1. Roman Military Power and Roman Manliness

2021 ◽  
pp. 181-201
2020 ◽  
pp. 169-211
Author(s):  
Julia Dyson Hejduk

While Augustus in Propertius stands for Roman military power, Jupiter’s additional association with sex makes him a far more complex figure. The erotic rivalry between Jupiter and Propertius throughout book 2, the lovesickness book, would devolve into even greater absurdity if Jupiter were metonymy for Augustus. Whether or not Augustus is on his way to becoming a “Jupiter figure,” the four poems in which he and the god are juxtaposed make clear the increasing concentration of power in the hands of one man. In book 2, Jupiter’s unsung Gigantomachy, followed immediately by Augustus’s unsung Aeneid, creates a connection; the inability of either Jupiter or Caesar to separate devoted lovers strengthens it. Book 3 floats the idea—playfully, one hopes—of an opposition between the chief man and the chief god, as the poet claims that Rome should not fear even Jupiter while Augustus is safe. By book 4, Jupiter has been further upstaged by Augustus, merely sitting in the audience while Caesar’s victory at Actium is sung. On the other hand, the rise and fall of Jupiter the Lover throughout Propertius’s poems does tell us something about the changing mores of Augustan Rome. The absence of this figure from book 4, and his replacement with the censorious persona who refuses to “suffer” Tarpeia’s love-wounds, may reflect the moral climate that Augustus’s marriage and adultery legislation sought to foster. Yet like the revenant Cynthia of 4.8, combining Juno’s wrath with Jupiter’s might, amor cannot really be killed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-215
Author(s):  
Hyun-Seok Song ◽  
Min-Ho Son ◽  
Sung-Ju Yoo ◽  
Do-Hyun Jung ◽  
Boo-Hee Park

Author(s):  
Mauricio Drelichman ◽  
Hans-Joachim Voth

This epilogue argues that Castile was solvent throughout Philip II's reign. A complex web of contractual obligations designed to ensure repayment governed the relationship between the king and his bankers. The same contracts allowed great flexibility for both the Crown and bankers when liquidity was tight. The risk of potential defaults was not a surprise; their likelihood was priced into the loan contracts. As a consequence, virtually every banking family turned a profit over the long term, while the king benefited from their services to run the largest empire that had yet existed. The epilogue then looks at the economic history version of Spain's Black Legend. The economic history version of the Black Legend emerged from a combination of two narratives: a rich historical tradition analyzing the decline of Spain as an economic and military power from the seventeenth century onward, combined with new institutional analysis highlighting the unconstrained power of the monarch.


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