Irony and Misreading in the Annals of Tacitus


Book Description

This 2000 book examines Tacitus' Annals as an ironic portrayal of Julio-Claudian Rome, through close analysis of passages in which characters engage in interpretation and misreading. By representing the misreading of signifying systems - such as speech, gesture, writing, social structures and natural phenomena - Tacitus obliquely comments upon the perversion of Rome's republican structure in the new principate. Furthermore, this study argues that the distinctively obscure style of the Annals is used by Tacitus to draw his reader into the ambiguities and compromises of the political regime it represents. The strain on language and meaning both portrayed and enacted by the Annals in this way gives voice to a form of political protest to which the reader must respond in the course of interpreting the narrative.




Tacitus’ History of Politically Effective Speech


Book Description

This study examines how Tacitus' representation of speech determines the roles of speakers within the political sphere, and explores the possibility of politically effective speech in the principate. It argues against the traditional scholarly view that Tacitus refuses to offer a positive view of senatorial power in the principate: while senators did experience limitations and changes to what they could achieve in public life, they could aim to create a dimension of political power and efficacy through speeches intended to create and sustain relations which would in turn determine the roles played by both senators or an emperor. Ellen O'Gorman traces Tacitus' own charting of these modes of speech, from flattery and aggression to advice, praise, and censure, and explores how different modes of speech in his histories should be evaluated: not according to how they conform to pre-existing political stances, but as they engender different political worlds in the present and future. The volume goes beyond literary analysis of the texts to create a new framework for studying this essential period in ancient Roman history, much in the same way that Tacitus himself recasts the political authority and presence of senatorial speakers as narrative and historical analysis.




The Tacitus Encyclopedia


Book Description

The Tacitus Encyclopedia ist das einzige vollständige Referenzwerk seiner Art im Bereich der Tacitus-Studien. Das zweibändige Werk enthält mehr als 1.000 Einträge zu jeder Person und jedem Ort, die in den erhaltenen Werken des römischen Historikers und Politikers Tacitus (ca. 56-120 n. Chr.) Erwähnung finden. In den von einem internationalen Autorenteam verfassten Beiträgen werden die bei Tacitus genannten Personen und Orte in den Kontext eingeordnet, und es werden ihre Beziehungen zum größeren taciteischen Korpus aufgezeigt. Die Einträge sind alphabetisch geordnet und mit Querverweisen versehen. Sie enthalten allgemeine Beschreibungen und Hintergrundinformationen zu den in den Texten genannten Stichworten, Zitate aus antiken Quellen und der einschlägigen Wissenschaft sowie Empfehlungen zum Weiterlesen. Die Enzyklopädie, die als Ausgangspunkt für weitere Forschungen gedacht ist, umfasst zudem 165 Themenschwerpunkte in Verbindung mit den Tacitus-Studien, darunter antike Geschichtsschreibung, Geschichte, Sozialgeschichte, Geschlecht und Sexualität, Literaturkritik, antike Autoren, Rezeption und materielle Kultur. Dieses unverzichtbare Nachschlagewerk bietet nicht nur einen umfassenden Überblick über die Inhalte der taciteischen Schriften, sondern darüber hinaus: * Eine Darstellung von rund 1.000 Personen sowie 400 Regionen, Städten und Orten, geografischen und topologischen Merkmalen * Einen verständlichen Einstieg in die Werke des Tacitus, insbesondere die Annalen, Historien, Agricola, Germania und Dialogus de oratoribus für Leserinnen und Leser mit unterschiedlichen Vorkenntnissen * Die Erörterung einer großen Bandbreite an Themen wie Geschlechterfragen, Sklaverei, Literaturgeschichte sowie der Regentschaft einzelner Herrscher * Eine Präsentation der wissenschaftlichen Erforschung und Rezeption von Tacitus von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart * Betrachtungen der wissenschaftlichen Trends, der aktuellen Methodik und künftigen Richtungen der Tacitus-Studien Das Werk The Tacitus Encyclopedia ist als Druckfassung und als Online-Version erhältlich. Es ist ein unentbehrliches Referenzwerk für Studierende und Forschende in den Bereichen Geschichte und Geschichtsschreibung, Klassische Philologie, Kunstgeschichte, Sozialwissenschaften, Europäische Geistesgeschichte, Archäologie und Romanistik.




