The Deaths of the Republic

The Deaths of the Republic PDF

Author: Brian Walters

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-02-20

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0192575945

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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.

Book of the Body Politic

Book of the Body Politic PDF

Author: Christine (de Pisan)

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9781649590510

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"Christine de Pizan's Body Politic (1406-1407) is the first political treatise to have been written not just by a woman, but by a woman capable of holding her own in a normally male domain. It advises not just the prince, as was traditional, but also nobles, knights, and the common people, promoting the ideals of interdependence and social responsibility. Rooted in the mind-set of medieval Christendom, it heralds the humanism of the Renaissance, highlighting classical culture and Roman civic virtues. The Body Politic resounds still today, urging the need for probity in public life and the importance of responsibilities as well as rights"--

Roman Political Thought

Roman Political Thought PDF

Author: Jed W. Atkins

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-04-12

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1107107008

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A thematic introduction to Roman political thought that shows the Romans' enduring contribution to key political ideas.

The Book of the Body Politic

The Book of the Body Politic PDF

Author: Christine de Pizan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1994-09-15

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 1316583554

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Christine de Pizan was born in Venice and raised in Paris at the court of Charles V of France. Widowed at the age of twenty-five, she turned to writing as a source of comfort and income, and went on to produce a remarkable series of books, including poetry, politics, chivalry, warfare, religion and philosophy. She is considered to be France's first female professional writer. This was the first translation into modern English of Christine de Pizan's major political work, The Book of the Body Politic. Written during the Hundred Years' War, it discusses the education and behaviour appropriate for princes, nobility and common people, so that all classes can understand their responsibilities towards society as a whole. A product of a time of civil unrest, The Book of the Body Politic offers a medieval political theory of interdependence and social responsibility from the perspective of an educated woman.

The Body Politic in Roman Political Thought

The Body Politic in Roman Political Thought PDF

Author: Julia Mebane

Publisher:

Published: 2024-01-31

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 1009389289

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How did Roman writers use the metaphor of the body politic to respond to the downfall of the Republic? In this book, Julia Mebane begins with the Catilinarian Conspiracy in 63 BCE, when Cicero and Catiline proposed two rival models of statesmanship on the senate floor: the civic healer and the head of state. Over the next century, these two paradigms of authority were used to confront the establishment of sole rule in the Roman world. Tracing their Imperial afterlives allows us to see how Romans came to terms with autocracy without ever naming it as such. In identifying metaphor as an important avenue of political thought, the book makes a significant contribution to the history of ideas. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Medieval Political Theory: A Reader

Medieval Political Theory: A Reader PDF

Author: Kate Langdon Forhan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-07-23

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1136123563

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A textbook anthology of important works of political thought revealing the development of ideas from the 12th to the 15th centuries. Includes new translations of both well-known and ignored writers, and an introductory overview.

Republicanism, Rhetoric, and Roman Political Thought

Republicanism, Rhetoric, and Roman Political Thought PDF

Author: Daniel J. Kapust

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-03-07

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1139497111

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Republicanism, Rhetoric, and Roman Political Thought develops readings of Rome's three most important Latin historians - Sallust, Livy and Tacitus - in light of contemporary discussions of republicanism and rhetoric. Drawing on recent scholarship as well as other classical writers and later political thinkers, this book develops interpretations of the three historians' writings centering on their treatments of liberty, rhetoric, and social and political conflict. Sallust is interpreted as an antagonistic republican, for whom elite conflict serves as an outlet and channel for the antagonisms of political life. Livy is interpreted as a consensualist republican, for whom character and its observation helps to maintain the body politic. Tacitus is interpreted as being centrally concerned with the development of prudence and as a subtle critic of imperial rule.

Crisis and Constitutionalism

Crisis and Constitutionalism PDF

Author: Benjamin Straumann

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 019995092X

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"The crisis and fall of the Roman Republic spawned a tradition of political thought that sought to evade the Republic's fate--despotism. Thinkers from Cicero to Bodin, Montesquieu and the American Founders saw constitutionalism, not virtue, as the remedy. This study traces Roman constitutional thought from antiquity to the Revolutionary Era"--

Roman Political Thought and the Modern Theoretical Imagination

Roman Political Thought and the Modern Theoretical Imagination PDF

Author: Dean Hammer

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2014-10-22

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 0806185686

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Links modern political theorists with the Romans who inspired them Roman contributions to political theory have been acknowledged primarily in the province of law and administration. Even with a growing interest among classicists in Roman political thought, most political theorists view it as merely derivative of Greek philosophy. Focusing on the works of key Roman thinkers, Dean Hammer recasts the legacy of their political thought, examining their imaginative vision of a vulnerable political world and the relationship of the individual to this realm. By bringing modern political theorists into conversation with the Romans who inspired them—Arendt with Cicero, Machiavelli with Livy, Montesquieu with Tacitus, Foucault with Seneca—the author shows how both ancient Roman and modern European thinkers seek to recover an attachment to the political world that we actually inhabit, rather than to a utopia—a “perfect nowhere” outside of the existing order. Brimming with fresh interpretations of both ancient and modern theorists, this book offers provocative reading for classicists, political scientists, and anyone interested in political theory and philosophy. It is also a timely meditation on the hidden ways in which democracy can give way to despotism when the animating spirit of politics succumbs to resignation, cynicism, and fear.