[Flyer] Conference: Performing Civil War: The Ritual Order of Disintegration; 6–8 October 2011; Schloss Reisensburg, Ulm (original) (raw)
Related papers
Abstract: The Romans were not afraid of talking about civil war and regularly did so, even if they did not always spell it out in explicit terms. Civil war had a great impact upon society and involved numerous levels of justification—chiefly, in the case of Rome, through the erection of victory monuments as conspicuous civil war markers in the city of Rome itself. Erected by the victor, these often displayed a positive and sanitised version of civil war which highlighted not the horrors of war but rather its successful termination, so creating a positive exemplum out of the conflict. Nevertheless, regardless of these efforts to sanitise the language and thus shaping the memory of a civil war, its story could not be retold without people remembering its terrors. Such monuments served to keep the memory of civil war alive and testify to the long-term impact of conflict. In addition, the long list of civil war monuments that we know of testifies to an ongoing debate about warfare at Rome. Unlike our modern counterparts—for example scholars of the American Civil War, who have no need to repeatedly reconstruct the context of their civil war monuments—we as ancient historians need to establish the civil war context of these ancient memorials first and foremost.
Politics and Religion in the Greco-Roman World, ELECTRUM vol. XXI, ed. E. Dąbrowa, Kraków, 2014
The success of Roman expansion in the Republican period and the durability of the empire, which survived the fall of the Republic and continued to function for the next few hundred years under the rule of emperors, drew the attention of both scholars and rulers in subsequent eras. The Imperium Romanum became a model for other states that attempted to build their own empires in later times. What draws our attention in discussions on Roman imperialism is mainly one, so far unresolved, dilemma: was Roman expansion a result of material and psychological benefits that individual social groups enjoyed as a result of the aggressive policy, or a product of the Roman society’s atavistic tendencies for using violence. Resolving this dilemma seems to be very difficult. If we also consider other elements that cause aggression, such as fright, fear (metus Gallicus, Punicus, Etruscus etc.) of something or someone and a desire to win fame or glory over an enemy, then solving the problem seems impossible indeed. Finding the right answer is not made any easier by the historical sources. On the one hand, they are very biased, as they hide the actual reasons under a thick layer of propaganda and apologetic slogans; so thick, in fact, that in many cases the Romans’ true motives seem incomprehensible. The majority of available accounts present the Romans as the defenders of the weak and the allies. This is a result of a strong propaganda rhetoric used by the Romans in order to justify themselves in the eyes of the contemporary and the posterity alike. We should also note one more element that could have had an influence on the development of an imperial mentality in Rome, i.e. the broadly defined civilisation and cultural milieu in which Rome was born – Italy. The cursory comparison of various Roman war rites with the rituals of other inhabitants of Italy indicates that war was very much a part of the mentality of Italic communities. The presence of war rites in Italic tribes indicates that in Italy, war was an important element of existence. Rome was an integral part of this world, which meant that the presence of a strong military component and aggressiveness in the life of the Roman community was natural.
This article examines how the victors in late Republican Rome expressed and celebrated military success in civil war. It is argued that the Senate and the victorious generals turned to the traditional triumph as a means to embrace civil war victories within an accepted frame of external conquest. It is further argued that the triumphal procession, in its capacity as a well-established spectacle performed as a role-playing between Roman victors and foreign losers, proved an inadequate means to give voice to Romans conquering other Romans. Novel forms of expressions were hence exploited: the memorial and the calendar. The memorial was alien to the Roman culture and did not succeed in winning acclaim. The calendar proved a more effective means. Both Caesar and Octavian were able to use the fasti anni as a medium to articulate their success in civil war, commemorating even their victories at Pharsalus and Philippi.
Maxentius' Head and the Rituals of Civil War (2015)
This paper investigates the immense rhetorical and symbolic power of decapitation, from Sulla’s proscriptions through the dismemberment of Cicero to the treatment of Maxentius’ head after his death in 312. In particular, it investigates a range of late-antique cases of civil war violence to understand their broader social significance and how they reflect contemporary bodily discourses, notably focusing on the head as the most noble and identifiable part of the body as well as its importance for contemporary conceptions of the afterlife. Decapitation has a series of implications in terms of political and social spectacle that empower its efficacy in the staging of violence, not least in the context of civil war. It thus raises questions such as: what role did violence inflicted on the human body play in internal political conflict in the late-antique world? What was at stake in the treatment of human bodies in civil war violence? And how did contemporary audiences perceive this violence?
