The Old Roman World [Didactic Press Paperbacks]

The Old Roman World [Didactic Press Paperbacks] PDF Author: John Lord
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781546472490
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 600

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Book Description
I propose to describe the Greatness and the Misery of the old Roman world; nor is there any thing in history more suggestive and instructive. A little city, founded by robbers on the banks of the Tiber, rises gradually into importance, although the great cities of the East are scarcely conscious of its existence. Its early struggles simply arrest the attention, and excite the jealousy, of the neighboring nations. The citizens of this little state are warriors, and, either for defense or glory, they subdue one after another the cities of Latium and Etruria, then the whole of Italy, and finally the old monarchies and empires of the world. In two hundred and fifty years the citizens have become nobles, and a great aristocracy is founded, which lasts eight hundred years. Their aggressive policy and unbounded ambition involve the whole world in war, which does not cease until all the nations known to the Greeks acknowledge their sway. Everywhere Roman laws, language, and institutions spread. A vast empire arises, larger than the Assyrian and the Macedonian combined,-a universal empire,-a great wonder and mystery, having all the grandeur of a providential event. It becomes too great to be governed by an oligarchy of nobles. Civil wars create an imperator, who, uniting in himself all the great offices of state, and sustained by the conquering legions, rules from East to West and from North to South, with absolute and undivided sovereignty. The Caesars reach the summit of human greatness and power, and the city of Romulus becomes the haughty mistress of the world. The emperor is worshiped as a deity, and the proud metropolis calls herself eternal. An empire is established by force of arms and by a uniform policy, such as this world has not seen before or since.

The Old Roman World [Didactic Press Paperbacks]

The Old Roman World [Didactic Press Paperbacks] PDF Author: John Lord
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781546472490
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 600

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Book Description
I propose to describe the Greatness and the Misery of the old Roman world; nor is there any thing in history more suggestive and instructive. A little city, founded by robbers on the banks of the Tiber, rises gradually into importance, although the great cities of the East are scarcely conscious of its existence. Its early struggles simply arrest the attention, and excite the jealousy, of the neighboring nations. The citizens of this little state are warriors, and, either for defense or glory, they subdue one after another the cities of Latium and Etruria, then the whole of Italy, and finally the old monarchies and empires of the world. In two hundred and fifty years the citizens have become nobles, and a great aristocracy is founded, which lasts eight hundred years. Their aggressive policy and unbounded ambition involve the whole world in war, which does not cease until all the nations known to the Greeks acknowledge their sway. Everywhere Roman laws, language, and institutions spread. A vast empire arises, larger than the Assyrian and the Macedonian combined,-a universal empire,-a great wonder and mystery, having all the grandeur of a providential event. It becomes too great to be governed by an oligarchy of nobles. Civil wars create an imperator, who, uniting in himself all the great offices of state, and sustained by the conquering legions, rules from East to West and from North to South, with absolute and undivided sovereignty. The Caesars reach the summit of human greatness and power, and the city of Romulus becomes the haughty mistress of the world. The emperor is worshiped as a deity, and the proud metropolis calls herself eternal. An empire is established by force of arms and by a uniform policy, such as this world has not seen before or since.

The Holy Roman Empire [Didactic Press Paperbacks]

The Holy Roman Empire [Didactic Press Paperbacks] PDF Author: James Bryce
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781546350958
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Of those who in August, 1806, read in the English newspapers that the Emperor Francis II had announced to the Diet his resignation of the imperial crown, there were probably few who reflected that the oldest political institution in the world had come to an end. Yet it was so. The Empire which a note issued by a diplomatist on the banks of the Danube extinguished, was the same which the crafty nephew of Julius had won for himself, against the powers of the East, beneath the cliffs of Actium; and which had preserved almost unaltered, through eighteen centuries of time, and through the greatest changes in extent, in power, in character, a title and pretensions from which all meaning had long since departed. Nothing else so directly linked the old world to the new-nothing else displayed so many strange contrasts of the present and the past, and summed up in those contrasts so much of European history. From the days of Constantine till far down into the middle ages it was, conjointly with the Papacy, the recognised centre and head of Christendom, exercising over the minds of men an influence such as its material strength could never have commanded. It is of this influence and of the causes that gave it power rather than of the external history of the Empire, that the following pages are designed to treat. That history is indeed full of interest and brilliance, of grand characters and striking situations. But it is a subject too vast for any single canvas. Without a minuteness of detail sufficient to make its scenes dramatic and give us a lively sympathy with the actors, a narrative history can have little value and still less charm. But to trace with any minuteness the career of the Empire, would be to write the history of Christendom from the fifth century to the twelfth, of Germany and Italy from the twelfth to the nineteenth; while even a narrative of more restricted scope, which should attempt to disengage from a general account of the affairs of those countries the events that properly belong to imperial history, could hardly be compressed within reasonable limits. It is therefore better, declining so great a task, to attempt one simpler and more practicable though not necessarily inferior in interest; to speak less of events than of principles, and endeavour to describe the Empire not as a State but as an Institution, an institution created by and embodying a wonderful system of ideas. In pursuance of such a plan, the forms which the Empire took in the several stages of its growth and decline must be briefly sketched. The characters and acts of the great men who founded, guided, and overthrew it must from time to time be touched upon. But the chief aim of the treatise will be to dwell more fully on the inner nature of the Empire, as the most signal instance of the fusion of Roman and Teutonic elements in modern civilization: to shew how such a combination was possible; how Charles and Otto were led to revive the imperial title in the West; how far during the reigns of their successors it preserved the memory of its origin, and influenced the European commonwealth of nations...

