Author: James Tan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780190639600
Category : Elite (Social sciences)
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
In this work, James Tan examines the ways in which the profits of imperial expansion transformed Roman public life. Tan argues that the leaders of Rome's early wars of expansion had been constrained by their dependence on taxpayer money.
Author: James Tan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190639598
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
Rome's wars delivered great wealth to the conquerors, but how did this affect politics and society on the home front? In Power and Public Finance at Rome, James Tan offers the first examination of the Roman Republic from the perspective of fiscal sociology and makes the case that no understanding of Roman history is complete without an appreciation of the role of economics in defining political interactions. Examining how imperial profits were distributed, Tan explores how imperial riches turned Roman public life on its head. Rome's lofty aristocrats had traditionally been constrained by their dependence on taxpayer money. They relied on the state to fund wars, and the state in turn relied on citizens' taxes to fuel the war machine. This fiscal chain bound the elite to taxpayer consent, but as the spoils of Empire flooded into Rome, leaders found that they could fund any policy they chose without relying on the support of the citizens who funded them. The influx of wealth meant that taxation at home was ended and citizens promptly lost what bargaining power they had enjoyed as a result of the state's reliance on their fiscal contributions. With their dependence on the taxpayers loosened, Rome's aristocratic leaders were free to craft a fiscal system which prioritized the enrichment of their own private estates and which devoted precious few resources to the provision of public goods. In six chapters on the nature of Rome's imperialist enrichment, on politics during the Punic Wars and on the all-important tribunates of the Gracchi, Tan offers new conceptions of Roman state creation, fiscal history, civic participation, aristocratic pre-eminence, and the eventual transition to autocracy.
Author: James Tan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190639571
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
In the first study of fiscal sociology in the Roman Republic, James Tan argues that much of Roman politics was defined by changes in the fiscal system. Tan offers a new conception of the Roman Republic by showing that imperial profits freed the elite from dependence on citizen taxes.
Author: Jordan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019888706X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291
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Book Description
What ambitions lay behind Roman provincial governance? How did these change over time and in response to local conditions? To what extent did local agents facilitate and contribute to the creation of imperial administrative institutions? The answers to these questions shape our understanding of how the Roman empire established and maintained hegemony within its provinces. This issue of imperial hegemony is particularly acute for the period during which the political apparatus of the Roman Republic was itself in crisis and flux--precisely the period during which many provinces first came under Roman control. Imperial Power, Provincial Government, and the Emergence of Roman Asia, 133 BCE-14 CE uses a case study of the province of Asia to focus closely on the formation and evolution of the Roman empire's administrative institutions. Comparatively well-excavated, Asia's rich epigraphy lends itself to this detailed study, while the region's long history of autonomous civic diplomacy and engagement with a range of Roman actors provide vital evidence for assessing the ways in which Roman empire and hegemony affected conditions on the ground in the province. Asia's unique history, moving from allied kingdom to regularly assigned provincia to a reconquered and reorganized territory, offers an insight into the complex workings of institutional formation. From an investigation of the institutions which emerged in the province over a long first century (133 BCE-14 CE), Bradley Jordan considers the discursive power of official utterances of the Roman state, and the strategies employed by local actors to negotiate a favourable relationship with the empire.
Author: Jeremy Armstrong
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350283770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
Money, Warfare and Power in the Ancient World offers twelve papers analysing the processes, consequences and problems involved in the monetization of warfare and its connection to political power in antiquity. The contributions explore not only how powerful men and states used money and coinage to achieve their aims, but how these aims and methods had often already been shaped by the medium of coined money typically with unintended consequences. These complex relationships between money, warfare and political power both personal and collective are explored across different cultures and socio-political systems around the ancient Mediterranean, ranging from Pharaonic Egypt to Late Antique Europe. This volume is also a tribute to the life and impact of Professor Matthew Trundle, an inspiring teacher and scholar, who was devoted to promoting the discipline of Classics in New Zealand and beyond. At the time of his death, he was writing a book on the wider importance of money in the Greek world. A central piece of this research is incorporated into this volume, completed by one of his former students, Christopher De Lisle. Additionally, Trundle had situated himself at the centre of a wide-ranging conversation on the nature of money and power in antiquity. The contributions of scholars of ancient monetization in this volume bring together many of the threads of those conversions, further advancing a field which Matthew Trundle had worked so tirelessly to promote.
