual attention, besides Stem (2018) and James Bradley (1991), despite being the equally longest biography in Nepos' Liber De Excellentibus Ducibus Exterarum Gentium and the author's only biography of a subject from the Argead Macedonian world. Chapter 1 discusses Nepos' conception of biography, his methods, and his use of source(s) as they concern the Eumenes. Nepos is consciously writing vitae and not historia and prioritises the virtutes of his subjects in his construction of biography at the expense of res gestae. His aims are explicitly stated (Epam. 4.6; Pelop. 1.1) and continually inform his writing. Nepos utilised Hieronymus of Cardia as his principal, and probably only source, as Bradley (1991) argues. By comparing Nepos' Eumenes with other sources derived principally from Hieronymus (i.e. Diodorus Siculus, Arrian Successors, Plutarch's Eumenes, Justin' Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, and the Heidelberg Epitome), I reconstruct a hypothetical schema of information contained in Hieronymus' original work, and thus what was available to Nepos, to show that Nepos selects only such information that illuminates the exemplary virtutes of Eumenes. Chapter 2 begins by showing how Nepos' presentation of Eumenes aligns broadly with the other accounts derived from Hieronymus. Then I argue that Nepos foregrounds the idea of Eumenes as a homo novus (a‘new man') to better explain his career for his Roman audience. Nepos' ascription to Eumenes of virtus, industria, and ingenium is unambiguously reminiscent of the language with which prominent homines novi (especially Cato Maior, C. Marius, and Cicero) spoke about themselves and are spoken about, and the ideology of novitas generally. The discrimination experienced by Eumenes is contrasted with that experienced by homines novi in Rome. Whereas Chapters 1 and 2 deal focus on Eumenes as a biography, Chapter 3 takes a more historical and historiographical approach: I focus on Nepos' highly abbreviated account of the Babylonian Settlement (June to July 323 BC) which is markedly different from our other extant sources. With close reading and commentary-style discussion, I show how and why Nepos constructed his account as he does and propose possible solutions to the so called ‘errors' attributed to Nepos.
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    Valerius Maximus on Vice: a commentary on Facta et Dicta Memorabilia 9.1-11
    (2016) Murray, Jeffrey; Wardle, David
    The Facta et Dicta Memorabilia of Valerius Maximus, written during the formative stages of the Roman imperial system, survives as a near unique instance of an entire work composed in the genre of Latin exemplary literature. By providing the first detailed historical and historiographical commentary on Book 9 of this prose text - a section of the work dealing principally with vice and immorality - this thesis examines how an author employs material predominantly from the earlier, Republican, period in order to validate the value system which the Romans believed was the basis of their world domination and to justify the reign of the Julio-Claudian family. By detailed analysis of the sources of Valerius' material, of the way he transforms it within his chosen genre, and of how he frames his exempla, this thesis illuminates the contribution of an often overlooked author to the historiography of the Roman Empire.