A wide-ranging exploration of the construction and representation of space and monumentality in central texts of the Augustan period.

The age of Augustus, commonly dated to 30 BC – AD 14, was a pivotal period in world history. A time of tremendous change in Rome, Italy, and throughout the Mediterranean world, many developments were underway when Augustus took charge and a recurring theme is the role that he played in shaping their direction. The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus captures the dynamics and richness of this era by examining important aspects of political and social history, religion, literature, and art and architecture. The sixteen essays, written by distinguished specialists from the United States and Europe, explore the multi-faceted character of the period and the interconnections between social, religious, political, literary, and artistic developments. Introducing the reader to many of the central issues of the Age of Augustus, the essays also break new ground and will stimulate further research and discussion.

Written by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, one of the world's foremost scholars on Roman social and cultural history, this well-established introduction to Rome in the Age of Augustus provides a fascinating insight into the social and physical contexts of Augustan politics and poetry, exploring in detail the impact of the new regime of government on society. Taking an interpretative approach, the ideas and environment manipulated by Augustus are explored, along with reactions to that manipulation. Emphasising the role and impact of art and architecture of the time, and on Roman attitudes and values, Augustan Rome explains how the victory of Octavian at Actium transformed Rome and Roman life. This thought-provoking yet concise volume sets political changes in the context of their impact on Roman values, on the imaginative world of poetry, on the visual world of art, and on the fabric of the city of Rome.

Studies the effect of Rome's geographic worldview on its politics

The political rupture caused by the ascension of Augustus Caesar in ancient Rome, which ended the centuries-old Republic, had drastic consequences for the performance and understanding of masculinity in a markedly androcentric society. Previously, masculinity was established and maintained through the frame of competition, in both public and private spheres—but the total accumulation of power by one man foreclosed most avenues of, and even appreciation for, competition. Melanie Racette-Campbell examines how Rome’s elite men navigated this liminal moment between Republic and Empire, and shows that the process was neither linear nor uniform. Already in the late Republic, prior to Augustus’s rise to power, cracks in the hegemonic concept of masculinity were starting to show. Careful reading of contemporary texts reveals a decades-long process as tumultuous and unsteady as the political events they echoed, one in which multiple and competing strategies for reconceiving the nature of masculinity were tested, employed, discarded, and adopted in a complex public-private discourse. The eventual reconstitution of a definition of Roman manhood was not easily agreed upon. Masculinity in both the Republic and the Empire are well studied subjects, but by shining a light on the precise moment of transition Racette-Campbell unveils the precise complexity, contours, and nuances of the Augustan crisis of masculinity.

An ambitious analysis of the Roman literary obsession with retreat and closed spaces, in the context of expanding empire.

This collection is based on the papers given at a conference at the University of Nottingham in September 2005. The conference was intended to explore Rome as a site for the making of films, and also its changing role as a setting for cinematic narrative. The resulting collection of essays will contribute to the burgeoning genre of studies on cinema and the city, by focusing on one particularly rich case study both for the nature of the films discussed, and the complexities of the city and its representation. The volume will also reach beyond film studies in so far as the subject draws on and informs other approaches to Rome's cultural history (geography, art history, urban history, classics).The essays address topics ranging from the interwar period to the present. A diverse set of cinematic interactions and interventions are placed within the context of the evolving architectural, social and political fabric of Rome in a period of rapid and often traumatic historical change. Implicit in the conception of the conference was the idea that cinematic representations of the city inherit and rework established habits of visualisation used to produce images of the Eternal city. Three other tropes which constitute key elements in Rome's international reputation can be seen as being embedded in cinematic narratives. Firstly, the trope of transformation - artisic, narratives.Firstly, the trope of transformation -artisic, psychological, spiritual; secondly, the city's reputation as a cosmopolitan crossroad. Thirdly, Rome's status as a locus classicus for the juxtaposition of the ancient and the modern, which was given a new relevance and complexity in films which sought to focus on aspects of contemporary life, be it in the Fascist era, or the extreme contrasts of poverty and international bohemianism of the postwar era.

In the early Roman Empire, women's domestic roles were given new public prominence. Through an examination of early imperial representations of women's activities and responsibilities within the household, Kristina Milnor argues that this emphasis on private morality is actually a new way of understanding the nature of political life.

This book examines the impact of the Roman cultural revolution under Augustus on the Roman province of Greece. It argues that the transformation of Roman Greece into a classicizing 'museum' was a specific response of the provincial Greek elites to the cultural politics of the Roman imperial monarchy. Against a background of Roman debates about Greek culture and Roman decadence, Augustus promoted the ideal of a Roman debt to a 'classical' Greece rooted in Europe and morally opposed to a stereotyped Asia. In Greece the regime signalled its admiration for Athens, Sparta, Olympia and Plataea as symbols of these past Greek glories. Cued by the Augustan monarchy, provincial Greek notables expressed their Roman orientation by competitive cultural work (revival of ritual; restoration of buildings) aimed at further emphasising Greece's 'classical' legacy. Reprised by Hadrian, the Augustan construction of 'classical' Greece helped to promote the archaism typifying Greek culture under the principate.

"This commentary pays close critical attention to Dio's historical sources, methods, and assumptions as it also strives to present him as a figure in his own right. During a long life (ca. 164-after 229), Dio served as a Roman senator under seven emperors from Commodus to Severus Alexander, governed three Roman provinces, and was twice consul."--BOOK JACKET.