Violence in Republican Rome

Violence in Republican Rome
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 272
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0198152825
ISBN-13 : 9780198152828
Rating : 4/5 (25 Downloads)

Synopsis Violence in Republican Rome by : Andrew William Lintott

Why did the aristocracy of the Roman Republic destroy the system of government which was its basis? The answers given by ancient authorities are moral corruption and personal ambition. The modern student finds only too inevitable the causal nexus of political conflict, violence, militaryinsurrection and authoritarian government. Yet before the era of intense violence Rome had an apparently stable constitution with a long history. In this revised edition of his classic book, for which he has written a new introduction, Andrew Lintott examines the roots of violence in Republican lawand society and the growth of violence in city war and the power of armies. It suggests in conclusion that this disaster was more the outcome of folly in the choice of political means than depravity in the choice of ends.

The Topography of Violence in the Greco-Roman World

The Topography of Violence in the Greco-Roman World
Author :
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Total Pages : 423
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780472119820
ISBN-13 : 0472119826
Rating : 4/5 (20 Downloads)

Synopsis The Topography of Violence in the Greco-Roman World by : Werner Riess

Examines how location confers cultural meaning on acts of violence, and renders them socially acceptable--or not

Murder Was Not a Crime

Murder Was Not a Crime
Author :
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Total Pages : 215
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780292721111
ISBN-13 : 0292721110
Rating : 4/5 (11 Downloads)

Synopsis Murder Was Not a Crime by : Judy E. Gaughan

Embarking on a unique study of Roman criminal law, Judy Gaughan has developed a novel understanding of the nature of social and political power dynamics in republican government. Revealing the significant relationship between political power and attitudes toward homicide in the Roman republic, Murder Was Not a Crime describes a legal system through which families (rather than the government) were given the power to mete out punishment for murder. With implications that could modify the most fundamental beliefs about the Roman republic, Gaughan's research maintains that Roman criminal law did not contain a specific enactment against murder, although it had done so prior to the overthrow of the monarchy. While kings felt an imperative to hold monopoly over the power to kill, Gaughan argues, the republic phase ushered in a form of decentralized government that did not see itself as vulnerable to challenge by an act of murder. And the power possessed by individual families ensured that the government would not attain the responsibility for punishing homicidal violence. Drawing on surviving Roman laws and literary sources, Murder Was Not a Crime also explores the dictator Sulla's "murder law," arguing that it lacked any government concept of murder and was instead simply a collection of earlier statutes repressing poisoning, arson, and the carrying of weapons. Reinterpreting a spectrum of scenarios, Gaughan makes new distinctions between the paternal head of household and his power over life and death, versus the power of consuls and praetors to command and kill.

Mortal Republic

Mortal Republic
Author :
Publisher : Hachette UK
Total Pages : 351
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780465093823
ISBN-13 : 0465093825
Rating : 4/5 (23 Downloads)

Synopsis Mortal Republic by : Edward J. Watts

Learn why the Roman Republic collapsed -- and how it could have continued to thrive -- with this insightful history from an award-winning author. In Mortal Republic, prize-winning historian Edward J. Watts offers a new history of the fall of the Roman Republic that explains why Rome exchanged freedom for autocracy. For centuries, even as Rome grew into the Mediterranean's premier military and political power, its governing institutions, parliamentary rules, and political customs successfully fostered negotiation and compromise. By the 130s BC, however, Rome's leaders increasingly used these same tools to cynically pursue individual gain and obstruct their opponents. As the center decayed and dysfunction grew, arguments between politicians gave way to political violence in the streets. The stage was set for destructive civil wars -- and ultimately the imperial reign of Augustus. The death of Rome's Republic was not inevitable. In Mortal Republic, Watts shows it died because it was allowed to, from thousands of small wounds inflicted by Romans who assumed that it would last forever.

The Cambridge World History of Violence: Volume 1, The Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds

The Cambridge World History of Violence: Volume 1, The Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds
Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Total Pages :
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781108882903
ISBN-13 : 1108882900
Rating : 4/5 (03 Downloads)

Synopsis The Cambridge World History of Violence: Volume 1, The Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds by : Garrett G. Fagan

The first in a four-volume set, The Cambridge World History of Violence, Volume 1 provides a comprehensive examination of violence in prehistory and the ancient world. Covering the Palaeolithic through to the end of classical antiquity, the chapters take a global perspective spanning sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East, Europe, India, China, Japan and Central America. Unlike many previous works, this book does not focus only on warfare but examines violence as a broader phenomenon. The historical approach complements, and in some cases critiques, previous research on the anthropology and psychology of violence in the human story. Written by a team of contributors who are experts in each of their respective fields, Volume 1 will be of particular interest to anyone fascinated by archaeology and the ancient world.

