Remembering the Roman Republic: Culture, Politics and History under the Principate

The Roman Principate was defined by its embrace of a central paradox - the ruling order strenuously advertised continuity with the past, even as the emperor’s monarchical power represented a fundamental breach with the traditions of the ‘free’ Republic it had replaced. Drawing on the evidence of coins, public monuments and literary texts ranging from Tacitus and Pliny the Younger to Frontinus and Silius Italicus, this study traces a series of six crucial moments in which the memory of the Republic intruded upon Roman public discourse in the period from the fall of Nero to the height of Trajan’s power. During these years, remembering the Republic was anything but a remote and antiquarian undertaking. It was instead a vital cultural process, through which emperors and their subjects attempted to navigate many of the fault lines that ran through Roman Imperial culture.