Academic literature on the topic 'Rome History Republic'

In the second and first centuries BCE a series of three large-scale slave revolts erupted in Sicily and central Italy, each of which ravaged wide swathes of territory and were suppressed only after serious loss of life. These slave rebellions, which were unprecedented in Roman experience to that point, provoked horrified reactions from most ancient authors. Modern scholars have generally treated the late-Republican uprisings as isolated events, the unexpected consequence of military expansion. A focus on the label "slave," however, instead of on the social and economic roles of the specific rebels, has compartmentalized studies of the slave wars, allowing discussion only within the confines of Roman slavery studies. Since the rebel armies in each war were composed principally of agricultural laborers, a profitable comparison can be drawn from peasant uprisings and other manifestations of collective violence that occurred in throughout the Roman world. This study offers a new context for analyzing the slave wars, which re-integrates them into the broader sweep of Roman history and understands them as one manifestation of a broader pattern of social and cultural transformation.

Bibliography: pages 287-298.<br>This study explores the relationship between political developments and the keeping of public records at Rome during a crucial time of transition in the inter-connected fields of constitutional law, politics, and administrative practices. The political value of control over records is illustrated in the Struggle of the Orders and remained a dominant issue. That knowledge is power was a reality implicitly recognised in the aristocratic constitution of the Republic, geared as it was to maintain popular political ignorance generally and so to perpetuate the dominance of a particular minority class. Throughout Republican history the question of exposure or repression of such knowledge was grounded in the socio-political tensions of a class-struggle. Translated into the changed setting of the early Principate, the same awareness of the value of control over access to state knowledge is exhibited by the emperor. Particularly relevant was the Augustan ban on the publication of senatorial proceedings, since the relationship between senate and emperor was an area where the increasingly autocratic nature of the emperor's position was most difficult to disguise.

This paper is an examination of how much of a military and diplomatic threat Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus truly posed to the Roman Republic during the Mithridatic Wars from 88-63 BC. This question was posed due to the seeming disconnect between how Mithridates is portrayed in primary sources compared to the results of his military encounters with the Romans. This examination was performed with the use of numerous primary sources from the time period as well as secondary, scholarly sources pertaining to the motivations and actions of both Mithridates and contemporary Roman personages. The conclusion arrived at was that Mithridates was portrayed by Roman historians as being far more imposing than he truly was, which is supported by his lack of military success against the armies of Rome in their encounters. The reasons for his are Mithridates being used as a means for political ascension within the Roman social sphere by characters such as Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey. Thus this paper examines how propaganda and political ambition can result in exaggerations and incomplete information being presented in historical accounts.

In examining the end of the Roman Republic and the rise of the principate, one is inevitably struck by the transformation of the relationship between the individual and the community. Roman society during the Republic was predicated on the communal leadership of the elite and the recognition of excellence in individuals. In the days of the early and middle Republic, this individual recognition served as the vehicle to participation in communal authority, the prize for which aristocratic families competed. Communal authority was embodied in the Senate. The Senate not only acted as the supreme political body in the Roman state, but also acted as the moral and religious arbiter for society. This was in addition to their more easily foreseeable role as the face of the Roman state toward foreign peoples, both diplomatically and militarily. Heads of aristocratic families who were most often already part of the economic elite sought to secure membership within this smaller circle of political elite. Influence was sought in a variety of arenas, all with the purpose of proving one’s worthiness to be part of the administration of the state. Pursuit and possession of the traditional Roman virtues provided the foundation of legitimacy for oligarchic rule, and individual proof of virtue was necessary for inclusion within that rule. One of the chief spheres of proving one’s virtue was war, where martial valor eclipsed all other virtues, and courage on the battlefield and excellence in command proved one’s worthiness to inclusion in communal authority. However, as the Republic found itself facing every more frequent and threatening crises, it increasingly turned to its men of ability, investing them with ever greater license, and permitting, or at least having no choice but to permit, ever greater concentration of state power in the hands of individuals. These men of ambition and ability took advantage of Rome’s changing polity and the professionalization of its military under the reforms of Marius to circumvent traditional avenues of advancement in favor of more direct approaches. Each looked to the man behind him as precedent and to the future as chance for even greater glory. Eventually, Caesar took power at the head of an intensely loyal military force, ready to enforce by force of arms any protests in the name of tradition. Though ultimately assassinated, Caesar’s dictatorship marked the end of Republican Rome and the rise of the principate, defined by an inversion of the traditional relationship between the community and the individual. Now it was the Senate which sought political participation within the overarching framework of individual authority.

The aim of this dissertation is to explain the meaning of concordia surveying the historical context in which it emerged. The thesis concentrates on the period 63--43 B.C. because it is in this crucial period that the concept achieves its most articulate and influential defence by the Roman orator, statesman, and philosopher, Marcus Tullius Cicero. My intention is to review the important writings and speeches of Cicero and to situate them in the political struggles in which he was implicated.<br>By placing the concept of concordia in this political context, a clearer picture emerges than is available in the current literature about how Cicero promoted, defended, and skillfully redefined the concept of concordia in order to achieve his political aims. What emerges are three identifiable meanings of the concept of concordia . The first is the longstanding conventional Roman republican idea of concordia as unity, friendship, and agreement. The second is what Cicero called the concordia ordinum, an innovative idea of concordia as a harmony or coalition of the two Roman orders of the senate and equites. The third is the idea of concordia as a consensus omnium bonorum---what Cicero called concordia civium or concordia civitatis . This idea represents an important shift in the thinking of the Roman orator who began to see the survival of the republic as depending on a consensus that went beyond the coalition of the senate and equites.

This thesis analyses the relationship between Marcus Porcius Cato Censorius and his eldest son, Marcus Porcius Cato Licinianus, considering its importance for Cato's public image and political career, investigating its place within some of the central cultural debates of the 2nd century BC, and looking at the impact which this relationship had upon received impressions of Cato the Censor as presented by later Latin authors. This is done primarily through the examination of the written works which Cato addressed to Licinianus, the extant fragments of which are presented here, with a translation and commentary, in the first modern edition to treat these texts as a unified project. The subsequent sections of this thesis set the works which Cato addressed to his son within the context of the general cultural debate and individual political competition which engaged Rome's ruling elite during this period; Cato's adoption of a paternal persona within these works is related to the character's popular appeal in the military sphere and on the comic stage; and the didactic pose and agricultural instruction featured in these texts is used to illuminate some of the challenges posed to Cato's successful performance of his duties as censor. A final section considers the reappropriation of Cato's relationship with his son as found in the De officiis of Cicero, the Institutio oratoria of Quintilian, and the anonymous Disticha Catonis. This thesis suggests that the Censor's relationship with his son, and the works which he addressed to the young man, played a more significant part in Cato's public image and political career than has hitherto been acknowledged. These texts illuminate some of the finer points of Cato's clever political strategy and they offer fresh insight into the popular culture and elite competition of the period in which he lived. The relative importance of this relationship within Cato's public life helps to explain the popularity of later images of the Censor as a paternal and educational figure and offers us a better understanding of modern conceptions of Cato.