This book is an attempt to read the poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus in his own context; to look at the poet and his works against the cultural realities of the first century BC as recent advances in historical research allow us to understand them. Catullus' own social background, the circumstances of the literary life of his time, the true extent of his works and the variety of audiences he addressed - these and other questions are explored by Professor Wiseman with new and startling results. Contemporary high society and politics are illustrated through Clodia and Caelius Rufus, considered...
This book is an attempt to read the poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus in his own context; to look at the poet and his works against the cultural realit...
Romulus founded Rome -- but why does the myth give him a twin brother Remus, who is killed at the moment of the foundation? This mysterious legend has been oddly neglected. Roman historians ignore it as irrelevant to real history; students of myth concentrate on the more glamorous mythology of Greece, and treat Roman stories as of little interest. In this book, Professor Wiseman provides, for the first time, a detailed analysis of all the variants of the story, and a historical explanation for its origin and development. His conclusions offer important new insights, both into the history and...
Romulus founded Rome -- but why does the myth give him a twin brother Remus, who is killed at the moment of the foundation? This mysterious legend has...
In this sequel to Historiography And Imagination (UEP 1994), Professor Wiseman explores the question of how the Romans understood their own past and the role of early drama in generating and transmitting legends. The first six of the book's twelve essays are concerned with stories and scenarios in the surviving literature which are best explained as having been first created for the stage. The other essays discuss the family traditions of Roman aristocrats, the rites of spring enjoyed by the Roman plebs, the use of Roman history in the radical politics of the nineteenth century, and how a...
In this sequel to Historiography And Imagination (UEP 1994), Professor Wiseman explores the question of how the Romans understood their own past and t...
In the Roman republic, only the People could pass laws, only the People could elect politicians to office, and the very word republica meant 'the People's business'. So why is it always assumed that the republic was an oligarchy? The main reason is that most of what we know about it we know from Cicero, a great man and a great writer, but also an active right-wing politician who took it for granted that what was good for a small minority of self-styled 'best people' (optimates) was good for the republic as a whole. T. P. Wiseman interprets the last century of the republic on the assumption...
In the Roman republic, only the People could pass laws, only the People could elect politicians to office, and the very word republica meant 'the Peop...
Who were Roman authors writing for? Only a minority of the population was fully literate and books were very expensive, individually hand-written on imported papyrus. So does it follow that great poets and prose authors like Virgil and Livy, Ovid and Petronius, were writing only for the cultured and the privileged? It is this modern consensus that is challenged in this volume. In an ambitious overview of a thousand years of history, from the formation of the city-state of Rome to the establishment of a fully Christian culture, T. P. Wiseman examines the evidence for the oral delivery of...
Who were Roman authors writing for? Only a minority of the population was fully literate and books were very expensive, individually hand-written on i...
