Political monuments are characterized by visual materiality that allows for and indeed invites engagement; the claim for permanence; and the force of visual presence. Caesar’s monuments, especially on the Capitol, signalled a decidedly new quality of presence irreconcilable with the fine balance of individual achievement and public recognition. The rules behind this balance were flexible, but collective consensus always retained the upper hand. The balance tipped only with Pompey’s enormous theatre complex on the Campus Martius. The complex created a new type of public space, and it set the precedent for Caesar, who took on the challenge of competition with his own Forum project. Such an omnipresent dynamic of increase provoked heavy polemics and fierce conflict, but this violence was not only tolerated but reckoned with as a possibility from the very start. It appeared more appropriate to accept repeated violation of tradition while still affirming it than to develop a fundamentally different, new ‘system’ of norms and behaviours. The mode of permanent transgression was indicative not only of a political culture in crisis but also of a culture of crisis.

The first chapter presents evidence in support of the claim that an interest in ruins was never widespread. It had to begin somewhere and at some time. There had also to be certain factors, which are set out in the chapter, that facilitated the interest. The main evidence for a lack of interest in ruins is seen in the motives for tourism in ancient Greece and Rome – indeed, tourism is one of the leading themes of the whole work. The indifference of the Greeks and Romans to ruins is also found in other cultures, notably China’s. What seems to be needed for the ruins of any culture to arouse interest and to make a favourable impression is a gap in the continuity of that culture, such as occurred in Roman culture from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages in Europe. Someone aiming to bridge that gap – a tourist, say – who surveys past Roman culture with a sympathetic eye and an understanding of its achievements is in a position to find the ruins, the material remains of Roman culture, as interesting as any of its other monuments.

The Roman senatorial elite laid claim to all roles of prominence in society. The very notion of nobilitas made prominence an all-inclusive virtue, in office-holding as much as in other public arenas. Indeed, scrutinizing an inherent tension between annual roles as embodied by the honores and more durable, sometimes life long, roles of prominence, Hans Beck argues that the aristocracy’s integrated claim to leadership wielded significant stabilizing impact upon Roman society. L. Quinctius Flamininus was expelled from the senate in 184 BCE but maintained his other social rules, his public standing, and his overall notability. In the century and a half that followed, Beck detects a gradual erosion of inclusive ideals of prominence. The crisis of the Republic is thus understood as a disintegration of social roles. In the era of the great extraordinary commands, the performance of prestige duties of the collective became less and less important. Augustus’ ostentatious unification of these under his watchful guard as princeps propelled a change in role behaviour that could easily be portrayed as a restitution of the Republican outlook.

The chapter pursues the consequences of the claim that the Greek canon was made based on the performative qualities of its authors, emphasizing its internal friction. As such, it did not embody any timeless values. Its function could be replicated by other traditions influenced by it: first Roman, then European languages and then globally. There is no function today that is uniquely performed by the Greek literary legacy and, in this sense, there is no need to preserve the particular tradition of classical studies. Greek antiquity is worthy of study simply because of its pivotal role, but it essentially expired. And yet, the attitude of admiration toward this type of liberating past experience is a useful one to maintain, as part of an overall hopeful attitude toward the arc of the moral universe.

Martin Jehne looks at the Roman comitia through the lens of their rich symbolism. Set in a demarcated space and sanctioned by the auspices of the gods, the popular assemblies were, in general, integrative: they symbolized the belonging of the citizens to the community as a whole. But the assemblies (comitia centuriata, comitia tributa, and comitia curiata) were far from uniform. Each one, argues Jehne, wielded a different type of integrative force upon its participants. The centuriate assembly emphasized hierarchy and vertical integration; the tribal assemblies had an essentially egalitarian structure. In light of a rapidly expanding body of citizens, the integrating capacities of the popular assemblies ought to have shrunk. Creating a climate of consensus and communality, those capacities were preserved in the assemblies’ roles as referential quantities that embodied ideas of hierarchy and equality vital to the libera res publica.

Monuments hold a special significance for the shaping and the perpetuation of historical memory. The past is discussed in terms of the conceptual, idealized past of public monuments; the local past of ancient sites from the early days of the community; the genealogical past of homes and tombs; and the unifying past of historiography. Noting that the historical memory of the Romans will only transpire if these different forms of memory are synthesized, each one with due recognition to the institutions and situations in which memory were deployed, Tonio Hölscher argues for a certain hierarchy: prioritization of material expressions of the past leads him to regard Roman historiography as an offshoot of historical memory with limited social impact; monuments, on the other hand, powerful and with vast visibility in the centre of the city, wield inescapable impact upon Roman society. The essay concludes with Hölscher expressing his opinion on the place and design of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, the planning of which had become the focus of a major public debate in Germany at the time.

Such was the aesthetic appeal of a Roman ruin that English grand tourists began to decorate their parkland back home, now landscaped in a sort of ‘faux-naturalism’, with sham ruins. The eighteenth-century fashion for the English garden swept over continental Europe, and many gardens, surprisingly even in Rome itself, have sham Roman ruins after the English fashion. The fashion for sham ‘Roman’ ruins continued into the twentieth century and was extended to the United States and Japan.

In a new essay, Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp reflects on almost a century’s worth of research on the Roman Republic in Germany and its reception in the Anglosphere. The history of scholarship on the Republic is traced, from Gelzer and Münzer to Syme to Brunt to Millar, with special attention given to the influence of Christian Meier. Key themes of more recent work include political culture, the contio, memory studies, the early Republic, and imperialism.

The study of Roman history has always been multilingual, and some of the most important work on the Roman Republic is in German. Today, however, fewer and fewer anglophone students and scholars read German. The result is that major work published in German can go unread and uncited. This new essay by Amy Russell surveys the problem and potential solutions, as well as exploring some of the difficulties of translation from German to English and a glossary of untranslatable terms. It is important that we balance the benefits of multilingual publishing with the need to make Roman history accessible to all. Translation and collaboration are among the methods recommended. Translation from German brings specific problems, as some concepts can be expressed more easily in one language or the other; Russell takes a case study of the term Öffentlichkeit and its similarities to and differences from English phrases such as ‘public space’. Those differences have significantly affected how scholars writing in German and English have conceptualized the public and the political in the Roman Republic. A glossary elucidates a range of other hard-to-translate concepts.