Didactic Literature in the Roman World

Didactic Literature in the Roman World PDF Author: T. H. M. Gellar-Goad
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000922731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
This book collects new work on Latin didactic poetry and prose in the late Republic and early Empire, and it evaluates the varied, shifting roles that literature of teaching and learning played during this period. Instruction was of special interest in the culture and literature of the late Roman Republic and the Age of Augustus, as attitudes towards education found complex, fluid, and multivalent expressions. The era saw a didactic boom, a cottage industry whose surviving authors include Vergil, Lucretius, Ovid, Horace, Cicero, Varro, Germanicus, and Grattius, who are all reexamined here. The contributors to this volume bring fresh approaches to the study of educational literature from the end of the Roman Republic and early Empire, and their essays discover unexpected connections between familiar authors. Chapters explore, interrogate, and revise some aspect of our understanding of these generic and modal boundaries, while considering understudied points of contact between art and education, poetry and prose, and literature and philosophy, among others. Altogether, the volume shows how lively, experimental, and intertextual the didactic ethos of this period is, and how deeply it engages with social, political, and philosophical questions that are of critical importance to contemporary Rome and of enduring interest into the modern world. Didactic Literature in the Roman World is of interest to students and scholars of Latin literature, particularly the late Republic and early Empire, and of Classics more broadly. In addition, the volume’s focus on didactic poetry and prose appeals to those working on literature outside of Classics and on intellectual history.

The Roman Empire During the 2nd Century [Didactic Press Paperbacks]

The Roman Empire During the 2nd Century [Didactic Press Paperbacks] PDF Author: William Capes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781545471593
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Before the murderers of Domitian raised their hands to strike the fatal blow, they looked around, we read, to find a successor to replace him. Others whom they sounded on the subject shrunk away in fear or in suspicion, till they thought of M. Cocceius Nerva, who was likely to fill worthily the office that would soon be vacant. Little is known of his career for more than sixty years, till after he had twice been consul, and when his work seemed almost done, he rose for a little while to take the highest place on earth. The tyrant on the throne had eyed him darkly, had banished him because he heard that the stars pointed in his case to the signs of sovereign power, and indeed only spared his life because other dabblers in the mystic lore said that he was fated soon to die. The sense of his danger, heightened by his knowledge of the plot, made Nerva bold when others flinched; so he lent the conspirators his name, and rose by their help to the imperial seat. He had dallied with the Muses, and courted poetry in earlier years; but he showed no creative aims as ruler, and no genius for heroic measures. The fancy or the sanguine confidence of youth was chequered perhaps by waning strength and feeble health, or more probably a natural kindliness of temper made him more careful of his people's wants. After the long nightmare of oppression caused by the caprices of a moody despot, Rome woke again to find herself at rest under a sovereign who indulged no wanton fancies, but was gentle and calm and unassuming, homely in his personal bearing, and thrifty with the coffers of the state. He had few expensive tastes, it seemed, and little love for grand parade, refusing commonly the proffered statues and gaudy trappings of official rank. As an old senator, he felt a pride in the dignity of the august assembly, consulted it in all concerns of moment, and pledged himself to look upon its members' lives as sacred. A short while since and they were cowering before Domitian's sullen frown, or shut up in the senate house by men-at-arms while the noblest of their number were dragged out before their eyes to death. But now they had an Emperor who treated them as his peers, who listened patiently to their debates, and met them on an easy footing in the courtesies of social life. He rose above the petty jealousy which looks askant at brilliant powers or great historic names, and chose even as his colleague in the consulship the old Verginius Rufus, in whose hands once lay the imperial power had he only cared to grasp it. Nor was he haunted by suspicious fears, such as sometimes give the timid a fierce appetite for blood. For when he learnt that a noble of old family had formed a plot against his life, he took no steps to punish him, but kept him close beside him in his train, talked to him at the theatre with calm composure, and even handed him a sword to try its edge and temper, as if intent to prove that he had no mistrustful or revengeful thought...

Roman imperialism...

