Author: Ralph Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350325414
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
Roman political leaders used distance from Rome as a key political tool to assert pre-eminence. Through the case studies of Caesar's hegemony, Augustus's autocracy, and Tiberius's reign, this book examines how these figures' experiences and manipulations of absence established a multipolar focus of political life centred less on the city of Rome, and more on the idea of a single leader. The Roman expansion over Italy and the Mediterranean put the political system under considerable stress, and eventually resulted in a dispersal of leadership and a decentralization of power. Absent generals rivalled their peers in Rome for influence and threatened to surpass them from the provinces. Roman leaders, from Sulla to Tiberius, used absence as a mechanism to act autonomously, but it came at the cost of losing influence and control at the centre. In order to hold influence while being split off from the decision-making powers of the geographical nucleus that was Rome, communication channels to mitigate necessary absences were developed during this period, such as travel, intermediate meetings, letters (propaganda writings) and a complex network of mediators, ultimately forming the circle from which the imperial court emerged. Absent leadership, as it developed throughout the Late Republic, a hitherto neglected issue, eventually became a valuable asset in the institutionalising process of the autocracy of Caesar, Augustus, and Tiberius.
Author: Raoul McLaughlin
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1847252354
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
Studies the complex system of trade exchanges and commerce that profoundly changed Roman society.
Author: Jennifer A. Rea
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472537831
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
"Legendary Rome" is the first book to offer a comparative treatment of the reinvention of Rome's origins in the poetry of Vergil, Tibullus and Propertius. It also examines the impact that the changing topography of Rome, as orchestrated by the emperor Augustus, had on those poets' renditions of Rome's legendary past. When the poets explore the significance of Augustus' reconstruction of the Palatine and Capitoline hills, they create new meaning and memories for the story of Rome's legendary foundations. As the tradition of Rome's mythic and legendary origins evolves through each poetic revision, the past transforms and is reinvented anew.The exploration of what constitutes a civilised landscape for each poet leads to significant conclusions about the dynamic and evolving nature of shared public memories. Written when Rome was in the process of defining a new, post-war identity, the poems studied here capture the growing tension between community and individual development, the restoration of peace versus expansion through military means, and stability and change within the city.
Author: Dexter Hoyos
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786725398
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201
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Book Description
Rome – Urbs Roma: city of patricians and plebeians, emperors and gladiators, slaves and concubines – was the epicentre of a far-flung imperium whose cultural legacy is incalculable. How a tiny settlement, founded by desperate adventurers beside the banks of the River Tiber, came to rule vast tracts of territory across the face of the known world is one of the more improbable stories of antiquity. The epic scale of the Colosseum; majestically columned temples; formidable legionaries marching in burnished steel breastplates; and capricious Caesars clad in purple robes who thought themselves gods: all these images speak of a grandeur that continues to be associated with this most celebrated of ancient capitals. The glory of Rome is further underlined by enduring monuments like Hadrian's Wall, holding the line as it did against ferocious Pictish barbarians thought to be from Hyperborea: the mythic Land Beyond the North Wind. This book vividly recounts the rags-to-riches story of Rome's unlikely triumph. Perhaps the most famous example in history of modest beginnings rising to greatness, Rome's empire was never static or uniform. Over the centuries, under the 'boundless grandeur of the Roman peace' (as the Elder Pliny put it), imperial law, civilisation and language vigorously interacted with and influenced local cultures across western and central Europe and North Africa. Provincial subjects were made Roman citizens, generals and senators. In AD 98 Trajan became the first of many Romans from outside Italy to assume supreme power as Emperor. Poets, philosophers, historians and legalists – and many others besides – all participated in the brilliant intellectual constellation secured by the pax Romana. However, as Dexter Hoyos reveals, the empire was not won cheaply or fast, and did not always succeed. The Carthaginian general Hannibal came close to destroying it. Arminius freed Germania by brutally annihilating three irreplaceable legions in the Teutoburg Forest – a disaster that broke Augustus' heart. And the Romans themselves, in expanding their empire, were often ruthless. Caesar boasted of killing a million enemy fighters in his Gallic Wars, while the accusation of a Caledonian lord became proverbial: they make a desert and call it peace. Yet at the same time the Romans strove to impose moral and legal principles for directing their subjects as much as themselves, and laid down standards of government that are still valid today. Rome Victorious is a masterful new treatment of the rise of Rome – from the viewpoints both of the city itself and the people it came to rule and make its own.
