The article examines passages from the «Praise of Rome» by Aelias Aristides, in which the Roman Empire is compared with the great powers of the past that existed among the Persians, Athenians, Spartans, Macedonians. It is established that the conceptual nature of such analogies consisted on the one hand in the representation of the Roman state as a kind of “end of history”, and on the other hand in the expression of a balanced, and sometimes even critical attitude to some aspects of imperial realities. At the same time, the Empire, even with the recognition and highlighting of certain expenses, is perceived and presented to the audience as part of a common existence and historical experience for the Greeks and Romans, as a common space for all, where both Europe and Asia eventually find themselves included in a politically and culturally unified Greco-Roman world.
|
