Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
207
result(s) for
"265-30 B.C."
Sort by:
Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the Late Roman Republic
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.
eBook
Mortal republic : how Rome fell into tyranny
\"In 22 BC, amid a series of natural disasters and political and economic crises, a mob locked Rome's senators into the Senate House and threatened to burn them alive if they did not make Augustus dictator. Why did Rome--to this day one of the world's longest-lived republics--exchange freedom for autocracy? Mortal Republic is a new history of the fall of the Roman Republic that explains why Rome made this trade. Prizewinning historian Edward J. Watts shows how, for centuries, Rome's governing institutions, parliamentary rules, and political customs succeeded in fostering compromise and negotiation. Even amid moments of crisis like Hannibal's invasion of Italy in the 210s BC, Rome's Republic proved remarkably resilient, and it continued to function well as Rome grow into the premier military and political power in the Mediterranean world. By the 130s BC, however, the old ways of government had grown inadequate in managing a massive standing army, regulating trade across the Mediterranean, and deciding what to do with enormous new revenues of money, land, and slaves. In subsequent decades, politicians increasingly misused Rome's consensus-building tools to pursue individual political and personal gain, and to obstruct urgently needed efforts to address growing social and economic inequality. Individuals--and Marius, Caesar and Cato, Augustus and Pompey--made selfish decisions that benefited them personally but irreparably damaged the health of the state. As the political center decayed, political fights evolved from arguments between politicians in representative assembles to violent confrontations between ordinary people in the street, setting the stage for the destructive civil wars of the first century BC--and ultimately for the Republic's end\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic
This book highlights the role played by public, political discourse in shaping the distribution of power between Senate and People in the Late Roman Republic. Against the background of the debate between 'oligarchical' and 'democratic' interpretations of Republican politics, Robert Morstein-Marx emphasizes the perpetual negotiation and reproduction of political power through mass communication. The book analyses the ideology of Republican mass oratory and situates its rhetoric fully within the institutional and historical context of the public meetings (contiones) in which these speeches were heard. Examples of contional orations, drawn chiefly from Cicero and Sallust, are subjected to an analysis that is influenced by contemporary political theory and empirical studies of public opinion and the media, rooted in a detailed examination of key events and institutional structures, and illuminated by a vivid sense of the urban space in which the contio was set.
eBook
The End of the Roman Republic 146 to 44 BC
In 146 BC the armies of Rome destroyed Carthage and emerged as the decisive victors of the Third Punic War. The Carthaginian population was sold and its territory became the Roman province of Africa. In the same year and on the other side of the Mediterranean Roman troops sacked Corinth, the final blow in the defeat of the Achaean conspiracy: thereafter Greece was effectively administered by Rome. Rome was now supreme in Italy, the Balkans, Greece, Macedonia, Sicily, and North Africa, and its power and influence were advancing in all directions.
However, not all was well. The unchecked seizure of huge tracts of land in Italy and its farming by vast numbers of newly imported slaves allowed an elite of usually absentee landlords to amass enormous and conspicuous fortunes. Insecurity and resentment fed the gulf between rich and poor in Rome and erupted in a series of violent upheavals in the politics and institutions of the Republic. These were exacerbated by slave revolts and invasions from the east. The instigation of Rome's first professional army to resolve the crises soon made its generals - Sulla, then Pompey, then Caesar - all too powerful. Meanwhile Greek ideas and culture had invaded Rome, contributing to the subversion of the Roman ideal of the free citizen, farmer of his own land, duty-bound to fight in its defence.
Catherine Steel tells history of this crucial and turbulent century, focussing on the issues of freedom, honour, power, greed and ambition, and the cherished but abused institutions of the Republic which were central to events then and which have preoccupied historians ever since.
eBook
Crossing the Rubicon
A dramatic account of the fateful year leading to the ultimate crisis of the Roman Republic and the rise of Caesar's autocracy When the Senate ordered Julius Caesar, conqueror of Gaul, to disband his troops, he instead marched his soldiers across the Rubicon River, in violation of Roman law. The Senate turned to its proconsul, Pompey the Great, for help. But Pompey's response was unexpected: he commanded magistrates and senators to abandon Rome-a city that, until then, had always been defended. The consequences were the ultimate crisis of the Roman Republic and the rise of Caesar's autocracy. In this new history, Luca Fezzi argues that Pompey's actions sealed the Republic's fate. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, including Cicero's extensive letters, Fezzi shows how Pompey's decision shocked the Roman people, severely weakened the city, and set in motion a chain of events that allowed Caesar to take power. Seamlessly translated by Richard Dixon, this book casts fresh light on the dramatic events of this crucial moment in ancient Roman history.
eBook