Author: DK
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0744086108
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 66
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Book Description
Illustrated guide to where and how the first great civilizations lived, shown on maps. From the first cities of Sumer to the empire of the Incas, travel around the world and through 5,000 years of history to see where and how ancient peoples lived. What was it like to live in the crowded city of Rome? Why did the Egyptians build pyramids? When did Samurai warriors first ride into battle? How did sailors first navigate the Pacific Ocean? Which Chinese emperor has a palace with 1,000 bedrooms? All these questions and more are answered in The Ancient Worlds Atlas - a lavishly illustrated guide to past civilizations. From North America to New Zealand, this book takes you on a trip around the world and through history to visit ancient cities and empires, showing who lived where and explaining the unique features of each civilization. Russell Barnett's hand-drawn illustrations literally put the past on map, showing where and why the world's great cities grew and how archaeological evidence has provided clues to the past.
Author: Ralph Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350325422
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 334
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Book Description
Roman political leaders used distance from Rome as a key political tool to assert pre-eminence. Through the case studies of Caesar's hegemony, Augustus's autocracy, and Tiberius's reign, this book examines how these figures' experiences and manipulations of absence established a multipolar focus of political life centred less on the city of Rome, and more on the idea of a single leader. The Roman expansion over Italy and the Mediterranean put the political system under considerable stress, and eventually resulted in a dispersal of leadership and a decentralization of power. Absent generals rivalled their peers in Rome for influence and threatened to surpass them from the provinces. Roman leaders, from Sulla to Tiberius, used absence as a mechanism to act autonomously, but it came at the cost of losing influence and control at the centre. In order to hold influence while being split off from the decision-making powers of the geographical nucleus that was Rome, communication channels to mitigate necessary absences were developed during this period, such as travel, intermediate meetings, letters (propaganda writings) and a complex network of mediators, ultimately forming the circle from which the imperial court emerged. Absent leadership, as it developed throughout the Late Republic, a hitherto neglected issue, eventually became a valuable asset in the institutionalising process of the autocracy of Caesar, Augustus, and Tiberius.
Author: E.A. Thompson
Publisher: Bristol Classical Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Ulfila was a fourth-century Christian bishop and missionary who first brought Christianity to the Goths. This study of early Christianity among the Goths describes the background to the Visigoths' conversion from paganism, discussing their material culture, relations with the Roman Empire, social organization and religion.
Author: Jacob A. Latham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316692426
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
The pompa circensis, the procession which preceded the chariot races in the arena, was both a prominent political pageant and a hallowed religious ritual. Traversing a landscape of memory, the procession wove together spaces and institutions, monuments and performers, gods and humans into an image of the city, whose contours shifted as Rome changed. In the late Republic, the parade produced an image of Rome as the senate and the people with their gods - a deeply traditional symbol of the city which was transformed during the empire when an imperial image was built on top of the republican one. In late antiquity, the procession fashioned a multiplicity of Romes: imperial, traditional, and Christian. In this book, Jacob A. Latham explores the webs of symbolic meanings in the play between performance and itinerary, tracing the transformations of the circus procession from the late Republic to late antiquity.
Author: Ellen O'Gorman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350095508
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
This study examines how Tacitus' representation of speech determines the roles of speakers within the political sphere, and explores the possibility of politically effective speech in the principate. It argues against the traditional scholarly view that Tacitus refuses to offer a positive view of senatorial power in the principate: while senators did experience limitations and changes to what they could achieve in public life, they could aim to create a dimension of political power and efficacy through speeches intended to create and sustain relations which would in turn determine the roles played by both senators or an emperor. Ellen O'Gorman traces Tacitus' own charting of these modes of speech, from flattery and aggression to advice, praise, and censure, and explores how different modes of speech in his histories should be evaluated: not according to how they conform to pre-existing political stances, but as they engender different political worlds in the present and future. The volume goes beyond literary analysis of the texts to create a new framework for studying this essential period in ancient Roman history, much in the same way that Tacitus himself recasts the political authority and presence of senatorial speakers as narrative and historical analysis.
Author: Jonathan Zarecki
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 178093470X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
The resurgence of interest in Cicero's political philosophy in the last twenty years demands a re-evaluation of Cicero's ideal statesman and its relationship not only to Cicero's political theory but also to his practical politics. Jonathan Zarecki proposes three original arguments: firstly, that by the publication of his De Republica in 51 BC Cicero accepted that some sort of return to monarchy was inevitable. Secondly, that Cicero created his model of the ideal statesman as part of an attempt to reconcile the mixed constitution of Rome's past with his belief in the inevitable return of sole-person rule. Thirdly, that the ideal statesman was the primary construct against which Cicero viewed the political and military activities of Pompey, Caesar and Antony, and himself.
