The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome

The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome PDF

Author: Catharine Edwards

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-05-09

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 9780521893893

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The decadence and depravity of the ancient Romans are a commonplace of serious history, popular novels and spectacular films. This book is concerned not with the question of how immoral the ancient Romans were but why the literature they produced is so preoccupied with immorality. The modern image of immoral Rome derives from ancient accounts which are largely critical rather than celebratory. Upper-class Romans habitually accused one another of the most lurid sexual and sumptuary improprieties. Historians and moralists lamented the vices of their contemporaries and mourned for the virtues of a vanished age. Far from being empty commonplaces these assertions constituted a powerful discourse through which Romans negotiated conflicts and tensions in their social and political order. This study proceeds by a detailed examination of a wide range of ancient texts (all of which are translated) exploring the dynamics of their rhetoric, as well as the ends to which they were deployed. Roman moralising discourse, the author suggests, may be seen as especially concerned with the articulation of anxieties about gender, social status and political power. Individual chapters focus on adultery, effeminacy, the immorality of the Roman theatre, luxurious buildings and the dangers of pleasure. This book should appeal to students and scholars of classical literature and ancient history. It will also attract anthropologists and social and cultural historians.

Death in Ancient Rome

Death in Ancient Rome PDF

Author: Catharine Edwards

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2007-01-01

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780300112085

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For the Romans, the manner of a person's death was the most telling indication of their true character. Death revealed the true patriot, the genuine philosopher, even, perhaps, the great artist--and certainly the faithful Christian. Catharine Edwards draws on the many and richly varied accounts of death in the writings of Roman historians, poets, and philosophers, including Cicero, Lucretius, Virgil, Seneca, Petronius, Tacitus, Tertullian, and Augustine, to investigate the complex significance of dying in the Roman world. Death in the Roman world was largely understood and often literally viewed as a spectacle. Those deaths that figured in recorded history were almost invariably violent--murders, executions, suicides--and yet the most admired figures met their ends with exemplary calm, their last words set down for posterity. From noble deaths in civil war, mortal combat between gladiators, political execution and suicide, to the deathly dinner of Domitian, the harrowing deaths of women such as the mythical Lucretia and Nero's mother Agrippina, as well as instances of Christian martyrdom, Edwards engagingly explores the culture of death in Roman literature and history.

Women and Politics in Ancient Rome

Women and Politics in Ancient Rome PDF

Author: Richard A. Bauman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-11-01

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 1134821344

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First published in 1994. The study of women in the societies of antiquity has assumed a fresh significance in recent years. This book delineates not only the influential and manipulative role of Roman women in the business of government, law and public affairs in general, but also the emergence of women's political and liberationist movements. Professor Bauman's investigation covers the period from C350 BC to AD 68, and thus embraces the Middle and Late Republic and the Early Principate. It is demonstrated that the story of Roman women over that period is one of cohesion and continuity, of the steady expansion of women's roles in public affairs. That paced expansion, and the means by which it was achieved, such as the acquisition and use of legal knowledge and the influence of women's movements, is the central theme of this book. Bauman's treatment is principally chronological, stressing sequential development, concluding with the great ladies of the Emperor's House.

Making enemies : the logic of immorality in Ciceronian oratory

Making enemies : the logic of immorality in Ciceronian oratory PDF

Author: Isak Hammar

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 9789174736137

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"This is a book about Roman immorality and its place in political oratory in ancient Rome during the late Republic. It traces the portraits of immorality that Cicero made of his political and forensic enemies throughout his career."--P. 17.

The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic

The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic PDF

Author: Harriet I. Flower

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-06-23

Total Pages: 519

ISBN-13: 1107032245

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This second edition examines all aspects of Roman history, and contains a new introduction, three new chapters and updated bibliographies.

Roman Frugality

Roman Frugality PDF

Author: Ingo Gildenhard

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-07-09

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 1108888437

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Roman Frugality offers the first-ever systematic analysis of the variants of individual and collective self-restraint that shaped ancient Rome throughout its history and had significant repercussions in post-classical times. In particular, it tries to do the complexity of a phenomenon justice that is situated at the interface of ethics and economics, self and society, the real and the imaginary, and touches upon thrift and sobriety in the material sphere, but also modes of moderation more generally, not least in the spheres of food and drink, sex and power. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach drawing on ancient history, philology, archaeology and the history of thought, the volume traces the role of frugal thought and practice within the evolving political culture and political economy of ancient Rome from the archaic age to the imperial period and concludes with a chapter that explores the reception of ancient ideas of self-restraint in early modern times.

The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome

The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome PDF

Author: Edward J. Watts

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-10-11

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0197691951

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The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome tells the story of 2200 years of the use and misuse of the idea of Roman decline by ambitious politicians, authors, and autocrats as well as the people scapegoated and victimized in the name of Roman renewal. It focuses on the long history of a way of describing change that might seem innocuous, but which has cost countless people their lives, liberty, or property across two millennia.

Becoming Roman

Becoming Roman PDF

Author: Greg Woolf

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2000-07-27

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 9780521789820

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Studies the 'Romanization' of Rome's Gallic provinces in the late Republic and early empire.

From Shame to Sin

From Shame to Sin PDF

Author: Kyle Harper

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2013-06-01

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0674074564

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The transformation of the Roman world from polytheistic to Christian is one of the most sweeping ideological changes of premodern history. At the center was sex. Kyle Harper examines how Christianity changed the ethics of sexual behavior from shame to sin, and shows how the roots of modern sexuality are grounded in an ancient religious revolution.