Magistracy and the Historiography of the Roman Republic: Politics in Prose

ISBN-13: 9781107040908 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 214 str.

Ayelet Haimson Lushkov; Ayelet Haimson Lushkov

Opis

The study of Roman republican magistracy has traditionally been the preserve of historians posing constitutional and prosopographical questions. As a result, one fundamental aspect of our most detailed contemporary and near-contemporary sources about magistracy has remained largely neglected: their literariness. This book takes a new approach to the representation of magistrates and shows how the rhetorical and formal features of prose texts - principally Livy's history but also works by Cicero and Sallust - shape our understanding of magistracy. Applying to the texts an expanded concept of exemplarity, Haimson Lushkov shows how a rich body of anecdotes concerning the behaviour and speech of magistrates reflects on the values and tensions that defined the republic. A variety of contexts - familial, military, and electoral, among others - flesh out the experience of being, becoming, and encountering a Roman magistrate, and the political and ethical problems highlighted and negotiated in such circumstances.

Spis treści

Introduction: exemplarity, magistracy, and narrative; 1. Magisterial authority and the politics of affection; 2. Authority in crisis: the Caudine Forks; 3. Elections and the generation of exempla; 4. Elections as narratives of magistracy; Epilogue: staging authority.