Coins of the best-known Roman revolutionary era allow rival pretenders to speak to us directly. After the deaths of Caesar and Cicero (in 44 and 43 BC) hardly one word has been reliably transmitted to us from even the two most powerful opponents of Octavian: Mark Antony and Sextus Pompeius - except through coinage and the occasional inscription. The coins are an antidote to a widespread fault in modern approaches: the idea, from hindsight, that the Roman Republic was doomed, that the rise of Octavian-Augustus to monarchy was inevitable, and that contemporaries might have sensed as much. Ancient works in other genres skilfully encouraged such hindsight. Augustus in the Res Gestae, and Virgil in Georgics and Aeneid, sought to flatten the history of the period, and largely to efface Octavian's defeated rivals. But the latter's coins in precious metal were not easily recovered and suppressed by Authority. They remain for scholars to revalue. In our own age, when public untruthfulness about history is increasingly accepted - or challenged, we may value anew the discipline of searching for other, ancient, voices which ruling discourse has not quite managed to silence. In this book eleven new essays explore the coinage of Rome's competing dynasts. Julius Caesar's coins, and those of his `son' Octavian-Augustus, are studied. But similar and respectful attention is given to the issues of their opponents: Cato the Younger and Q. Metellus Scipio, Mark Antony and Sextus Pompeius, Q. Cornificius and others. A shared aim is to understand mentalities, the forecasts current, in an age of rare insecurity as the superpower of the Mediterranean faced, and slowly recovered from, division and ruin.

A richly illustrated introduction to the contribution of Roman and provincial coinage to the history of this period, aimed at undergraduates.

Offering new and original approaches to the Roman civil wars of 49-30 BCE, the eleven papers presented here for the first time shed light on this crucial moment in the forging of Roman identity. They engage with a variety of problems and topics in political discourse (diplomacy, the concept of libertas, divine paternity); socio-economic structures (allied rulers, military officials, civil war finances, Agrippa's family); material culture (the coinage of Julius Caesar, the physical remains of Corfinium); and literary commemoration (Sallust on trauma, the lost Histories of Asinius Pollio). The case studies presented here contribute to our understanding of a period that is just as fundamental for our view of the Romans as it was to the Romans themselves. Arguing for the unity of the period in question, the volume deploys a multiplicity of methodologies to analyse how the trauma of armed conflict and the breakdown of accepted socio-cultural models not only mediated the contemporary experience of Roman civil war, but also left a lasting impression upon how Romans viewed the world. Incisive and critical, these contributions by a diverse team of international researchers, both emerging scholars and leaders in their fields, offer a new window into the world of the late Republic and early Principate.

Rome was an empire of images, especially images that bolstered their imperial identity. Visual and material items portraying battles, myths, captives, trophies, and triumphal parades were particularly important across the Roman empire. But where did these images originate and what shaped them? Empire of Images explores the development of the Roman visual language of power in the Republic in Iberian Peninsula, the Gallic provinces, and Greece and Macedonia, centering the development of imperial imagery in overseas conquest. Drawing on a range of material evidence, this book argues that Roman imperial imagery developed through prolonged interaction with and adaptation by subjugated peoples. Despite their starring role in Roman imagery, the populations of Rome’s provinces continuously reinterpreted and reimagined Roman images of power to navigate their membership in the new imperial community, and in doing so, contributed to the creation of a universal visual language that continues to shape how Rome is understood.

Nothing from the subsequent Augustan age can be fully explained without understanding the previous Triumviral period (43-31 BC). In this book, twenty experts from nine different countries and nineteen universities examine the Triumviral age not merely as a phase of transition to the Principate but as a proper period with its own dynamics and issues, which were a consequence of the previous years. The volume aims to address a series of underlying structural problems that emerged in that time, such as the legal nature of power attributed to the Triumvirs; changes and continuity in Republican institutions, both in Rome and the provinces of the Empire; the development of the very concept of civil war; the strategies of political communication and propaganda in order to win over public opinion; economic consequences for Rome and Italy, whether caused by the damage from constant wars or, alternatively, resulting from the proscriptions and confiscations carried out by the Triumvirs; and the transformation of Roman-Italian society. All these studies provide a complete, fresh and innovative picture of a key period that signaled the end of the Roman Republic.

What ambitions lay behind Roman provincial governance? How did these change over time and in response to local conditions? To what extent did local agents facilitate and contribute to the creation of imperial administrative institutions? The answers to these questions shape our understanding of how the Roman empire established and maintained hegemony within its provinces. This issue of imperial hegemony is particularly acute for the period during which the political apparatus of the Roman Republic was itself in crisis and flux--precisely the period during which many provinces first came under Roman control. Imperial Power, Provincial Government, and the Emergence of Roman Asia, 133 BCE-14 CE uses a case study of the province of Asia to focus closely on the formation and evolution of the Roman empire's administrative institutions. Comparatively well-excavated, Asia's rich epigraphy lends itself to this detailed study, while the region's long history of autonomous civic diplomacy and engagement with a range of Roman actors provide vital evidence for assessing the ways in which Roman empire and hegemony affected conditions on the ground in the province. Asia's unique history, moving from allied kingdom to regularly assigned provincia to a reconquered and reorganized territory, offers an insight into the complex workings of institutional formation. From an investigation of the institutions which emerged in the province over a long first century (133 BCE-14 CE), Bradley Jordan considers the discursive power of official utterances of the Roman state, and the strategies employed by local actors to negotiate a favourable relationship with the empire.

This unique full-length English biography of Varus reassesses how he has been held responsible for one of the most infamous and humiliating defeats in Roman history. Publius Quinctilius Varus is famous as the incompetent commander duped into an ambush that wiped out three legions in one of the most humiliating defeats in Roman history. Yet this is the first full length biography of the man. Dr Joanne Ball revisits the ancient sources alongside the most recent archaeological evidence from the Teutoburg battlefield in Germany, where she has been personally involved in excavations. The result is a fresh, detailed new analysis of this significant battle and a reappraisal of the Roman commander. Examination of his earlier career reveals that Varus, who had married into the Imperial family, was an experienced and competent, if harsh and ruthless, governor and general. He had served in Africa and put down rebellions in Syria and Judaea before being posted to Germany. Dr Ball sets his German command in the context of wider events, explaining the weakness of the Roman position there and the necessary reliance on auxiliary forces. Although Varus was clearly fooled by Arminius, the former Roman auxiliary who masterminded the Teutoburg battle in AD 9, she questions the extent of Varus’ culpability and asks whether he was scapegoated by Roman historians to deflect blame away from the Emperor.