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23990 results in Ancient history

Page 372 of 1200

  • Chapter 12 - The ‘Wrong’ Meetings?

  • from Part III - Institutions in Theory and Practice
  • Edited by Henriette van der Blom, University of Birmingham, Christa Gray, University of Reading, Catherine Steel, University of Glasgow
  • Book:
    Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome
    Published online:
    08 May 2018
    Print publication:
    17 May 2018, pp 236-251

  • Summary

    This chapter considers the terms coetus and contio used to describe non-decision-making meetings in Republican Rome. They are not opposites on a spectrum, but have entirely different qualities. While contio implies a political meeting with a more-or-less clear set of specific characteristics, a coetus is not even necessarily a meeting. When it is, only a broader informative context can show whether coetus is an opposite of contio, a general term for a gathering, encompassing contio within it, or a pejorative, yet precise, equivalent of contio. An application of the more precise contio to a meeting that does not look like a typical contio may imply that the author thought the gathering had at least some of the specific features of a contio. Especially telling are the instances in which the terms coetus and contio both indicate the same meeting. Thus, Livy compares some plebeian coetus with official contiones in a serious rather than sarcastic or ironic manner because they were commensurable in terms of political significance. It follows that such terminology reflects both the actual features of political gatherings and the political aims and preferences of the ancient authors.

  • Chapter 16 - Gaius Verres Troubleshooter

  • from Part IV - Memory and Reputation
  • Edited by Henriette van der Blom, University of Birmingham, Christa Gray, University of Reading, Catherine Steel, University of Glasgow
  • Book:
    Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome
    Published online:
    08 May 2018
    Print publication:
    17 May 2018, pp 299-313

  • Summary

    This paper reconstructs the political context of the trial of C. Verres in 70 BC and the defence mounted by Verres’ advocate, Q. Hortensius. In 74 BC the city of Rome was in the midst of famine, and piracy and insurrection were rife throughout the Mediterranean. The senate sent Verres to Sicily with the task of securing Italy’s food supply; he also cooperated with M. Crassus in preventing Spartacus from crossing into Sicily, while his personal profiteering was in line with current practice. Hortensius defended Verres on those grounds. Verres was in fact successful enough to be retained in his province for three years; indeed, a slip by Cicero reveals Verres as a plausible candidate for the consulship of 68 BC, and other evidence points to connections with Caecilli Metelli and Crassus. The villain of the Verrines was thus neither typical nor unique, and better connected than has been realized previously. However, following embarrassments in 71, Verres was made a scapegoat by political enemies—above all Cn. Pompeius Magnus—in their promotion of a milder approach to empire. It was Pompeius who stood behind Cicero’s prosecution of Verres.

  • Chapter 14 - Like Father, Like Son?

  • from Part IV - Memory and Reputation
  • Edited by Henriette van der Blom, University of Birmingham, Christa Gray, University of Reading, Catherine Steel, University of Glasgow
  • Book:
    Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome
    Published online:
    08 May 2018
    Print publication:
    17 May 2018, pp 267-282

  • Summary

    The strategic mobilisation of family ancestry either to launch an attack upon an opponent, or to shore up one’s own case for credibility is a well-known technique observable in Republican oratory, especially in forensic contexts. Yet very little attention has been accorded to the intersection of familial and ideological exempla in Republican oratory. What were the specific political contexts which allowed an orator to invoke a family exemplum—their own or their opponent’s—in an ideological contest, beyond the domain of character building or invective? This chapter unpacks this question through an examination of some oratorical fragments that feature diverse ideological flashpoints (a popularis tribunate, the Social War, and tyrannicide) in which orators within and outside of families capitalized upon their ideological histories. Three families—the Lutatii Catuli, the Livii Drusi and the Junii Bruti—and their exempla are adduced as case studies, demonstrating that family exempla could become ideological exempla too. At a methodological level, this study’s use of fragmentary oratory grapples both with the Ciceronian bias inherent to the study of Late Republican oratory and with the interpretation of oratorical fragments in multiple historical contexts, such as those found in the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium.

  • Chapter 6 - Theophanes of Mytilene, Cicero and Pompey’s Inner Circle

  • from Part II - Political Alliances
  • Edited by Henriette van der Blom, University of Birmingham, Christa Gray, University of Reading, Catherine Steel, University of Glasgow
  • Book:
    Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome
    Published online:
    08 May 2018
    Print publication:
    17 May 2018, pp 128-146

  • Summary

    This paper charts the relationship between Pompey the Great and Theophanes of Mytilene, and discusses the latter's role in the politics of the mid-first century BC, both in his hometown, where he was a distinguished local notable, and in Rome, where he was a valued advisor to Pompey, notably in the run-up to the Civil War. The historical work that Theophanes wrote on Pompey's achievements and the grant of Roman citizenship that he received from him have a prominent place in the discussion, which also explores the nature and function of the circles of advisors that surrounded some political leaders in the late Republican period.

  • Introduction

  • Edited by Henriette van der Blom, University of Birmingham, Christa Gray, University of Reading, Catherine Steel, University of Glasgow
  • Book:
    Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome
    Published online:
    08 May 2018
    Print publication:
    17 May 2018, pp 1-12

  • Summary

    The Roman Republic was a political system which, in theory, offered a stable balance between different social groups. In practice it was subject to conflict and change, which became particularly violent in the first century B.C. The introduction to this volume surveys the current research landscape and sets out the rationale for the volume's focus on institutional structures and ideological formations in seeking to understand the success and failure of the Roman Republic as a political system. It presents two underpinning arguments: that rules deriving from institutional norms could always potentially be overturned by the will of the people as manifested on a specific occasion, and hence innovation was a constant possibility; and that the complexity of the system as it evolved in practice was in tension with the binary simplicity of the Romans' narratives about the nature of their political constitution.

  • Chapter 2 - Political Communication in the Late Roman Republic

  • from Part I - Modes of Political Communication
  • Edited by Henriette van der Blom, University of Birmingham, Christa Gray, University of Reading, Catherine Steel, University of Glasgow
  • Book:
    Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome
    Published online:
    08 May 2018
    Print publication:
    17 May 2018, pp 35-68

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses whether the opposing forces in the late Roman Republic settled substantial political battles with a programmatic dimension: did they hold deeply varying evaluations on the causes and remedies of the political crisis, that is, were there semantic battles between them? Are the terms optimates and populares appropriate for designating these forces? The discussion takes into consideration the fact that Rome’s premodern society precluded any modern party labels and that the basic values of the mos maiorum remained common for all citizens during the Roman Republic. Therefore, my approach comprises several steps: first, I show why the specific manner of Roman political communication ran less successfully during the late Republic. Second, I analyse the political divergences and the recognizable difference in the political languages and styles used by both optimates and populares. Finally, I offer a short reflection on the terms optimates and populares and argue that these terms were understood differently in the broader public, pending on who used them. All the evidence collected suggests that the battle between opposing political forces in this era was not only settled in words but through words.

Page 372 of 1200