A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic

An insightful and original exploration of Roman Republic politics

In A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic, editors Valentina Arena and Jonathan Prag deliver an incisive and original collection of forty contributions from leading academics representing various intellectual and academic traditions. The collected works represent some of the best scholarship in recent decades and adopt a variety of approaches, each of which confronts major problems in the field and contributes to ongoing research.

The book represents a new, updated, and comprehensive view of the political world of Republican Rome and some of the included essays are available in English for the first time.

Divided into six parts, the discussions consider the institutionalized loci, political actors, and values, rituals, and discourse that characterized Republican Rome. The Companion also offers several case studies and sections on the history of the interpretation of political life in the Roman Republic. Key features include:

• A thorough introduction to the Roman political world as seen through the wider lenses of Roman political culture
• Comprehensive explorations of the fundamental components of Roman political culture, including ideas and values, civic and religious rituals, myths, and communicative strategies
• Practical discussions of Roman Republic institutions, both with reference to their formal rules and prescriptions, and as patterns of social organization
• In depth examinations of the 'afterlife' of the Roman Republic, both in ancient authors and in early modern and modern times

Perfect for students of all levels of the ancient world, A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic will also earn a place in the libraries of scholars and students of politics, political history, and the history of ideas.

Valentina Arena is Professor of Ancient History at University College London, UK. Her work focuses on the history of Roman politics, ancient political thought, and the wider intellectual landscape of the Roman Republic. She is the author of Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the late Roman Republic and the editor of Liberty: an Ancient Concept for the Contemporary World. She has co-edited volumes on Varro and the antiquarian tradition and is currently directing the ERC funded project Ordering, Constructing, Empowering: Fragments of the Roman Republican Antiquarians. 

Jonathan Prag is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Oxford. He works on the history of the Roman Republic, ancient Sicily, epigraphy and digital methods. He has previously co-edited The Hellenistic West and A Handbook to Petronius. He has published extensively on ancient Sicily where he also co-directs an archaeological excavation. He directs the I.Sicily epigraphic corpus (http://sicily.classics.ox.ac.uk).

Notes on Editors xiii

Notes on Contributors xiv

Abbreviations xx

Introduction 1
Valentina Arena and Jonathan Prag

1 Political Culture: Career of a Concept 4
Karl-J. Hölkeskamp

Part I Modern Reading 21

2 Machiavelli's Roman Republic 25
Ryan K. Balot and Nathaniel K. Gilmore

3 The Roman Republic and the English Republic 40
Rachel Foxley

4 Liberty, Rights and Virtue: The Roman Republic in Eighteenth-Century France 52
Christopher Hamel

5 A Roman Revolution: Classical Republicanism in the Creation of the American Republic 68
Eran Shalev

6 Theodor Mommsen's History of Rome and Its Political and Intellectual Context 81
Stefan Rebenich

7 The Political Culture of the Republic since Syme's The Roman Revolution: A Story of a Debate 93
Alexander Yakobson

Part II Ancient Interpreters 107

8 Polybius and Roman Political Culture 111
Chiara Carsana

9 Cicero: In and Above the Republic's Political Culture 125
Walter Nicgorski

10 Sallust 136
J. Alison Rosenblitt

11 Augustan Republics: Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the Politics of the Past 146
Andrew Gallia

12 Plutarch's Evaluation of Roman Politics and Political Figures 159
Mark Beck

13 Appian, Cassius Dio and the Roman Republic 174
John Rich

Part III Institutionalised Loci 189

14 The Census 193
Guido Clemente

15 The Senate 206
Marianne Coudry

16 Roman Political Assemblies 220
Tim Cornell

17 Armies and Political Culture 236
Nathan Rosenstein

18 Imperator and Politician: The Consul as the Highest Magistrate of the Republic 248
Francisco Pina Polo

19 The Tribunate of the Plebs: Between Compromise and Revolution 260
Amy Russell

20 Priests 274
Jörg Rüpke

21 Other Magistrates, Officials and Apparitores 285
E.J. Kondratieff

Part IV Political Actors 303

22 The Civis 307
Andrea Raggi

23 Romans, Latins and Allies 318
Edward Bispham

24 Peregrini/Nationes Exterae: Foreigners and the Political Culture of the Roman Republic 332
Lisa Pilar Eberle

25 Republican Elites: Patricians, Nobiles, Senators and Equestrians 347
Hans Beck

26 Matronae and Politics in Republican Rome 362
Francesca Rohr Vio

27 On Freedom and Citizenship: Freedmen as Agents and Metaphors of Roman Political Culture 374
Pedro López Barja de Quiroga

Part V Values, Rituals and Political Discourse 387

28 Roman Republican Political Culture: Values and Ideology 391
Robert Morstein-Marx

29 From Patronage to Violence and Bribery: Towards a New Political Culture 408
Antonio Duplá-Ansuategui

30 The Political Culture of the Plebs 422
Jerry Toner

31 The Law and the Courts in Roman Political Culture 433
Jean-Michel David

32 Rhetoric and Roman Political Culture 446
Catherine Steel

33 Religion and Rituals in Republican Rome 455
Francisco Marco Simón

34 Myth and Theatre 470
Uwe Walter

35 Imagery and Space 484
Peter J. Holliday

Part VI Politics in Action - Case Studies 505

36 The Political Culture of Rome in 218 - 212 bce 509
Bernhard Linke

37 Roman Political Culture in 169 bce 524
John A. North

38 133 bce: Politics in a Time of Challenge and Crisis 537
J. Lea Beness and Tom Hillard

39 88 bce 555
W. Jeffrey Tatum

40 The Year 52 bce 568
Egon Flaig

Index 583

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.