Writing Down Rome

Writing Down Rome

Author: John Henderson

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 1998-12-17

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 0191584428

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In a series of controversial essays, this book examines the Roman penchant for denigration, and in particular self-denigration, at the expense of Roman culture. Comedy in Republican Rome radically transformed both itself and the culture from which it sprang: in Poenulus, Plautus laughed at Roman depreciation of Carthage; in Adelphoe, Terence turned on his audience in provocation. The comic Roman poets played with self-mockery: in Eclogue III, Virgil tests his audience's security in judging peasant unpleasantness; in Odes III.22, Horace sends up his own pious rusticity down on the farm. In the second half of the book, Roman verse satire is the subject: the genre of male bragging mocks its own masculine aggression. The great Latin satirists make fun of making fun: Horace, Satires I.9, shows up the politics of humour, unmanned by his own good manners; Persius nails his own weaknesses in fortifying himself against the world; Juvenal, Satire 1, loathes the literary scene he bids to dominate. The book shows a vital ingredient of Roman poetry to be an energetic surge of urbane banter directed towards Roman culure.


Fighting for Rome

Fighting for Rome

Author: John Henderson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1998-03-12

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 9780521580267

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The essays in Fighting for Rome confront the traumatic disjunction between the militarist culture of classical Rome, with its heavy investment in valour, conquest and triumph, and the domination of its history by civil war, where Roman soldiers killed so many Romans for control of Rome. The essays gathered and rewritten here range across the literary forms (history, satire, lyric and epic) and work closely with the ancient texts (Appian and Julius Caesar; Horace; Lucan and Statius; Tacitus and Livy). Close reading and powerful translation communicate the ancient writers' efforts to grasp and respond to the Roman civil wars, and to their product, Roman terror under the Caesars. The book aims to bring to life strong reactions to a world order run by civil war.


Legible Religion

Legible Religion

Author: Duncan MacRae

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-06-07

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0674969685

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Scholars have long emphasized the importance of scripture in studying religion, tacitly separating a few privileged “religions of the Book” from faiths lacking sacred texts, including ancient Roman religion. Looking beyond this distinction, Duncan MacRae delves into Roman religious culture to grapple with a central question: what was the significance of books in a religion without scripture? In the last two centuries BCE, Varro and other learned Roman authors wrote treatises on the nature of the Roman gods and the rituals devoted to them. Although these books were not sacred texts, they made Roman religion legible in ways analogous to scripture-based faiths such as Judaism and Christianity. Rather than reflect the astonishingly varied polytheistic practices of the regions under Roman sway, the contents of the books comprise Rome’s “civil theology”—not a description of an official state religion but one limited to the civic role of religion in Roman life. An extended comparison between Roman books and the Mishnah—an early Rabbinic compilation of Jewish practice and law—highlights the important role of nonscriptural texts in the demarcation of religious systems. Tracing the subsequent influence of Roman religious texts from the late first century BCE to early fifth century CE, Legible Religion shows how two major developments—the establishment of the Roman imperial monarchy and the rise of the Christian Church—shaped the reception and interpretation of Roman civil theology.


Politeia in Greek and Roman Philosophy

Politeia in Greek and Roman Philosophy

Author: Verity Harte

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-08

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 1107020220

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This book explores how politeia (constitution) structures both political and extra-political relations throughout the entire range of Greek and Roman thought. Topics include the vocabulary of politics, the practice of politics, the politics of value, and the extension of constitutional order to relations with animals, gods and the cosmos.


Beyond Greek

Beyond Greek

Author: Denis Feeney

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-01-01

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 0674496043

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A History Today Best Book of the Year A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Horace, and other authors of ancient Rome are so firmly established in the Western canon today that the birth of Latin literature seems inevitable. Yet, Denis Feeney boldly argues, the beginnings of Latin literature were anything but inevitable. The cultural flourishing that in time produced the Aeneid, the Metamorphoses, and other Latin classics was one of the strangest events in history. “Feeney is to be congratulated on his willingness to put Roman literary history in a big comparative context...It is a powerful testimony to the importance of Denis Feeney’s work that the old chestnuts of classical literary history—how the Romans got themselves Hellenized, and whether those jack-booted thugs felt anxiously belated or smugly domineering in their appropriation of Greek culture for their own purposes—feel fresh and urgent again.” —Emily Wilson, Times Literary Supplement “[Feeney’s] bold theme and vigorous writing render Beyond Greek of interest to anyone intrigued by the history and literature of the classical world.” —The Economist


Romans (Teach the Text Commentary Series)

Romans (Teach the Text Commentary Series)

Author: C. Marvin Pate

Publisher: Baker Books

Published: 2013-01-15

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 1441241272

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The Teach the Text Commentary Series utilizes the best of biblical scholarship to provide the information a pastor needs to communicate the text effectively. The carefully selected preaching units and focused commentary allow pastors to quickly grasp the big idea and key themes of each passage of Scripture. Each unit of the commentary includes the big idea and key themes of the passage and sections dedicated to understanding, teaching, and illustrating the text.


Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome

Author: Fiona Macdonald

Publisher: Capstone Classroom

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 52

ISBN-13: 9781403454584

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Presents the history of ancient Rome by examining the archaeological excavations of its historical sites and the artifacts found at those sites.


Figuring Genre in Roman Satire

Figuring Genre in Roman Satire

Author: Catherine Keane

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2006-01-12

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 0195346025

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Satirists are social critics, but they are also products of society. Horace, Persius, and Juvenal, the verse satirists of ancient Rome, exploit this double identity to produce their colorful commentaries on social life and behavior. In a fresh comparative study that combines literary and cultural analysis, Catherine Keane reveals how the satirists create such a vivid and incisive portrayal of the Roman social world. Throughout the tradition, the narrating satirist figure does not observe human behavior from a distance, but adopts a range of charged social roles to gain access to his subject matter. In his mission to entertain and moralize, he poses alternately as a theatrical performer and a spectator, a perpetrator and victim of violence, a jurist and criminal, a teacher and student. In these roles the satirist conducts penetrating analyses of Rome's definitive social practices "from the inside." Satire's reputation as the quintessential Roman genre is thus even more justified than previously recognized. As literary artists and social commentators, the satirists rival the grandest authors of the classical canon. They teach their ancient and modern readers two important lessons. First, satire reveals the inherent fragilities and complications, as well as acknowledging the benefits, of Roman society's most treasured institutions. The satiric perspective deepens our understanding of Roman ideologies and their fault lines. As the poets show, no system of judgment, punishment, entertainment, or social organization is without its flaws and failures. At the same time, readers are encouraged to view the satiric genre itself as a composite of these systems, loaded with cultural meaning and highly imperfect. The satirist who functions as both subject and critic trains his readers to develop a critical perspective on every kind of authority, including his own.


The Function of Humour in Roman Verse Satire

The Function of Humour in Roman Verse Satire

Author: Maria Plaza

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2006-01-26

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 0199281114

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Maria Plaza offers a fresh and comprehensive analysis of humour in the writings of Horace, Persius, and Juvenal, with an excursus to Lucilius.