‘Education and Literacy’, ‘Prose Writing’, ‘Rhetoric’ in Matthew Nicholls (ed.), 30-Second Rome (Ivy Press 2014). (original) (raw)

Free PDF

Foreword to Literary language and its public in late Latin antiquity and the Middle Ages

Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, 1993

In this, his final book, Erich Auerbach writes, "My purpose is always to write history." Tracing the transformations of classical Latin rhetoric from late antiquity to the modern era, he explores major concerns raised in his Mimesis: the historical and social contexts in which writings were received, and issues of aesthetics, semantics, stylistics, and sociology that anticipate the concerns of the new historicism.

Free PDF

Ago and aio or "how to make law with words". Observations on ritualized law-making in republican Roman law by means of a spoken word.

Vol. 6 No. 1 (2022): University of Vienna Law Review, 2022

This paper analyses the legal figure agere in the Republican period of Roman law. By means of etymological reconstructions of the verb agere based on literary sources from the Republican period, it will be shown that agere in a legal context means above all a unilateral highly formalised orally performed speech act. By performing this unilateral oral performative speech act (agere), private legal subjects can formalise and (re)create their individual legal status predominantly without the intervention of the Roman state. This "creative role" of agere will be shown in particular on the basis of the oldest rituals from the Twelve Tables - lege agere per sacramentum in rem, lege agere per manus iniectionem, lege agere per pignoris capionem. To paraphrase the famous title of J.L. Austin's work "How to do things with words", here we can say that the reconstruction of agere helps us to understand 'how to make law with words'.

Free PDF

Roman Law and Latin Literature

Oxford Handbook of Roman Law and Society, edited by Clifford Ando, Paul Du Plessis, and Kaius Tuori. Oxford: 70-82, 2016

This is a position paper outlining a variety of different ways law and literature interact in Roman culture, ranging from homology, to contestation, to intimate discomfort. Both use stories to get things done, both serve as vehicles for norms, and fiction cannot be used as a criterion to disambiguate between these discursive media. Nevertheless the Romans were acutely aware of the differences between them.

Free PDF

‘Education and Literacy’, ‘Prose Writing’, ‘Rhetoric’ in Matthew Nicholls (ed.), 30-Second Rome (Ivy Press 2014). (original) (raw)

Free related PDFsRelated papers