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: Georges Massinelli
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110724006
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 544
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Book Description
The Pauline collection for the poor in Jerusalem is the most famous example of financial support for geographically distant groups in early Christianity. Recent assessments of the Pauline collection have focused on patronage to explain the social relations between Jerusalem and the Pauline groups and the strategies adopted by Paul. Through a comparison with the Greco-Roman world and a close reading of the texts, this study challenges the recent approach and proposes that other factors shaped Paul’s stance. Paul was interested in reassuring the Corinthians about the financial outcome of the collection and dispelling doubts that he might take advantage of them. The collection was an action modeled on divine generosity and an exchange within a reciprocal relationship between Christian groups. This study also surveys intergroup support between Christian groups in the first three centuries CE. This practice involved churches from most of the Mediterranean Basin and was known even outside of Christian circles. Transfers of money were organized according to a consistent pattern modeled on local charitable practices. The Pauline collection had similar characteristics and can be seen as part of this widespread economic practice.
Author: Walter Scheidel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691216738
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 698
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Book Description
The gripping story of how the end of the Roman Empire was the beginning of the modern world The fall of the Roman Empire has long been considered one of the greatest disasters in history. But in this groundbreaking book, Walter Scheidel argues that Rome's dramatic collapse was actually the best thing that ever happened, clearing the path for Europe's economic rise and the creation of the modern age. Ranging across the entire premodern world, Escape from Rome offers new answers to some of the biggest questions in history: Why did the Roman Empire appear? Why did nothing like it ever return to Europe? And, above all, why did Europeans come to dominate the world? In an absorbing narrative that begins with ancient Rome but stretches far beyond it, from Byzantium to China and from Genghis Khan to Napoleon, Scheidel shows how the demise of Rome and the enduring failure of empire-building on European soil launched an economic transformation that changed the continent and ultimately the world.
Author: Eric M. Orlin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 111835950X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
Provides students with a balanced understanding of the key aspects of the culture and society of the Roman Republic A Social and Cultural History of Republican Rome is the first undergraduate textbook of its kind to concentrate on the ways Roman societal structures, family dynamics, visual arts, law, religion, and other cultural and intellectual developments contributed to Roman identity between 509 BCE and 14 CE. Drawing from a diverse range of archaeological, epigraphic, and literary sources, author Eric M. Orlin provides insight into the socio-cultural and intellectual issues that shaped both the Roman Republic and the wider Mediterranean world. Thematically organized chapters address the practice of politics in the Roman Republic, explain the concept of patronage and the distinctions between patricians and plebeians, examine the impact of the army and militarism on Roman society, discuss the ties between Roman religion and the Roman state, and more. Chapters include maps, charts, images, and links to further readings in ancient sources and modern scholarship. Throughout the text, discussion of several recurring themes connects individual chapters while helping students critically engage the material. A Social and Cultural History of Republican Rome: Focuses on themes other than politics and the military, such as the position and role of women in the Roman family, the foundation of the Roman legal system, and the topography and growth of the city of Rome Introduces the basic materials available for the study of the Roman Republic, including written, architectural, and numismatic sources Features a brief narrative history of the Roman Republic and an overview of the text’s methodological framework Establishes key points of discussion for students, using comparisons between Roman society and our modern-day world Encourages students to critically examine the problems and issues raised by the material Covering topics in Roman history that are frequently neglected in undergraduate classrooms, A Social and Cultural History of Republican Rome is an excellent primary or supplementary textbook for courses on the Roman Republic as well as broader Roman history classes that incorporate socio-cultural issues.
Author: Elizabeth H. Pearson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000366715
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229
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Book Description
This volume demonstrates the development of Roman military bureaucracy during the Middle Republic, expanding on recent research to examine these administrative systems that made possible Rome’s expansion in this period. Bringing together literary works, epigraphy, archaeology, topography and demography, the study reveals a complex and well-structured bureaucratic system developing in parallel with the army during the Middle Republic, propelled in no small part by the stresses of the Hannibalic War. Not only the contents of documents, but the physical objects, individuals and spaces are discussed to re-create the administrative processes in maximum detail. Exploring the Mid-Republican Origins of Roman Military Administration provides an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Rome’s military and administrative history, as well as anyone working on the Republican period.
