Roman Republican Reflections: Studies in Politics, Power, and Pageantry

The international discussion on the political culture of the Roman republic, which began in the 1980s and is still going on, is one of the most vibrant and lively debates in the Classics. This collection of essays - all revised and updated - offers fresh approaches to central themes of the debate: Roman republican social and political order in scholarship in the 20th century; the origins and development of the aforementioned debate; the emergence of new questions, fields of research, theoretical and methodological approaches; the constitution of the ruling class; the concept of ‘political culture’; the importance of public oratory; the character and role of the ‘public’ in a ‘city-state’ - contio and comitia; the role of history and collective memory; the performative construction of hierarchy and ‘power’; performative media of self-presentation - processions and other rituals; monumental and other visual media of self-fashioning - temples, spoils and statues; the self-fashioning of prominent families - the Marcii and the Cornelii Scipiones.