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Edited by

Valentina Arena

University College London London, England

Jonathan Prag

University of Oxford Oxford, England

Jonathan Prag

University of Oxford Oxford, England

with Assistant Editor

Andrew Stiles

This edition first published 2022

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Arena, Valentina, editor. | Prag, J. R. W. editor.

Title: A companion to Roman political culture / edited by Valentina Arena, Jonathan Prag; with assistant editor Andrew Stiles.

Description: Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, 2022. | Series: Blackwell companions to the ancient world | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Contents: Political culture : a career of a concept / Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp -- Machiavelli’s Roman Republic / Ryan Balot and Nate Gilmore -- The Roman Republic and the English Republic / Rachel Foxley -- Liberty, rights, and virtue : the Roman Republic in eighteenth century France / Christopher Hamel -- A Roman revolution : classical republicanism in the creation of the American republic / Eran Shalev -- Theodor Mommsen’s history of Rome and its political and intellectual context / Stefan Rebenich -- The political culture of the Republic since Syme’s The Roman revolution : a story of a debate/ Alexander Yakobson -- Polybius and Roman political culture / Chiara Carsana -- Cicero : in and above the Republic’s political culture / Walter Nicgorski -- Sallust / Alison Rosenblitt -- Augustan republics : Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and the politics of the past / Andrew Gallia -- Plutarch’s evaluation of Roman politics and political figures / Mark Beck -- Appian, Cassius Dio, and the Roman Republic / John Rich -- The census / Guido Clemente -- Senate / Marianne Coudry -- Roman political assemblies / Tim Cornell -- Armies and political culture / Nathan Rosenstein -- Imperator and politician : the consul as the highest magistrate of the Republic / Francisco Pina Polo -- The tribunate of the plebs : between compromise and revolution / Amy Russell -- Priests / Jörg Rüpke -- Other magistrates, officials and apparitores / Eric Kondratieff -- The ciuis / Andrea Raggi -- Romans, Latins and allies / Edward Bispham -- Peregrini/nationes exterae : foreigners and the political culture of the Roman Republic / Lisa Eberle -- Republican elites : patricians, nobiles, senators, and equestrians / Hans Beck -- Matronae and politics in Republican Rome / Rohr -- On freedom and citizenship : freedmen as agents and metaphors of Roman political culture / Pedro López Barja -- Roman republican political culture : values and ideology / Robert Morstein-Marx -- From patronage to violence and bribery : towards a new political culture / Antonio Duplá -- The political culture of the plebs / Jerry Toner -- The law and the courts in Roman political culture / Jean-Michel David -- Rhetoric and Roman political culture / Catherine Steel -- Religion and rituals in Republican Rome / Francisco Marco Simón -- Myth and theatre / Uwe Walter -- Imagery and space / Peter J. Holliday -- The political culture of Rome in 218-212 BCE / Bernhard Linke -- Roman political culture in 169 BC / John A. North -- 133 BC. politics in a time of challenge and crisis / J. Lea Beness and Tom Hillard -- 88 BC / W. Jeffrey Tatum -- The year 52 BC / Egon Flaig. | Summary: “The decision to dedicate an entire volume to the study of the political culture of the Roman Republic reflects what is currently the most comprehensive approach to the subject traditionally labelled as Roman Republican politics (for a definition of the concept of ‘political culture’ and its history in the field of Roman studies see Hölkeskamp, ch. 1). This volume analyses the Roman political world through the wider lenses of ‘Roman political culture’, in full recognition that, alongside the working of the political and religious institutions and their related officers, a system of shared values, traditions, and communicative strategies played a fundamental role in the social and political life of Rome throughout the Republic. The subject has been at the centre of an intensely contested debate for centuries and Part 1 (supplemented by chapter 1) traces the modern history of this. Needless to say, the subject goes right back to contemporary discourse, beginning for us with Polybius, whose account perhaps already foreshadows some of the wider approaches now being advocated - and it is to the ancient accounts that Part 2 is dedicated. More recently, modern historians have broadly approached the study of the Republican political life of Rome following three main strands: first, the study of its legal system, its institutions, and rules and regulations; second, the investigation of the social interactions amongst the members of the elite (which, under the impetus of neo-Marxist approaches of the later 20th century, extended to a growing interest in their interactions with the wider Roman people and the latter’s socio-economic demands); and finally, the analysis of the ‘political grammar’, as Meier (1980) called it, which put an emphasis on shared beliefs, values, myths, traditions, and symbolic communication of the political system. Each of these approaches has yielded important results, which, however, taken separately, provide a somewhat fragmented view of Roman political world”-- Provided by publisher.