Virtus Romana


Book Description

The political transformation that took place at the end of the Roman Republic was a particularly rich area for analysis by the era's historians. Major narrators chronicled the crisis that saw the end of the Roman Republic and the changes that gave birth to a new political system. These writers drew significantly on the Roman idea of virtus as a way of interpreting and understanding their past. Tracing how virtus informed Roman thought over time, Catalina Balmaceda explores the concept and its manifestations in the narratives of four successive Latin historians who span the late Republic and early Principate: Sallust, Livy, Velleius, and Tacitus. Balmaceda demonstrates that virtus in these historical narratives served as a form of self-definition that fostered and propagated a new model of the ideal Roman more fitting to imperial times. As a crucial moral and political concept, virtus worked as a key idea in the complex system of Roman sociocultural values and norms that underpinned Roman attitudes about both present and past. This book offers a reappraisal of the historians as promoters of change and continuity in the political culture of both the Republic and the Empire.




Brill’s Companion to Military Defeat in Ancient Mediterranean Society


Book Description

In Brill's Companion to Military Defeat in Ancient Mediterranean Society, Jessica H. Clark and Brian Turner lead a re-examination of how Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman societies addressed – or failed to address – their military defeats and casualties of war. Original case studies illuminate not only how political and military leaders managed the political and strategic consequences of military defeats, but also the challenges facing defeated soldiers, citizens, and other classes, who were left to negotiate the meaning of defeat for themselves and their societies. By focusing on the connections between war and society, history and memory, the chapters collected in this volume contribute to our understanding of the ubiquity and significance of war losses in the ancient world.




Damqatum - Number 17 (2021)


Book Description

Damqatum is a journal dedicated to the history and archaeology of the Near East, oriented to the general public.




The Julio-Claudian Succession


Book Description

The representation, and retention, of power was a critical issue for the princeps and his subjects, and the contributors provide fresh political and literary analysis of aspects of the principates of Augustus, Tiberius Claudius and Nero.




The Cambridge Companion to Roman Satire


Book Description

Satire as a distinct genre of writing was first developed by the Romans in the second century BCE. Regarded by them as uniquely 'their own', satire held a special place in the Roman imagination as the one genre that could address the problems of city life from the perspective of a 'real Roman'. In this Cambridge Companion an international team of scholars provides a stimulating introduction to Roman satire's core practitioners and practices, placing them within the contexts of Greco-Roman literary and political history. Besides addressing basic questions of authors, content, and form, the volume looks to the question of what satire 'does' within the world of Greco-Roman social exchanges, and goes on to treat the genre's further development, reception, and translation in Elizabethan England and beyond. Included are studies of the prosimetric, 'Menippean' satires that would become the models of Rabelais, Erasmus, More, and (narrative satire's crowning jewel) Swift.




Machiavelli's Prince


Book Description

This book gives a radical, new, chapter-by-chapter reading of Machiavelli's The Prince, arguing that it is an ironic masterpiece with a moral purpose. It outlines Machiavelli's most important ironic techniques: a normatively coded use of language.




Writing Ancient History


Book Description

'History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon', said Napoleon. Yet the actual writing of history, especially ancient history, is a practice that often prompts more discord than assent. In his new textbook, Luke Pitcher aims to overcome the hostility which exists between two rival camps in their study of classical historiography. The first camp looks at the classical historians with an eye to what data they can provide about the ancient world. The second camp examines the ancient writers as literary texts in their own right, employing the tools of literary criticism and engaging with such matters as narrative artistry.Attempting to fuse these two - mutually suspicious - approaches, Luke Pitcher's attractive introduction offers undergraduate students of classics the first comprehensive introduction to historiography in antiquity on the market. It unites the nitty-gritty of the historian's trade (the finding and managing of data) to an awareness of the importance of style, form, allusion and composition. The book also seeks to do justice to individual classical historians, and discusses such important figures as Livy, Tacitus, Herodotus, Cicero, Plutarch and Lucian. A comprehensive bibliography and glossary are included. "Writing Ancient History" at last does full justice to the mechanics of history-writing in the ancient world.