Roman History - H. H. Sgullard: From the Gracchi to Nero; a History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68. Pp. ix+450; 4 maps. London: Methuen, 1959. Cloth, 25s. net.

1960 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-250
Author(s):  
A. H. McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Roman History ◽  
History Of

The Renaissance of Roman Colonization

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Property Distribution ◽  
Carlo Sigonio ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law

The colonization policies of Ancient Rome followed a range of legal arrangements concerning property distribution and state formation, documented in fragmented textual and epigraphic sources. Once antiquarian scholars rediscovered and scrutinized these sources in the Renaissance, their analysis of the Roman colonial model formed the intellectual background for modern visions of empire. What does it mean to exercise power at and over distance? This book foregrounds the pioneering contribution to this debate of the great Italian Renaissance scholar Carlo Sigonio (1522/3–84). His comprehensive legal interpretation of Roman society and Roman colonization, which for more than two centuries remained the leading account of Roman history, has been of immense (but long disregarded) significance for the modern understanding of Roman colonial practices and of the legal organization and implications of empire. Bringing together experts on Roman history, the history of classical scholarship, and the history of international law, this book analyses the context, making, and impact of Sigonio’s reconstruction of the Roman colonial model. It shows how his legal interpretation of Roman colonization originated and how it informed the development of legal colonial discourse, from visions of imperial reform and colonial independence in the nascent United States of America, to Enlightenment accounts of property distribution, culminating in a specific juridical strand in twentieth-century Roman historiography. Through a detailed analysis of scholarly and political visions of Roman colonization from the Renaissance until today, this book shows the enduring relevance of legal interpretations of the Roman colonial model for modern experiences of empire.

The History of the Extortion Court at Rome, 123–70 b.c.

1938 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 98-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. P. V. D. Balsdon
Keyword(s):  
Roman History ◽  
Precise Statement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Age Limits ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Way

The available evidence concerning the history of the Extortion Court, the quaestio repetundarum, at Rome is tabulated opposite page 114. In view of the bulk of this evidence, it is at first sight surprising that this should be one of the most confused chapters of Roman history. Indeed, it is improbable that all Roman historians would agree upon any more precise statement of certainty than the following: that C. Gracchus, whether by a lex Sempronia iudiciaria, or by a lex Sempronia de repetundis, or by a lex Acilia de repetundis which may, or may not, be reproduced in the lex repetundarum, fragments of which are preserved at Naples and at Vienna (CIL i, 583), established equites (selected either from owners and past owners, within certain age limits, of the equus publicus, or from all those who possessed the equestrian census) either in place of, or in association with, senators as jurors in the quaestio de repetundis; that Q. Servilius Caepio, probably in his consulship in 106 B.C., proposed, and perhaps carried, a judiciary law in the interest of the Senate; that C. Servilius Glaucia either in m (Mommsen), 108 (Carcopino) 104 (Last) or 101 B.C. (Niccolini) carried a lex repetundarum and perhaps other judiciary laws in which he possibly either gave for the first time, or restored, to the equites complete possession of the juries and certainly effected two reforms in procedure, (a) by legalising the prosecution not only of recent magistrates and pro-magistrates, but also of their accomplices and (b) by introducing the form of ‘double action’ known as comperendinatio; that M. Livius Drusus, as tribune in 91 B.C., endeavoured unsuccessfully to establish, or to re-establish, as the case may be, mixed juries of senators and equites, and to make equestrian as well as senatorial jurors liable to prosecution for accepting bribes; that in 89 B.C. by a lex Plautia of the tribune M. Plautius Silvanus mixed juries were established, certainly for trials of maiestas, and perhaps for repetundae too. After this, the way is clearer, Sulla re-established senatorial juries, which survived until 70 B.C., when, by the lex Aurelia, jurors were selected from three panels—from senators, equites and tribuni aerarii.

De Civitate Dei Books III and IV

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Augustine
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Latin Text ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
City Of God ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
Christian Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

This edition of St. Augustine's The City of God (De Civitate Dei) is the only one in English to provide a text and translation as well as a detailed commentary of this most influential document in the history of western Christianity. In these books, Augustine offers a Christian perspective on the growth of Rome, which its pagan apologists attribute to the providential protection of its gods. Book III spotlights both the injustices inflicted and the privations endured by the Romans, thus rebutting such claims. Book IV offers a withering account of the Roman deities, basing its analysis on the researches of Terentius Varro. This section of The City of God is a vital document for students of Roman history, and especially of Roman religion, for it provides the most detailed evidence of Varro's learned works. The volume presents Latin text with facing-page English translation, introduction and commentary.

Seneca the Elder, the Controuersia Figurata, and the Political Discourse of the Early Empire

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-150
Author(s):  
Matthew Leigh
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Roman History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Specific Event ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Seneca The Elder

This paper studies examples of how exponents of Roman declamation could insert into arguments on the trivial, even fantastic, cases known as controuersiae statements of striking relevance to the political culture of the triumviral and early imperial period. This is particularly apparent in the Controuersiae of Seneca the Elder but some traces remain in the Minor Declamations attributed to Quintilian. The boundaries separating Rome itself from the declamatory city referred to by modern scholars as Sophistopolis are significantly blurred even in those instances where the exercise does not turn on a specific event from Roman history, and there is much to be gained from how the declaimers deploy Roman historical examples. Some of the most sophisticated instances of mediated political comment exploit the employment of universalizing sententiae, which have considerable bite when they are related to contemporary Roman discourse and experience. The declamation schools are a forum for thinking through the implications of the transformation of the Roman state and deserve a place within any history of Roman political thought.