Killing for the Republic

Killing for the Republic
Author :
Publisher : Johns Hopkins University Press
Total Pages : 393
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781421429861
ISBN-13 : 1421429861
Rating : 4/5 (61 Downloads)

Synopsis Killing for the Republic by : Steele Brand

A sweeping political and cultural history, Killing for the Republic closes with a compelling argument in favor of resurrecting the citizen-soldier ideal in modern America.

The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic

The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic
Author :
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Total Pages : 262
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0472088785
ISBN-13 : 9780472088782
Rating : 4/5 (85 Downloads)

Synopsis The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic by : Fergus Millar

A major work on the power of the crowd

The Deaths of the Republic

The Deaths of the Republic
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Total Pages : 175
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780192575944
ISBN-13 : 0192575945
Rating : 4/5 (44 Downloads)

Synopsis The Deaths of the Republic by : Brian Walters

That the Roman republic died is a commonplace often repeated. In extant literature, the notion is first given form in the works of the orator Cicero (106-43 BCE) and his contemporaries, though the scattered fragments of orators and historians from the earlier republic suggest that the idea was hardly new. In speeches, letters, philosophical tracts, poems, and histories, Cicero and his peers obsessed over the illnesses, disfigurements, and deaths that were imagined to have beset their body politic, portraying rivals as horrific diseases or accusing opponents of butchering and even murdering the state. Body-political imagery had long enjoyed popularity among Greek authors, but these earlier images appear muted in comparison and it is only in the republic that the body first becomes fully articulated as a means for imagining the political community. In the works of republican authors is found a state endowed with nervi, blood, breath, limbs, and organs; a body beaten, wounded, disfigured, and infected; one with scars, hopes, desires, and fears; that can die, be killed, or kill in turn. Such images have often been discussed in isolation, yet this is the first book to offer a sustained examination of republican imagery of the body politic, with particular emphasis on the use of bodily-political images as tools of persuasion and the impact they exerted on the politics of Rome in the first century BCE.

The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rome

The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rome
Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Total Pages : 647
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780521896290
ISBN-13 : 0521896290
Rating : 4/5 (90 Downloads)

Synopsis The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rome by : Paul Erdkamp

Rome was the largest city in the ancient world. As the capital of the Roman Empire, it was clearly an exceptional city in terms of size, diversity and complexity. While the Colosseum, imperial palaces and Pantheon are among its most famous features, this volume explores Rome primarily as a city in which many thousands of men and women were born, lived and died. The thirty-one chapters by leading historians, classicists and archaeologists discuss issues ranging from the monuments and the games to the food and water supply, from policing and riots to domestic housing, from death and disease to pagan cults and the impact of Christianity. Richly illustrated, the volume introduces groundbreaking new research against the background of current debates and is designed as a readable survey accessible in particular to undergraduates and non-specialists.

Roman Masculinity and Politics from Republic to Empire

Roman Masculinity and Politics from Republic to Empire
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 243
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781000299007
ISBN-13 : 1000299007
Rating : 4/5 (07 Downloads)

Synopsis Roman Masculinity and Politics from Republic to Empire by : Charles Goldberg

This volume explores the role that republican political participation played in forging elite Roman masculinity. It situates familiarly "manly" traits like militarism, aggressive sexuality, and the pursuit of power within a political system based on power sharing and cooperation. In deliberations in the Senate, at social gatherings, and on military campaign, displays of consensus with other men greased the wheels of social discourse and built elite comradery. Through literary sources and inscriptions that offer censorious or affirmative appraisal of male behavior from the Middle and Late Republic (ca. 300–31 BCE) to the Principate or Early Empire (ca. 100 CE), this book shows how the vir bonus, or "good man," the Roman persona of male aristocratic excellence, modulated imperatives for personal distinction and military and sexual violence with political cooperation and moral exemplarity. While the advent of one-man rule in the Empire transformed political power relations, ideals forged in the Republic adapted to the new climate and provided a coherent model of masculinity for emperor and senator alike. Scholars often paint a picture of Republic and Principate as distinct landscapes, but enduring ideals of male self-fashioning constitute an important continuity. Roman Masculinity and Politics from Republic to Empire provides a fascinating insight into the intertwined nature of masculinity and political power for anyone interested in Roman political and social history, and those working on gender in the ancient world more broadly.