Author: Richard Duncan-Jones Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1316715205 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 243
Book Description
How far were appointments in the Roman Empire based on merit? Did experience matter? What difference did social rank make? This innovative study of the Principate examines the career outcomes of senators and knights by social category. Contrasting patterns emerge from a new database of senatorial careers. Although the highest appointments could reflect experience, a clear preference for the more aristocratic senators is also seen. Bias is visible even in the major army commands and in the most senior civilian posts nominally filled by ballot. In equestrian appointments, successes by the less experienced again suggest the power of social advantage. Senatorial recruitment gradually opened up to include many provincials but Italians still kept their hold on the higher social groupings. The book also considers the senatorial career more widely, while a final section examines slave careers and the phenomenon of voluntary slavery.
Author: Jeffrey Allen Stevens Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
The power to define and characterize various groups, as well as those individuals commonly associated with them, remains one of the most effective ways to reinforce social hierarchy in almost any society through a justification of status, influence, and privilege based on identity. This dissertation represents an exploration of the power of social identity utilizing the framework of infamia (dishonor, ill-repute, disgrace, social stigmatization, civic disability) within the world of ancient Roman spectacle and entertainment. Such an analysis will illustrate how the Roman elite used the concept of infamia as something to define themselves against in order to augment their perceived moral and political authority. In an era of social turmoil and transformation, the gradual increase in the legal restrictions placed upon public performers in the late stages of the Republic suggests infamia was used as a social and political tool to reinforce the integrity of the traditional orders of elite Roman society. How were these disreputable performers able to create a distinctive sub-culture of their own despite a popular perception, both ancient and modern, that they lived in a state of `social death' resulting from the moral censure and civic disability associated with the stigma of infamia? How might socially marginalized people have envisioned their unique place within Roman society, and in what ways did those of degraded civic status preserve or construct a sense of identity, both individual and collective, in the face of overwhelming Roman power? The evidence suggests some of these people constructed their own form of community, in many ways modeled on traditional Roman society, with a complex network of social bonds based on family, occupation, dependency, and religion. The iconic gladiators and actors of ancient Rome conducted their daily lives in a public arena that provided an environment for them to challenge the limitations of the traditional `social death' models that are so often associated with the subjugated elements of hierarchical societies.
Author: W. V. Harris Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1107152712 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 381
Book Description
This book explains the growth, durability and eventual shrinkage of Roman imperial power alongside the Roman state's internal power structures.
Author: William Vernon Harris Publisher: ISBN: 9781316685778 Category : HISTORY Languages : en Pages : 382
Book Description
This book explains the growth, durability and eventual shrinkage of Roman imperial power alongside the Roman state's internal power structures.
Author: Harriet I. Flower Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1107032245 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 519
Book Description
This second edition examines all aspects of Roman history, and contains a new introduction, three new chapters and updated bibliographies.
Author: Edward J. Watts Publisher: Basic Books ISBN: 0465093825 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 339
Book Description
Learn why the Roman Republic collapsed -- and how it could have continued to thrive -- with this insightful history from an award-winning author. In Mortal Republic, prize-winning historian Edward J. Watts offers a new history of the fall of the Roman Republic that explains why Rome exchanged freedom for autocracy. For centuries, even as Rome grew into the Mediterranean's premier military and political power, its governing institutions, parliamentary rules, and political customs successfully fostered negotiation and compromise. By the 130s BC, however, Rome's leaders increasingly used these same tools to cynically pursue individual gain and obstruct their opponents. As the center decayed and dysfunction grew, arguments between politicians gave way to political violence in the streets. The stage was set for destructive civil wars -- and ultimately the imperial reign of Augustus. The death of Rome's Republic was not inevitable. In Mortal Republic, Watts shows it died because it was allowed to, from thousands of small wounds inflicted by Romans who assumed that it would last forever.
Author: Inge Mennen Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004211926 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
This book deals with changing power and status relations between the highest ranking representatives of Roman imperial power at the central level, in a period when the Empire came under tremendous pressure, AD 193-284. Based on epigraphic, literary and legal materials, the author deals with issues such as the third-century development of emperorship, the shift in power of the senatorial elite and the developing position of senior military officers and other high equestrians. By analyzing the various senior power-holders involved in Roman imperial administration by social rank, this book presents new insights into the diachronic development of imperial administration, appointment policies and socio-political hierarchies between the second and fourth centuries AD.
Author: James Tan Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190639598 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 249
Book Description
Rome's wars delivered great wealth to the conquerors, but how did this affect politics and society on the home front? In Power and Public Finance at Rome, James Tan offers the first examination of the Roman Republic from the perspective of fiscal sociology and makes the case that no understanding of Roman history is complete without an appreciation of the role of economics in defining political interactions. Examining how imperial profits were distributed, Tan explores how imperial riches turned Roman public life on its head. Rome's lofty aristocrats had traditionally been constrained by their dependence on taxpayer money. They relied on the state to fund wars, and the state in turn relied on citizens' taxes to fuel the war machine. This fiscal chain bound the elite to taxpayer consent, but as the spoils of Empire flooded into Rome, leaders found that they could fund any policy they chose without relying on the support of the citizens who funded them. The influx of wealth meant that taxation at home was ended and citizens promptly lost what bargaining power they had enjoyed as a result of the state's reliance on their fiscal contributions. With their dependence on the taxpayers loosened, Rome's aristocratic leaders were free to craft a fiscal system which prioritized the enrichment of their own private estates and which devoted precious few resources to the provision of public goods. In six chapters on the nature of Rome's imperialist enrichment, on politics during the Punic Wars and on the all-important tribunates of the Gracchi, Tan offers new conceptions of Roman state creation, fiscal history, civic participation, aristocratic pre-eminence, and the eventual transition to autocracy.
Author: C. J. Smith Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1139450875 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 407
Book Description
The gens, a key social formation in archaic Rome, has given rise to considerable interpretative problems for modern scholarship. In this comprehensive exploration of the subject, Professor Smith examines the mismatch between the ancient evidence and modern interpretative models influenced by social anthropology and political theory. He offers a detailed comparison of the gens with the Attic genos and illustrates, for the first time, how recent changes in the way we understand the genos may impact upon our understanding of Roman history. He develops a concept of the gens within the interlocking communal institutions of early Rome, which touches on questions of land ownership, warfare and the patriciate, before offering an explanation of the role of the gens and the part it might play in modern political theory. This significant work makes an important contribution not only to the study of archaic Rome, but also to the history of ideas.
Author: Richard Duncan-Jones
Author: Peter Garnsey
Author: Jeffrey Allen Stevens
Author: W. V. Harris
Author: William Vernon Harris
Author: Harriet I. Flower
Author: Edward J. Watts
Author: Inge Mennen
Author: James Tan
Author: C. J. Smith