Conclusion

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Hingley
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Roman History ◽  
King Arthur ◽  
State Control ◽  
Scottish Highlands ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Extension Of State ◽  
The Devil

The works examined above have been explored through a chronological study based upon the four overlapping themes of civility/ Romanization, the walling out of humanity, Roman incomers, and ruination, emphasized through a reading of the sources to explore how the discovery of objects and sites has helped to inform a number of contrasting interpretations that went in and out of fashion. A number of more local and fragmented tales have also been addressed in passing and it is evident that a very different account could have been articulated if I had drawn more directly upon such ideas. Tales, such as those of Onion the Silchester Giant, Graham’s creation of a breach in the Antonine Wall, King Arthur and his ‘O’on’ at Camelon in central Scotland and the activities of the devil at Rodmarton, provide information about how local people interpreted the physical remains of the Romans in Britain. The focus on elite tales in this book should not detract from the potential of local myths, but a thorough study of such material remains to be undertaken. Instead, this book has emphasized stories that have been told about the pre- Roman and Roman history of Britain that served to develop relevant national and imperial tales. The significance of the civilizing of the ancient Britons drove a particular approach to the ancient sources during the early seventeenth century that emphasized the passing on of Roman civility to people of England (or Lowland Britain). From this point of view, the ruined Roman Walls projected the territorial limit of civility, beyond which were the lands of barbarians. Towards the end of the century, a new interpretation arose that placed emphasis on the Roman settlers, their ‘stations’, and roads, reflecting the contemporary military aspect of society while envisaging England (or Lowland Britain) as the inheritor of Roman civility. This military conception was redefined and updated during the succeeding centuries as an analogy for the extension of state control over the Scottish Highlands and later for the exploration, documentation, and domination of territories in India and elsewhere.

The Legion and the Centuriate Organization

1970 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. V. Sumner
Keyword(s):  
Early Republic ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Roman Army ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of

It is generally recognized that Rome of the early Republic offers a good example of the correlation between military and political organization. The ordering of the Roman citizenry in centuries, classes and age-groups was in origin and essence a military system. The Comitia Centuriata was the exercitus urbanus—the army on parade in the Field of Mars.But by the third century B.C. the Roman army and the centuriate assembly were manifestly two different systems, even if vestiges of their interconnection lingered on. The process whereby this differentiation had come about is, unfortunately, not so clear. The traditional accounts of early Roman history generally failed to devote much attention to questions of that order. Yet the effort to tackle and, if possible, solve this complex of problems can hardly be evaded. The answers given, or assumed, by modern historians are bound to determine how the whole history of early Rome is interpreted and represented.

Learning from the Capitol’s Deliverance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Moralee
Keyword(s):  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Clement Of Alexandria ◽  
Roman People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Eusebius Of Caesarea

Chapter 5 asks what Christians were supposed to learn from the stories about the Capitoline Hill’s special status in Roman memory as the inviolable citadel of Jupiter’s people. Christian intellectuals such as Tertullian, followed by Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, Lactantius, and Arnobius, ridiculed Roman history and mythology. Jerome, Ambrose, Prudentius, Augustine, and others pursued the same agenda into the fourth and fifth centuries. For these apologists, the ways of knowing the Capitol could be flipped to suddenly make clear that the beloved traditions at the heart of the Capitol’s symbolic status could not stand up to scrutiny. Of particular importance to these men was the belief that Jupiter lived in his house on the Capitoline Hill and was especially interested in protecting the Roman people through the long history of their state, a series of arguments reanimated with significance in the years following the Gothic king Alaric’s occupation of Rome in 410.

scholarly journals History, Exemplarity and Improvements: 18th Century Ideas about Man-Made Climate Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 353-368
Author(s):  
Anne Eriksen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Roman History ◽  
General Mechanism ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Grain Crops ◽  
Human Interventions ◽  
History Of

Can grain crops be increased? The issue was heatedly debated in 18th century Denmark-Norway, both for patriotic and economic reasons. The historian Gerhard Schøning (1722–80) answered affirmatively. Chopping down much of the forests that covered Norway would change the climate radically for the better. As a consequence of the warmer weather, the fertility of the soil would improve. Crops would increase, and new and even more delicate types of plants could be introduced. Schøning’s argument was nearly entirely built on examples from Greek and Roman history, cited to demonstrate that since classical times, this kind of changes had already taken place in other parts of Europe. Climate interested a number of 18th century writers. It was not only a part of geotheory, but also included in theories about the history of society, law and culture as well as in medical thought. Ideas about a human-made climate change similar to Schøning’s can be found in texts by e.g. Hume and Buffon. The argument relied on a quantity of examples, as well as on the uncontested exemplarity of classical literature itself. Schøning’s examples represent both series and ideals. The cases he cites are numerous (serial) instantiations of the same general mechanism: The effect of human interventions in nature. Yet at the same time they are models to follow, even if it will take some effort. Norway will never be as warm and fertile as southern countries, but Schøning exhorts his compatriots to “take courage and start!” History consisted of examples to learn from and models to follow.

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