The Republican Aventine And Romes Social Order

A new consideration of life on the Republican-era Aventine Hill uncovers a diverse urban landscape

Scholars, military men, and casual observers alike have devoted significant energy to understanding how the armies of the Roman Middle Republic (300 – 100 BCE) were able to function so effectively, examining their organization, hierarchy, recruitment, tactics, and ideology in close detail. But what about the concerns, interests, and goals of the soldiers who powered it? The present study argues that the military forces of the Middle Republic were not simply cogs in the Roman military machine, but rather dynamic and diverse social units that played a key role in shaping an ever-changing Mediterranean world. Indeed, the soldiers in the armies of this period not only developed connections with one another, but also formed bonds with non-military personnel who traveled with as well as inhabitants of the places where they campaigned. The connections soldiers developed while on campaign gave them significant power and agency as a group. Throughout the third and second centuries BCE, soldiers took collective actions, ranging from mutiny to defection to looting, to ensure that their economic, social, and political interests were advanced and protected. Recognizing the communities that Roman soldiers formed and the power that they exerted not only reframes our understanding of the Middle Republic and its armies, but fundamentally alters how we conceptualize the turbulent years of the Late Republic and the massive social, political, and military changes that followed.

Showcases new approaches that reveal the remarkable transformation of Roman and Italian societies during the Middle Republican period.

With a broad chronological sweep, this book provides an historical account of Roman law and legal institutions which explains how they were created and modified in relation to political developments and changes in power relations. It underlines the constant tension between two central aspects of Roman politics: the aristocratic nature of the system of government, and the drive for increased popular participation in decision-making and the exercise of power. The traditional balance of power underwent a radical transformation under Augustus, with new processes of integration and social mobility brought into play. Professor Capogrossi Colognesi brings into sharp relief the deeply political nature of the role of Roman juridical science as an expression of aristocratic politics and discusses the imperial jurists' fundamental contribution to the production of an outline theory of sovereignty and legality which would constitute, together with Justinian's gathering of Roman legal knowledge, the most substantial legacy of Rome.

From the Renaissance to today, the idea that the Roman Republic lasted more than 450 years--persisting unbroken from the late sixth century to the mid-first century BC--has profoundly shaped how Roman history is understood, how the ultimate failure of Roman republicanism is explained, and how republicanism itself is defined. In Roman Republics, Harriet Flower argues for a completely new interpretation of republican chronology. Radically challenging the traditional picture of a single monolithic republic, she argues that there were multiple republics, each with its own clearly distinguishable strengths and weaknesses. While classicists have long recognized that the Roman Republic changed and evolved over time, Flower is the first to mount a serious argument against the idea of republican continuity that has been fundamental to modern historical study. By showing that the Romans created a series of republics, she reveals that there was much more change--and much less continuity--over the republican period than has previously been assumed. In clear and elegant prose, Roman Republics provides not only a reevaluation of one of the most important periods in western history but also a brief yet nuanced survey of Roman political life from archaic times to the end of the republican era.

Rome was the largest city in the ancient world. As the capital of the Roman Empire, it was clearly an exceptional city in terms of size, diversity and complexity. While the Colosseum, imperial palaces and Pantheon are among its most famous features, this volume explores Rome primarily as a city in which many thousands of men and women were born, lived and died. The thirty-one chapters by leading historians, classicists and archaeologists discuss issues ranging from the monuments and the games to the food and water supply, from policing and riots to domestic housing, from death and disease to pagan cults and the impact of Christianity. Richly illustrated, the volume introduces groundbreaking new research against the background of current debates and is designed as a readable survey accessible in particular to undergraduates and non-specialists.

This widely respected study of social conflicts between the patrician elite and the plebeians in the first centuries of the Roman republic has now been enhanced by a new chapter on material culture, updates to individual chapters, an updated bibliography, and a new introduction. Analyzes social conflicts between patricians and plebeians in early republican Rome Includes chapters by leading scholars from both sides of the Atlantic illuminating social, economic, legal, religious, military, and political aspects as well as the reliability of historical sources Contributors have written addenda for the new edition, updating their chapters in light of recent scholarship

This book presents a series of previously unpublished studies on aspects of the Roman Republic by one of the greatest Roman historians of all time, Sir Ronald Syme (1903-1989), the author of The Roman Revolution.

This is a comprehensive analysis of the idea of libertas and its conflicting uses in the political struggles of the late Roman Republic. By reconstructing Roman political thinking about liberty against the background of Classical and Hellenistic thought, it excavates two distinct intellectual traditions on the means allowing for the preservation and the loss of libertas. Considering the interplay of these traditions in the political debates of the first century BC, Dr Arena offers a significant reinterpretation of the political struggles of the time as well as a radical reappraisal of the role played by the idea of liberty in the practice of politics. She argues that, as a result of its uses in rhetorical debates, libertas underwent a form of conceptual change at the end of the Republic and came to legitimise a new course of politics, which led progressively to the transformation of the whole political system.