The Roman Republic (original) (raw)
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2019
… but apart from that-the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health-what have the Romans ever done for us? Monty Python Life of Brian Students of International Relations (IR) have paid little attention to the Roman Empire. They have tended to think of Rome as ancient history and of empires as scarcely relevant for interstate relations. Yet, a walk around the capital cities of the West suggests otherwise: Colonnades, triumphal archs and imperial eagles in London, Paris, Berlin, Washington indicate that the Great Powers have been deeply affected by the example of Rome. It's symbols, at least, are alive and well-those of the Republic as well as those of Empire. This chapter will linger a bit on the concepts of Republic and Empire. Both terms are still in common use. But they are often bandied about with little regard for their origins and their substance. Let it be clear at once: both terms are of Roman origins. 'Republic' refers to a mixed form of government. 'Empire' is derived from the Latin verb imperare which refers to the right of command; most particularly military command. This right was explicitly given to Augustus around 30 BC for having introduced order and peace to Rome after a series of civil wars. Thus, he could call himself 'emperor' and refer to his realm as an 'empire'. This right to command is ancient. It is much older than Augusts. And this simple fact provides the vantage point for this chapter: the bulk of the Roman Empire was conquered militarily long before Augustan times. Most of the imperial expansion, in other words, took place under the Republic. In fact, once the Empire was formally declared, expansion slowed significantly down. It more or less ground to a halt after the death of Emperor Trajan in AD 117. This chapter, then, eschews the standard historical narrative of Rome's evolution from Republic to Empire. It begins with the premise that Rome was (almost) always an empire, but not always a Republic. It argues that the importance of Rome-the Republic as well as the Empire-is greater that routinely assumed by IR-scholars, because the Great Powers of the West evolved their systems of administration and governance in the shadow of Rome's example. And since European states are built around systems of Roman law and administration, the study of Rome ought to given more attention
2019
In conversation with Terrenato's notion of Rome as a 'deceptive archetype', in this paper I enquire to what extent we can understand Rome as a flexible archetype in early colonial contexts. Previous frameworks for understanding Roman imperialism, often based on the classical literary tradition filtered through early modern political science, are now rapidly being reconsidered in the light of a wealth of new archaeological data and critical historiographic enquiry. It is not necessary to reiterate the vehement deconstruction of Rome as a sociopolitical and cultural role model or "archetype" in detail here, although I raise a few cautionary considerations in this regard. Rather, I shift attention to the question of how we should assess the impact of the newly emerging information on our overall understanding of the character of Roman society and imperialism in the Republican period. Should we interpret the recent critiques as support for a ''primitivist" view of expansive Republican Rome: a Rome that is much less thought out, farsighted, imperialist, and hegemonic, closer to archaic than imperial period Roman society? Or can further historiographical rethinking instead reveal a different logic?
THE FUTURE OF ROME - Introduction to Volume
4. J.J. Price and K. Berthelot, eds., The Future of Rome: Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian Visions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, 2020
How was the future of Rome, both near and distant in time, imagined by different populations living in the Roman Empire? It emerges from this collection of essays by a distinguished international team of scholars that Romans, Greeks, Jews and Christians had strikingly different answers to that question, revealing profound differences in their conceptions of history and historical time, the purpose of history and the meaning of written words and oral traditions. It is also argued that practically no one living under Rome's rule, including the Romans themselves, did not think about the question in one form or another.
54. “Structural Weaknesses in Rome’s Power? Historians’ Views on Roman Stasis”
K. Berthelot, ed., Reconsidering Roman Power: Roman, Greek, Jewish and Christian Perceptions and Reactions, l’École Française de Rome 2020, 255-67. , 2020
Rome's Empire prompted historians to think universally. From the Second Punic War, the history of the oikoumenē was for Greek and Latin historians a history of Rome's empire. Polybius said this first. In the Preface to his innovative and ambitious History, he explained that «previously the doings of the world had been, so to say, dispersed, as they were held together by no unity of initiative, results or locality; but ever since this date [of the second war between Rome and Carthage] history has been an organic whole». 2 Polybius claims not only that world history had entered a new, unprecedented age, in which everything is connected, but that his account of it will perforce be a unique (idion) way of writing history. Many others followed, their names familiar even if their texts have not survived: Posidonius, Pompeius Trogus, Nicolaus of Damascus; the remains of Diodorus Siculus' compilation are illuminating about the genre. These writers often-logically-began their histories long before the rise of Rome to emphasize not only the theme of unifying conquest but also the pattern of rise and fall, the fate of empires. 3 Even histories solely of Rome from its foundation, and even accounts solely of early Rome before its empire, could have a kind of universalizing purpose, to explain the