“Not Putting Roman History in Order?” – Regal, Republican and Imperial Boundaries

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-46
Keyword(s):  
Roman History

Lykophron's Alexandra, Rome, and the Hellenistic World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Hornblower
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Historical Document ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
South Italy ◽  
Hellenistic World ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Area Of Origin

This book is an original, accessibly written, contribution to Roman and Hellenistic history. Its subject is a long (1474-line) ancient Greek poem, Lykophron’s Alexandra, probably written about 190 BC. The Trojan Kassandra foretells the conflicts between Europe and Asia from the Trojan Wars to the establishment of Roman ascendancy over the Greek world in the poet’s own time, including the founding of new cities by returning Greeks through the Mediterranean zone, and of Rome by the Trojan refugee Aineias, Kassandra’s kinsman. Simon Hornblower now follows his detailed commentary (OUP 2015, paperback 2017) with a monograph asserting the Alexandra’s importance as a historical document of interest to political, cultural, and religious historians and students of myths of identity. Part One explores Lykophron’s geopolitical world, especially south Italy (perhaps the poet’s area of origin), Sicily, and Rhodes, and argues that the recent (in the 190s) hostile presence of Hannibal in south Italy is a frequent if indirectly expressed concern of the poem. Part Two investigates the poem’s relation to Sibylline and other anti-Roman writings, and argues for its cultural and religious topicality. The Conclusion shows that the 190s BC were a turning-point in Roman history, and that Lykophron was aware of this.

Reading Roman Declamation

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman History ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
Sociocultural Context ◽  
International Group ◽  
Seneca The Elder ◽  
First Time ◽  
Literary Phenomenon

Situated at the crossroads of rhetoric and fiction, the genre of declamatio offers its practitioners the freedom to experiment with new forms of discourse. This volume places the literariness of Roman declamation into the spotlight by showcasing its theoretical influences, stylistic devices, and generic conventions as related by Seneca the Elder, the author of the Controversiae and Suasoriae, which jointly make up the largest surviving collection of declamatory speeches from antiquity. In so doing, it draws attention to the complexity of these texts, and maps out, for the first time, the sociocultural context for their composition, delivery, and reception. The volume’s chapters have been authored by an international group of leading scholars in Latin literature and rhetoric, and explore not only the historical roles of individual declaimers but also the physical and linguistic techniques upon which they collectively drew. In addition, the ‘dark side of declamation’ is illuminated by contributions on the competitiveness of the arena and the manipulative potential of declamatory skill. In keeping with the volume’s overall treatment of declamation as a literary phenomenon, a section has also been dedicated to intertextuality. This comprehensive, innovative, and up-to-date treatment provides thought-provoking analyses of Roman declamation, and therefore constitutes an essential volume for both students and scholars in the fields of Latin literature, Republican Roman history, and rhetoric.

The Corrupting Sea

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Bond
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Law ◽  
Institutional Decline ◽  
Roman Administration

The chapter focuses on a period that has often been described in terms of a moral and institutional decline. It interrogates both legal and literary sources pertaining to imperial Roman administration, and asks to what extent do they offer evidence of increasing corruption or merely greater awareness of its debilitating effects. In addition, it also explores the extent to which the rhetoric of corruption itself can be seen as an anticorruption tactic on the part of some elites, with the power to shape norms outside the formal remit of the law. Ultimately, what it shows is that, though corruption may not have been a problem unique to the later Roman Empire, the array and severity of anticorruption tactics introduced during this period do distinguish it from previous eras of Roman history.

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.

Capital, Investment, and Innovation in the Roman World

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Capital Investment ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Roman Economy ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Modern Economic Growth ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
Agriculture Water

Investment in capital, both physical and financial, and innovation in its uses are often considered the linchpins of modern economic growth, while credit and credit markets now seem to determine the wealth—as well as the fate—of nations. This book asks whether it always thus, and whether the Roman economy—large, complex, and sophisticated as it was— looked anything like today’s economies in terms of its structural properties. Through consideration of the allocation and uses of capital and credit and the role of innovation in the Roman world, the contributors to this volume go to the heart of the matter. How was capital in its various forms generated, allocated, and employed in the Roman economy? Did the Romans have markets for capital goods and credit? Did investment in capital lead to innovation and productivity growth? The authors consider multiple aspects of capital use in agriculture, water management, trade, and urban production, and of credit provision, finance, and human capital in different periods of Roman history, in Italy and elsewhere in the Roman world. Using many different types of written and archaeological evidence, and employing a range of modern theoretical perspectives and methodologies, the contributors, an international team of historians and archaeologists, have produced the first book-length contribution to focus exclusively on (physical and financial) capital in the Roman world, a volume that is aimed at experts in the field as well as at economic historians and archaeologists specializing in other periods and places.

Inscriptions and the Narrative of Roman History

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Potter
Keyword(s):  
Roman History ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
The Third ◽  
Literary Sources

This chapter offers an analysis of how inscriptions can complement the narratives of Roman history from the third century BCE to the third century CE provided in literary sources. They reveal certain historical events or details that would otherwise be unknown, and they supplement the information offered by the surviving Roman historians .

Roman History

2021 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-148
Author(s):  
James Corke-Webster
Keyword(s):  
Roman Republic ◽  
Social History ◽  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
New Institutional Economics ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Drivers Of Change ◽  
Ancient Economy

A bumper edition this time, by way of apology for COVID-necessitated absenteeism in the autumn issue. The focus is on three pillars of social history – the economy (stupid), law, and religion. First up is Saskia Roselaar's second monograph, Italy's Economic Revolution. Roselaar sets out to trace the contribution made by economics to Italy's integration in the Roman Republic, focusing on the period after the ‘conquest’ of Italy (post 268 bce). Doing so necessitates two distinct steps: assessing, first, how economic contacts developed in this period, and second, whether and to what extent those contacts furthered the wider unification of Italy under Roman hegemony. Roselaar is influenced by New Institutional Economics (hereafter NIE), now ubiquitous in studies of the ancient economy. Her title may be an homage to Philip Kay's Rome's Economic Revolution, but the book itself is a challenge to that work, which in Roselaar's view neglects almost entirely the agency of the Italians in the period's economic transformation. For Roselaar, the Italians were as much the drivers of change as the Romans; indeed, it is this repeated conviction that unifies her chapters.

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