Christopher Smith and Anton Powell (dir.), The lost memoirs of Augustus and the development of Roman autobiography, Swansea, 2009.

Éditeur : Classical Press of Wales
XII-227 pages
ISBN : 9781905125258
100 $

Augustus' Memoirs, written probably in the mid 20s BC, might have been one of the most revealing texts of Roman history - had they survived. Far longer than his surviving Res Gestae, the Memoirs seem to date from a period at which the wounds of Rome's civil wars were fresh, and the emperor's partisan past might be recalled with discomfort. Existing fragments and testimonia have suggested that the work was apologetic in purpose. In this, the first ever comprehensive study of the subject, a cast of internationally-respected scholars reconstruct aspects of the work, its importance for historians, and its relation to Roman literary genre. The book also contains, by kind permission of Oxford University Press, the fragments and testimonia of the Memoirs as they will appear, newly edited by Christopher Smith, in 'The Fragmentary Roman Historians'.

God is in the details

A reflection on methodology in the humanities

A conference organized within the activities of the Graduate School Humanae Litterae, University of Milan
June 10-11, 2010.

We invite papers for an interdoctoral conference, aimed at a reflection on the methodology in the humanities. The main focus of the conference will be on texts, considered as the common ground between the different disciplines. The starting point is Erich Auerbach's statement, according to which, starting from a kind of observation focused on detail, on the single distinctive mark - through a gradual widening of the perspective beyond the limits of specialized knowledge - it is possible to set the terms of a discourse which interprets the relationship between general and particular: