Compitum

Anthony Kaldellis, Romanland. Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium, Cambridge (Ma), 2019.

Éditeur : Harvard University Press
392 pages
ISBN : 9780674986510
41 €

A leading historian argues that in the empire we know as Byzantium, the Greek-speaking population was actually Roman, and scholars have deliberately mislabeled their ethnicity for the past two centuries for political reasons.
Was there ever such a thing as Byzantium? Certainly no emperor ever called himself “Byzantine.” And while the identities of minorities in the eastern empire are clear—contemporaries speak of Slavs, Bulgarians, Armenians, Jews, and Muslims—that of the ruling majority remains obscured behind a name made up by later generations.
Historical evidence tells us unequivocally that Byzantium's ethnic majority, no less than the ruler of Constantinople, would have identified as Roman. It was an identity so strong in the eastern empire that even the conquering Ottomans would eventually adopt it. But Western scholarship has a long tradition of denying the Romanness of Byzantium. In Romanland, Anthony Kaldellis investigates why and argues that it is time for the Romanness of these so-called Byzantines to be taken seriously.

William Robins, Historia Apollonii regis Tyri. A Fourteenth Century Version of a Late Antique Romance, Toronto, 2019.

Éditeur : Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
Collection : Toronto Medieval Latin Texts 36
XI+123 p. pages
ISBN : 978-0-88844-486-8
€ 17.50 (excl. TVA and shipping)

With its shipwrecked princes, pirates, princesses, the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri provided medieval Europe with one of its most popular and influential narratives. The tale incorporates many literary features characteristic of the ancient Hellenistic novel, but differs markedly from its Greek predecessors: its narrative is presented in condensed fashion, its description of characters and events is straightforwardly functional, and the style of its Latin simple. While these features make the Historia Apollonii an oddity among the ancient novels, they contributed to the appeal the story held for later readers and writers in medieval Europe. This edition provides a text of the Latin Historia Apollonii as a reader from the later Middle Ages might have encountered, from a manuscript written in Italy in the middle of the fourteenth century.

Source : http://www.brepols.net

Jennifer Gerrish, Sallust's Histories and Triumviral Historiography, Londres, 2019.

Éditeur : Routledge
168 pages
ISBN : 9781315437378
£105.00

Sallust's Histories and Triumviral Historiographyexplores the historiographical innovations of the first century Roman historian Sallust, focusing on the fragmentary Histories, an account of the turbulent years after the death of the dictator Sulla. The Histories were written during the violent transition from republic to empire, when Rome's political problems seemed insoluble and its morals hopelessly decayed. The ruling triumvirate of Octavian, Mark Antony, and Lepidus created a false sense of hope for the future, relentlessly insisting that they were bringing peace to the republic. The Histories address the challenges posed to historians by both civil war andauthoritarian rule. What does it mean, Sallust asks, to write history under a regime that so skillfully manipulates or even replaces facts with a more favorable narrative? Historiography needed a new purpose to remain relevant and useful in the triumviral world.In the Histories, Sallust adopts an analogical method of historiography that enables him to confront contemporary issues under the pretext of historical narrative.The allusive Histories challenge Sallust's audience to parse and analyze history as it is being "written" by the actors themselves and to interrogate the relationship between words and deeds.

Adrian Papahagi, Adinel-Ciprian Dincă et Andreea Mârza (éd.), Manuscrisele medievale occidentale din România. Census, Iaşi, 2019.

Éditeur : Polirom
Collection : Biblioteca medievală
248 pages
ISBN : 978-973-46-7463-3
34.95 RON

Volum publicat în colaborare cu Centrul de Istoria Cărții și a Textelor – CODEX, UBB Cluj
Lucrarea a fost realizată și tipărită cu sprijinul unui grant de cercetare CNCS‑UEFISCDI (PN II‑RU‑TE‑2010‑ 290).

Acest Census oferă cercetătorilor o vedere de ansamblu asupra conținutului, provenienței și decorației manuscriselor medievale în grafie latină din România. Lucrarea este totodată primul inventar național al acestor manuscrise și aduce la lumină codici necunoscuți pînă în prezent. Sînt recenzate complet și descrise unitar – unele pentru prima oară – manuscrisele de la Alba Iulia, Brașov, București, Cisnădie, Cluj, Gheorgheni, Mediaș, Miercurea Ciuc, Odorheiu Secuiesc, Sfîntu Gheorghe, Sibiu, Sighișoara, Tîrgu Mureș și Timișoara. În cazul unor codici descriși în trecut sînt propuse noi identificări de texte, descrieri codicologice mai exacte, datări mai precise sau stabilirea mai sigură a provenienței. Volumul include în anexă manuscrise sau fragmente menționate în literatură, dar nereperabile în prezent. Studiul introductiv schițează istoria și conținutul colecțiilor de manuscrise medievale occidentale din România. În fine, volumul este completat de numeroși indici: autori și titluri, posesori și locuri de proveniență, copiști, limbă, decorație, notație muzicală, data manuscriselor.

Source : Polirom

Orazio Capello, The School of Doubt Skepticism, History and Politics in Cicero's Academica, Leyde-Boston, 2019.

Éditeur : Brill
Collection : Brill Studies in Skepticism
361 pages
ISBN : 978-90-04-38987-8
175 €

The School of Doubt conducts a close philological and philosophical reading of Cicero’s Academica, a fragmentary work on sense-perception and Academic history written in the wake of Caesar’s victory in the civil wars (45 BCE). Focusing in turn on the author’s letters discussing the process of composition, the historiographical treatment of the Platonic tradition and the critical exploration of philosophical doubt, this volume presents Cicero as an original and sophisticated historian of philosophy and a radical figure in Western skeptical thought. Widely misconstrued as a technical treatise and a mere chronicle of the Greek debates on which it draws, the Academica here emerges as a key work in the evolution of Ciceronian philosophy and of ancient skepticism – and one that responds directly to the disintegration of Republican Rome.

Julia Hell, The Conquest of Ruins. The Third Reich and the Fall of Rome, Chicago, 2019.

Éditeur : Chicago of University Press
576 pages
ISBN : 9780226588193
35 $

The Roman Empire has been a source of inspiration and a model for imitation for Western empires practically since the moment Rome fell. Yet, as Julia Hell shows in The Conquest of Ruins, what has had the strongest grip on aspiring imperial imaginations isn't that empire's glory but its fall—and the haunting monuments left in its wake.
Hell examines centuries of European empire-building—from Charles V in the sixteenth century and Napoleon's campaigns of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to the atrocities of Mussolini and the Third Reich in the 1930s and '40s—and sees a similar fascination with recreating the Roman past in the contemporary image. In every case—particularly that of the Nazi regime—the ruins of Rome seem to represent a mystery to be solved: how could an empire so powerful be brought so low? Hell argues that this fascination with the ruins of greatness expresses a need on the part of would-be conquerors to find something to ward off a similar demise for their particular empire.