Roman imperialism... PDF Author: Tenney Frank
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Rome
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


The Roman World

The Roman World PDF Author: V. Chapot
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780415850438
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Originally published between 1920-70, The History of Civilization was a landmark in early twentieth century publishing. It was published at a formative time within the social sciences, and during a period of decisive historical discovery. The aim of the general editor, C.K. Ogden, was to summarize the most up to date findings and theories of historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and sociologists. This reprinted material is available as a set or in the following groupings: * Prehistory and Historical Ethnography Set of 12: 0-415-15611-4: £800.00 * Greek Civilization Set of 7: 0-415-15612-2: £450.00 * Roman Civilization Set of 6: 0-415-15613-0: £400.00 * Eastern Civilizations Set of 10: 0-415-15614-9: £650.00 * Judaeo-Christian Civilization Set of 4: 0-415-15615-7: £250.00 * European Civilization Set of 11: 0-415-15616-5: £700.00

Roman Education

Roman Education PDF Author: A. S. Wilkins
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
This 1905 book was intended to provide an introduction to the history of the ancient Roman system of education. It begins from a purely national stage, considering the basis of education in the early Roman Republic, before tracing the historical influence of the flood of Greek culture which poured into Rome.

Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius [Didactic Press Paperbacks]

Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius [Didactic Press Paperbacks] PDF Author: Samuel Dill
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781545592038
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
There must always be something arbitrary in the choice and isolation of a period of social history for special study. No period can, from one point of view, be broken off and isolated from the immemorial influences which have moulded it, from the succession of coming ages which it will help to fashion. And this is specially true of the history of a race at once so aggressive, yet so tenacious of the past, as the Roman. The national fibre was so tough, and its tone and sentiment so conservative under all external changes, that when a man knows any considerable period of Roman social history, he may almost, without paradox, be said to know a great deal of it from Romulus to Honorius.Yet, as in the artistic drama there must be a beginning and an end, although the action can only be ideally severed from what has preceded and what is to follow in actual life, so a limited space in the collective history of a people may be legitimately set apart for concentrated study. But as in the case of the drama, such a period should possess a certain unity and intensity of moral interest. It should be a crisis and turning-point in the life of humanity, a period pregnant with momentous issues, a period in which the old order and the new are contending for mastery, or in which the old is melting into the new. Above all, it should be one in which the great social and spiritual movements are incarnate in some striking personalities, who may give a human interest to dim forces of spiritual evolution.Such a period, it seems to the writer of this book, is that which he now presents to the reader. It opens with the self-destruction of lawless and intoxicated power; it closes with the realisation of Plato's dream of a reign of the philosophers. The revolution in the ideal of the principate, which gave the world a Trajan, a Hadrian, and a Marcus Aurelius in place of a Caligula and a Nero, may not have been accompanied by any change of corresponding depth in the moral condition of the masses. But the world enjoyed for nearly a century an almost unexampled peace and prosperity, under skilful and humane government. The civic splendour and social charities of the Antonine age can be revived by the imagination from the abundant remains and records of the period. Its materialism and social vices will also sadden the thoughtful student of its literature and inscriptions. But if that age had the faults of a luxurious and highly organised civilisation, it was also dignified and elevated by a great effort for reform of conduct, and a passion, often, it is true, sadly misguided, to rise to a higher spiritual life and to win the succour of unseen Powers. To the writer of this book, this seems to give the Antonine age its great distinction and its deepest interest for the student of the life of humanity. The influence of philosophy on the legislation of the Antonines is a commonplace of history. But its practical effort to give support and guidance to moral life, and to refashion the old paganism, so as to make it a real spiritual force, has perhaps hardly yet attracted the notice which it deserves. It is one great object of this book to show how the later Stoicism and the new Platonism, working in eclectic harmony, strove to supply a rule of conduct and a higher vision of the Divine world.

Rome and Italy

Rome and Italy PDF Author: Livy
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141913118
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Books VI-X of Livy's monumental work trace Rome's fortunes from its near collapse after defeat by the Gauls in 386 bc to its emergence, in a matter of decades, as the premier power in Italy, having conquered the city-state of Samnium in 293 bc. In this fascinating history, events are described not simply in terms of partisan politics, but through colourful portraits that bring the strengths, weaknesses and motives of leading figures such as the noble statesman Camillus and the corrupt Manlius vividly to life. While Rome's greatest chronicler intended his history to be a memorial to former glory, he also had more didactic aims - hoping that readers of his account could learn from the past ills and virtues of the city.

Science Education in the Early Roman Empire

Science Education in the Early Roman Empire PDF Author: Richard Carrier
Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA)
ISBN: 1634310918
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Throughout the Roman Empire Cities held public speeches and lectures, had libraries, and teachers and professors in the sciences and the humanities, some subsidized by the state. There even existed something equivalent to universities, and medical and engineering schools. What were they like? What did they teach? Who got to attend them? In the first treatment of this subject ever published, Dr. Richard Carrier answers all these questions and more, describing the entire education system of the early Roman Empire, with a unique emphasis on the quality and quantity of its science content. He also compares pagan attitudes toward the Roman system of education with the very different attitudes of ancient Jews and Christians, finding stark contrasts that would set the stage for the coming Dark Ages.