This paper investigates the impact of civil war on triumphal rulership for the period from Constantine’s triumph over Maxentius in 312 to Honorius’ triumph over Priscus Attalus in 416. These victory performances mark the starting and ending points of a series of triumphs in the city of Rome that deliberately included dramatic representations of martial achievements in civil war. I argue that the need to celebrate a civil-war victory with performances, monuments, and narratives that were formerly restricted to external victories (e.g., a triumphal procession, a triumphal arch, a battle frieze, etc.) resulted, on the one hand, from significant structural changes of the Roman monarchy in the third and fourth centuries and, on the other, from the fierce rivalry between emperors in the period of late Tetrarchic collegial rule, a situation in which a massive display of the emperor’s military achievements was an important prerequisite for the formation of loyalty and obedience within the imperial apparatus.
War as Spectacle. Ancient and Modern Perspectives on the Display of Armed Conflict
2015
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors 1 Introduction: War as Spectacle, a Multi-sensory Event Worth Watching? Anastasia Bakogianni Part 1 Ancient and Modern Literary Spectacles of War A. Epic Spectacles 2 'What if We Had a War and Everybody Came?': War as Spectacle and the Duel of Iliad 3 (Tobias Myers, Connecticut College, USA) 3 From Our Own Correspondent: Authorial Commentary on the 'Spectacles of War' in Homer and in the Tale of the Heike (Naoko Yamagata, The Open University, UK) 4 'The Clash of Weapons and the Sight of War': Spectatorship and Identification in Roman Epic (Neil W. Bernstein, Ohio University, USA) 5 Death on the Margins: Statius and the Spectacle of the Dying Epic Hero (Helen Lovatt, University of Nottingham, UK) B. Poetical, Historiographical and Philosophical Spectacles 6 Lyric Visions of Epic Combat: The Spectacle of War in Archaic Personal Song (Laura Swift, The Open University, UK) 7 'The Greatest Runway Show in History': Paul Violi's 'House of Xerxes' and the Herodotean Spectacle of War (Emma Bridges, The Open University, UK) 8 Plato's Cinematic Vision: War as Spectacle in Four Dialogues (Laches, Republic, Timaeus and Critias) (Andrea Capra, Universita degli Studi di Milano, Italy) 9 Shadow-Boxing in the East: The Spectacle of Romano-Parthian Conflict in Tacitus (Rhiannon Ash, University of Oxford, UK) 10 Bodies on the Battlefield: The Spectacle of Rome's Fallen Soldiers (Valerie M. Hope, The Open University, UK) Part 2 Spectacles of War in Material Culture 11 The Monument and Altar to Liberty: A Memory Site for the United States' Own Thermopylae (Jared A. Simard, CUNY, USA) 12 Triumphal Washington: New York City's First 'Roman' Arch (Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis, CUNY, USA) 13 An Unwinding Story: The Influence of Trajan's Column on the Depiction of Warfare (Andrew Fear, University of Manchester, UK) Part 3 Spectacles of War on Stage and in Modern Media 14 Epic Parodies: Martial Extravaganzas on the Nineteenth-Century Stage (Justine Mc Connell, University of Oxford, UK) 15 Parading War and Victory under the Greek Military Dictatorship: The Hist(o)rionics of 1967-74 (Gonda Van Steen, University of Florida, USA) 16 The Anti-War Spectacle: Denouncing War in Michael Cacoyannis' Euripidean Trilogy (Anastasia Bakogianni, The Open University, UK) 17 Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line and Homeric Epic: Spectacle, Simile, Scene and Situation (Jon Hesk, University of St Andrews, UK) 18 Animating Ancient Warfare: The Spectacle of War in the Panoply Vase Animations (Sonya Nevin, University of Roehampton, UK) Notes Bibliography Index