What would you see if you attended a trial in a courtroom in the early Roman empire? What was the behaviour of litigants, advocates, judges and audience? It was customary for Roman individuals out of general interest to attend the various courts held in public places in the city centre and as such the Roman courts held an important position in the Roman community on a sociological level as well as a letigious one. This book considers many aspects of Roman courts in the first two centuries AD, both civil and criminal, and illuminates the interaction of Romans of every social group. Actors and Audience in the Roman Courtroom is an essential resource for courses on Roman social history and Roman law as a historical phenomenon.
What would you see if you attended a trial in a courtroom in the early Roman empire? What was the behaviour of litigants, advocates, judges and audience? It was customary for Roman individuals out of general interest to attend the various courts held in public places in the city centre and as such the Roman courts held an important position in the Roman community on a sociological level as well as a letigious one. This book considers many aspects of Roman courts in the first two centuries AD, both civil and criminal, and illuminates the interaction of Romans of every social group. Actors and Audience in the Roman Courtroom is an essential resource for courses on Roman social history and Roman law as a historical phenomenon.
Rhetorical training was the central component of an elite Roman man's education, and declamations--imaginary courtroom speeches in the character of a fictional or historical individual--were the most advanced exercises in the standard rhetorical curriculum. The Major Declamations is a collection of nineteen full-length Latin speeches attributed in antiquity to Quintilian but most likely composed by a group of authors in the second and third centuries CE. Though there has been a recent revival of interest in Greco-Roman declamation, the Major Declamations has generally been neglected. Ethics, Identity, and Community in Later Roman Declamation is the first book devoted exclusively to the Major Declamations and its reception in later European literature. It argues that the fictional scenarios of the Major Declamations enable the conceptual exploration of a variety of ethical and social issues. Chapters explore these cultural matters, covering, in turn, the construction of authority, the verification of claims, the conventions of reciprocity, and the ethics of spectatorship. The book closes with a study of the reception of the collection by the Renaissance humanist Juan Luis Vives and the eighteenth-century scholar Lorenzo Patarol, followed by a brief postscript that deftly surveys the use of declamatory exercises in the contemporary university. This much-needed and engaging study will rescue the Major Declamations from generations of neglect, while critically informing current work in rhetorical studies.
The Theatre of Justice contains 17 chapters that offer a holistic view of performance in Greek and Roman oratorical and political contexts. This holistic view consists of the examination of two areas of techniques. The first one relates to the delivery of speeches and texts: gesticulation, facial expressions and vocal communication. The second area includes a wide diversity of techniques that aim at forging a rapport between the speaker and the audience, such as emotions, language and style, vivid imagery and the depiction of characters. In this way the volume develops a better understanding of the objectives of public speaking, the mechanisms of persuasion, and the extent to which performance determined the outcome of judicial and political contests.
In Machines of the Mind, Katharine Breen proposes that medieval personifications should be understood neither as failed novelistic characters nor as instruments of heavy-handed didacticism. She argues that personifications are instead powerful tools for thought that help us to remember and manipulate complex ideas, testing them against existing moral and political paradigms. Specifically, different types of medieval personification should be seen as corresponding to positions in the rich and nuanced medieval debate over universals. Breen identifies three different types of personification—Platonic, Aristotelian, and Prudentian—that gave medieval writers a surprisingly varied spectrum with which to paint their characters. Through a series of new readings of major authors and works, from Plato to Piers Plowman, Breen illuminates how medieval personifications embody the full range of positions between philosophical realism and nominalism, varying according to the convictions of individual authors and the purposes of individual works. Recalling Gregory the Great’s reference to machinae mentis (machines of the mind), Breen demonstrates that medieval writers applied personification with utility and subtlety, employing methods of personification as tools that serve different functions. Machines of the Mind offers insight for medievalists working at the crossroads of religion, philosophy, and literature, as well as for scholars interested in literary character-building and gendered relationships among characters, readers, and texts beyond the Middle Ages.
This volume acknowledges the centrality of comic invective in a range of oratorical institutions (especially forensic and symbouleutic), and aspires to enhance the knowledge and understanding of how this technique is used in such con-texts of both Greek and Roman oratory. Despite the important scholarly work that has been done in discussing the patterns of using invective in Greek and Roman texts and contexts, there are still notable gaps in our knowledge of the issue. The introduction to, and the twelve chapters of, this volume address some understudied multi-genre and interdisciplinary topics: first, the ways in which comic invective in oratory draws on, or has implications for, comedy and other genres, or how these literary genres are influenced by oratorical theory and practice, and by contemporary socio-political circumstances, in articulating comic invective and targeting prominent individuals; second, how comic invective sustains relationships and promotes persuasion through unity and division; third, how it connects with sexuality, the human body and male/female physiology; fourth, what impact generic dichotomies, as, for example, public-private and defence-prosecution, may have upon using comic invective; and fifth, what the limitations in its use are, depending on the codes of honour and decency in ancient Greece and Rome.
