Mardi, 03 Juillet 2018 08:04
Guillaume Flamerie de Lachapelle
Kathryn Lomas, The Rise of Rome: From the Iron Age to the Punic Wars, Cambridge [MA] - Londres, 2018.
Éditeur : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Collection : History of the Ancient World
432 pages
ISBN : 9780674659650
35 $
By the third century BC, the once-modest settlement of Rome had conquered most of Italy and was poised to build an empire throughout the Mediterranean basin. What transformed a humble city into the preeminent power of the region? In The Rise of Rome, the historian and archaeologist Kathryn Lomas reconstructs the diplomatic ploys, political stratagems, and cultural exchanges whereby Rome established itself as a dominant player in a region already brimming with competitors. The Latin world, she argues, was not so much subjugated by Rome as unified by it. This new type of society that emerged from Rome's conquest and unification of Italy would serve as a political model for centuries to come.
Archaic Italy was home to a vast range of ethnic communities, each with its own language and customs. Some such as the Etruscans, and later the Samnites, were major rivals of Rome. From the late Iron Age onward, these groups interacted in increasingly dynamic ways within Italy and beyond, expanding trade and influencing religion, dress, architecture, weaponry, and government throughout the region. Rome manipulated preexisting social and political structures in the conquered territories with great care, extending strategic invitations to citizenship and thereby allowing a degree of local independence while also fostering a sense of imperial belonging.
In the story of Rome's rise, Lomas identifies nascent political structures that unified the empire's diverse populations, and finds the beginnings of Italian peoplehood.
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Dimanche, 01 Juillet 2018 08:12
Guillaume Flamerie de Lachapelle
Brian W. Breed, Elizabeth Keitel et Rex Wallace (éd.), Lucilius and Satire in Second-Century BC Rome, Cambridge, 2018.
Éditeur : Cambridge University Press
332 pages
ISBN : 9781107189553
75 £
This volume considers linguistic, cultural, and literary trends that fed into the creation of Roman satire in second-century BC Rome. Combining approaches drawn from linguistics, Roman history, and Latin literature, the chapters share a common purpose of attempting to assess how Lucilius' satires functioned in the social environment in which they were created and originally read. Particular areas of focus include audiences for satire, the mixing of varieties of Latin in the satires, and relationships with other second-century genres, including comedy, epic, and oratory. Lucilius' satires emerged at a time when Rome's new status as an imperial power and its absorption of influences from the Greek world were shaping Roman identity. With this in mind the book provides new perspectives on the foundational identification of satire with what it means to be Roman and satire's unique status as 'wholly ours' tota nostra among Latin literary genres.
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Vendredi, 29 Juin 2018 08:08
Guillaume Flamerie de Lachapelle
Clare Coombe, Claudian the Poet, Cambridge, 2018.
Éditeur : Cambridge University Press
254 pages
ISBN : 9781107058347
75 £
This comprehensive reassessment of the carmina maiora of the fourth-century poet Claudian contributes to the growing trend to recognize that Late Antique poets should be approached as just that: poets. Its methodology is developed from that of Michael Roberts' seminal The Jeweled Style. It analyzes Claudian's poetics and use of story telling to argue that the creation of a story world in which Stilicho, his patron, becomes an epic hero, and the barbarians are giants threatening both the borders of Rome and the order of the very universe is designed to convince his audience of a world-view in which it is only the Roman general who stands between them and cosmic chaos. The book also argues that Claudian uses the same techniques to promote the message that Honorius, young hero though he may seem, is not yet fit to rule, and that Stilicho's rightful position remains as his regent.
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Jeudi, 28 Juin 2018 08:05
Guillaume Flamerie de Lachapelle
Ann Vasaly, Livy's Political Philosophy: Power and Personality in Early Rome, Cambridge, 2018.
Éditeur : Cambridge University Press
221 pages
ISBN : 9781107667945
18,99 £
This volume explores the political implications of the first five books of Livy's celebrated history of Rome, challenging the common perception of the author as an apolitical moralist. Ann Vasaly argues that Livy intended to convey through the narration of particular events crucial lessons about the interaction of power and personality, including the personality of the Roman people as a whole. These lessons demonstrate the means by which the Roman republic flourished in the distant past and by which it might be revived in Livy's own corrupt time. Written at the precise moment when Augustus' imperial autocracy was replacing the republican system that had existed in Rome for almost 500 years, the stories of the first pentad offer invaluable insight into how republics and monarchies work. Vasaly's innovative study furthers the integration in recent scholarship of the literary brilliance of Livy's text and the seriousness of its purpose.
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Mardi, 26 Juin 2018 08:05
Anna Maria Wasyl
Anna Maria Wasyl, Alcestis barcelońska oraz centon Alcesta. Późnoantyczne spojrzenie na mit i gatunek, Kraków (Cracovie), 2018.
Éditeur : Wydawnictwo UJ /Jagiellonian University Press
256 pages
ISBN : 978-83-233-4385-1
39.90 PLN
The Barcelona Alcestis and the cento Alcesta can be considered – with no exaggeration at all – two very important examples of the exploitation of the Alcestis myth in Latin literature. In addition – if we take into account the period when they were composed – they both show how the Alcestis myth was read in late antiquity, in a period already marked by the influence of the Christian culture, even though – and this is no less intriguing – none of them offers us a strictly Christian reinterpretation of the story of Alcestis and Admetus. […]
The two minor poems on Alcestis exemplify remarkably well the features that might be considered typical of late antique poetics and literary aesthetics, with their compositional idiosyncrasies, rich intertextual texture, playfulness, finesse, learnedness, and an additional quality, often described in literary studies as ‘poetological self-consciousness'. If we add to all that the fact that at least one of the poems in question (possibly) introduces us into the world of ancient female literature (though, as a matter of fact, because of their specific topic this is peculiar to them both), we need not find further arguments to show that they deserve more scholarly attention on our part.
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Lundi, 25 Juin 2018 08:02
Guillaume Flamerie de Lachapelle
Monica R. Gale et J. H. D. Scourfield (éd.), Texts and Violence in the Roman World, Cambridge, 2018.
Éditeur : Cambridge University Press
396 pages
ISBN : 9781107027145
90 £
From the bites and scratches of lovers and the threat of flogging that hangs over the comic slave, to murder, rape, dismemberment, and crucifixion, violence is everywhere in Latin literature. The contributors to this volume explore the manifold ways in which violence is constructed and represented in Latin poetry and prose from Plautus to Prudentius, examining the interrelations between violence, language, power, and gender, and the narrative, rhetorical, and ideological functions of such depictions across the generic spectrum. How does violence contribute to the pleasure of the text? Do depictions of violence always reinforce status-hierarchies, or can they provoke a reassessment of normative value-systems? Is the reader necessarily complicit with authorial constructions of violence? These are pressing questions both for ancient literature and for film and other modern media, and this volume will be of interest to scholars and students of cultural studies as well as of the ancient world.
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