Ancient Rome: The Republic and the Augustan Age

2019 ◽  
pp. 85-105
Author(s):  
Derek Attridge
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Skilled Readers ◽  
Latin Verse ◽  
Augustan Era ◽  
Augustan Age ◽  
The Republic

This chapter begins with earliest form of Latin verse, the Saturnian, dating from the early centuries after Rome’s founding; little is known about it, however. A native tradition of written verse was established when Ennius created a Latin equivalent of the Greek hexameter, and there is evidence of public performances of his epic verse. During the Late Republic, the two major poets were Lucretius and Catullus, the former inviting a reader imbibing versified philosophy on the page, the latter inviting performance in a convivial setting—but also incorporating performance in the verse itself. Cicero, in the same period, provides testimony to the practice of having skilled readers at symposia. The two poets who dominate the Augustan era, Virgil and Horace, also represent opposing attitudes to performance, the former embracing it, the latter professing to abhor it. Allusions by Ovid and Propertius to poetic performance are also discussed.

scholarly journals Inconvenient Witnesses: Testimonies of Slaves in a Criminal Trial During the Republic and the Principate

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 197
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Loska
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Trial ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Statutory Law ◽  
The Republic

<p>In ancient Rome, slaves performed many different tasks. The fact that they often enjoyed the trust of their owners and knew their secrets made them very desirable witnesses in a criminal trial. The aim of the article is to show examples of situations in which the testimony of slaves in a criminal trial could be dangerous for their owners. Slaves were subject to obligatory torture, so they could reveal some secrets against their will. However, there was a ban on the use of slaves’ testimonies against their owners. Roman law, still, knew a few exceptions to this, in matters justified by the interests of Rome. The article shows also the changes made during the Principate, when the statutory law regulating this issue appeared.</p>

Foreign policy of Ancient Rome during the period of the kings and the early Republic

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksey Panischev
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
Military Training ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Political Center ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Republic

The monograph is devoted to the foreign policy of Ancient Rome during the period of the kings and the early Republic. The paper draws attention to the fact that at these stages of its development, Rome did not create a state in the modern sense, but rather a Federation, and with a developed self-government of its participants. Thanks to a system of mutually beneficial treaties, Rome became a political center among the peoples of Ancient Italy. At the same time, remnants of tribal relations were preserved in Ancient Rome for a long time. Attention is also paid to the development of military Affairs in Rome. It is noted that in Ancient Rome for a long time there were no defensive walls, which predisposed the Romans to an offensive type of warfare. The Romans created battle tactics that would be consistent with the characteristics of the soldiers ' weapons and would allow for rapid military training among recruits, which provided the Romans with high mobilization capabilities. However, classically represent the soldier in the Lorica of segmentata in the tsarist period was not. An important role in the development of Rome as the center of international politics of Ancient Italy, the center of the Federation was played by the high moral standards postulated by the ancient Roman society and invested in the concept of the Republic. All these diplomatic, ethical, and military features of Ancient Rome combined to determine the success of Roman civilization. However, it is worth noting that the disorganization of these principles caused the fall of Rome. For anyone interested in the historical processes of Ancient Italy and Ancient Rome.

Literary Evidence for the Beginnings of Roman Art

1934 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-162
Author(s):  
C. C. Van Essen
Keyword(s):  
Roman Period ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Roman Art ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Social War ◽  
Rome I

‘Art in Rome and Roman art are two notions not necessarily identical.’ Some years ago, I began a paper on the chronology of Roman sculpture under the Republic with these words, and since then Mrs. Strong has published her book Art in Ancient Rome, which by its title seems to express the same view—a view corroborated by the materials studied in the first chapters. Therefore, notwithstanding some recent objections, in matters of plastic art at Rome, I persist in distinguishing a Latin and a Roman period, meeting about 90 B.C., the epoch of the Social War.

Rome, Race, and the Republic: Progressive America and the Fall of the Roman Empire, 1890-1920

2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-323
Author(s):  
Kristofer Allerfeldt
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Roman Republic ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Henry Adams ◽  
Theodore Roosevelt ◽  
Alive Today ◽  
Western Imagination ◽  
The Republic

Ancient Rome is a powerful metaphor in the western imagination. It is very much alive today. The Roman Republic inspires images of democracy and the empire is the very epitome of decadence. The collapse of this, the greatest of empires, is a parable. The Progressive Era opened with overt imperial ambitions and ended with the collapse of Woodrow Wilson's plans for a Pax Americana. Throughout this period, the symbol of Rome was explicitly used to justify or condemn expansion, warn of the dangers of immigration and commercialization, attack America's enemies, and praise the nation's allies. To figures as diverse as Kaiser Wilhelm II, Henry Adams, and Theodore Roosevelt, Rome was both a model and a warning. Politicians, historians and other commentators saw America as heir to the Roman legacy. Race theorizers claimed that Americans were either the modern Romans or the descendants of the Barbarians—promoters of ordered modernity or champions of individual democracy.

scholarly journals On the Concepts of the “Family” and the “Household” in the Political Theory of Jean Bodin

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 130-148
Author(s):  
Gulnara Bayazitova
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The Public ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Jean Bodin ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Republic

The article examines the tradition of formation of the concepts “family” (famille) and “household” (ménage) in the political theory of the French lawyer, Jean Bodin. The article looks into different editions of Six Books of the Commonwealthto explore the connotations of the key concepts and the meaning that Bodin ascribed to them. As secondary sources, Bodin uses the works by Xenophon, Aristotle, Apuleus, and Marcus Junianus Justin, as well as the Corpus Juris Civilis. Bodin examines three different traditions, those of Ancient Greece, Ancient Hebrew, and Ancient Rome. Each of these traditions has its own history of the concepts of the “family” and of the “household”. Bodin refers to ancient traditions for polemics, but eventually offers his own understanding, not only of the concepts of “famille” and “ménage”, but also of the term «République», defined as the Republic, a term that (with some reservations) refers to the modern notion of state. The very fact that these concepts are being used signifies the division of the political space into the spheres of the private and the public. Furthermore, the concepts of the “family” and of the “household” are key to understand the essence of sovereignty as the supreme authority in the Republic. The author concludes that the difference between Bodin’s concepts of the “family” and the “household” lies not only in the possession of property and its legal manifestation, but also in the fact that the “household” is seen by Bodin as the basis of the Republic, the first step in the system of subordination to the authority.

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