What happens when we juxtapose medicine and law in the ancient Roman world? This innovative collection of scholarly research shows how both fields were shaped by the particular needs and desires of their practitioners and users. It approaches the study of these fields through three avenues. First, it argues that the literatures produced by elite practitioners, like Galen or Ulpian, were not merely utilitarian, but were pieces of aesthetically inflected literature and thus carried all of the disparate baggage linked to any form of literature in the Roman context. Second, it suggests that while one element of that literary luggage was the socio-political competition that these texts facilitated, high stakes agonism also uniquely marked the quotidian practice of both medicine and law, resulting in both fields coming to function as forms of popular public entertainment. Finally, it shows how the effects of rhetoric and the deeply rhetorical education of the elite made themselves constantly apparent in both the literature on and the practice of medicine and law. Through case studies in both fields and on each of these topics, together with contextualizing essays, Medicine and the Law Under the Roman Empire suggests that the blanket results of all this were profound. The introduction to the volume argues that medicine was not contrived merely to ensure healing of the infirm by doctors, and law did not single-mindedly aim to regulate society in a consistent, orderly, and binding fashion. Instead, both fields, in the full range of their manifestations, were nested in a complex matrix of social, political, and intellectual crosscurrents, all of which served to shape the very substances of these fields themselves. This poses forward-looking questions: What things might ancient Roman medicine and law have been meant or geared to accomplish in their world? And how might the very substance of Roman medicine and law have been crafted with an eye to fulfilling those peculiarly ancient needs and desires? This book suggests that both fields, in their ancient manifestations, differed fundamentally from their modern counterparts, and must be approached with this fact firmly in mind.
A Companion to the City of Rome presents a series of original essays from top experts that offer an authoritative and up-to-date overview of current research on the development of the city of Rome from its origins until circa AD 600. Offers a unique interdisciplinary, closely focused thematic approach and wide chronological scope making it an indispensible reference work on ancient Rome Includes several new developments on areas of research that are available in English for the first time Newly commissioned essays written by experts in a variety of related fields Original and up-to-date readings pertaining to the city of Rome on a wide variety of topics including Rome’s urban landscape, population, economy, civic life, and key events
The princeps Augustus (63 BCE - 14 CE), recognized as the first of the Roman emperors, looms large in the teaching and writing of Roman history. Major political, literary, and artistic developments alike are attributed to him. This book deliberately and provocatively shifts the focus off Augustus while still looking at events of his time. Contributors uncover the perspectives and contributions of a range of individuals other than the princeps. Not all thought they were living in the "Augustan Age." Not all took their cues from Augustus. In their self-display or ideas for reform, some anticipated Augustus. Others found ways to oppose him that also helped to shape the future of their community. The volume challenges the very idea of an "Augustan Age" by breaking down traditional turning points and showing the continuous experimentation and development of these years to be in continuity with earlier Roman culture. In showcasing absences of Augustus and giving other figures their due, the papers here make a seemingly familiar period startlingly new.
The study of Roman society and social relations blossomed in the 1970s. By now, we possess a very large literature on the individuals and groups that constituted the Roman community, and the various ways in which members of that community interacted. There simply is, however, no overview that takes into account the multifarious progress that has been made in the past thirty-odd years. The purpose of this handbook is twofold. On the one hand, it synthesizes what has heretofore been accomplished in this field. On the other hand, it attempts to configure the examination of Roman social relations in some new ways, and thereby indicates directions in which the discipline might now proceed. The book opens with a substantial general introduction that portrays the current state of the field, indicates some avenues for further study, and provides the background necessary for the following chapters. It lays out what is now known about the historical development of Roman society and the essential structures of that community. In a second introductory article, Clifford Ando explains the chronological parameters of the handbook. The main body of the book is divided into the following six sections: 1) Mechanisms of Socialization (primary education, rhetorical education, family, law), 2) Mechanisms of Communication and Interaction, 3) Communal Contexts for Social Interaction, 4) Modes of Interpersonal Relations (friendship, patronage, hospitality, dining, funerals, benefactions, honor), 5) Societies Within the Roman Community (collegia, cults, Judaism, Christianity, the army), and 6) Marginalized Persons (slaves, women, children, prostitutes, actors and gladiators, bandits). The result is a unique, up-to-date, and comprehensive survey of ancient Roman society.
