The modern age is not the only one in which Romans and visitors to Rome have been fascinated with the city's striking juxtapositions of past and present. Rome's wealth of history also captured the imagination of the ancients. Livy's Written Rome, by Mary Jaeger, shows how one writer explored the relationship between events in Roman history, the landscape in which they occurred, and the monuments that commemorated them. While Augustus reconstructed the physical city to reflect the ideology of the Empire, the historian Livy created a written Rome and taught his readers to look beyond the city's dramatically altered landscape. In so doing, they gained insight into the lessons of the lost Republic. Drawing upon modern discourse on the connection between private mental spaces and public civic spaces, this first in-depth study of Livy's use of the urban landscape offers discerning views on his interpretation of ancient theories of historiography. Livy's Written Rome discusses the Roman idea of the monument as a place where memory and space intersect and includes fresh readings of several historical episodes, including the battle over the Sabine Women, the sedition of Marcus Manlius, and the trials of the Scipios. Scholars have long criticized Livy as a historian because his work is not in accord with modern historiographical standards. Yet even his critics agree that Livy is a masterful literary artist, and recent work on Livy has argued for the complexity and originality of his thought. Across the humanities, recent scholarship has focused on the role of memory in civic consciousness and identity. This book explores the ways in which Livy's texts question traditional assumptions about the preservation and use of the past. In doing so, it identifies a new and important facet of Livy's representation of urban Rome. Livy's Written Rome will be of interest to classicists and historians, students of ancient historiography and classical rhetoric, as well as general readers interested in memory, monuments, and historical narrative. Mary Jaeger is Professor of Classics, University of Oregon.

A study of the construction of new temples in the Roman Republic, a process which illuminates key features of both their political and religious systems. It offers an analysis of the relationship between the individual and the community, both human and divine, and their responsibilities toward one another. The book examines in detail each of the three main stages in the construction of a new temple: the vow, the placing of a contract, and the dedication. Special attention is paid to the ability of a Roman magistrate to enter into building obligations on behalf of the state, and the role of the general's share of the spoils of war, his manubiae. In contrast to previous studies, this work emphasizes the significant role played by the Roman Senate, and thus offers a new interpretation of the symbolic meaning of this process. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

The construction of a new temple in the Roman Republic was an event that illuminated key features of their political and religious systems. Building a temple was for instance a way for a victorious general to proclaim his glory and for a magistrate to higlight his prestige, but it was also a public service. This book explores this relationship between the individual and the community and analyses the formal process by which a temple came to construction; the vow, the placing of a contract and the dedication, as well as the importance of the Sibylline books, use of war booty and the role played by the senate, which Orlin argues is more significant than previously thought.

This volume demonstrates the development of Roman military bureaucracy during the Middle Republic, expanding on recent research to examine these administrative systems that made possible Rome’s expansion in this period. Bringing together literary works, epigraphy, archaeology, topography and demography, the study reveals a complex and well-structured bureaucratic system developing in parallel with the army during the Middle Republic, propelled in no small part by the stresses of the Hannibalic War. Not only the contents of documents, but the physical objects, individuals and spaces are discussed to re-create the administrative processes in maximum detail. Exploring the Mid-Republican Origins of Roman Military Administration provides an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Rome’s military and administrative history, as well as anyone working on the Republican period.

This book examines the development of Roman temple architecture from its earliest history in the sixth century BC to the reigns of Hadrian and the Antonines in the second century AD. John Stamper analyzes the temples' formal qualities, the public spaces in which they were located and, most importantly, the authority of precedent in their designs. He also traces Rome's temple architecture as it evolved over time and how it accommodated changing political and religious contexts, as well as the affects of new stylistic influences.

In this collection of essays, an international team of outstanding scholars engage with the ideas and methods of Professor Peter Wiseman's past and present work. They provide a sustained response to the work of one of the most widely respected Roman historians of this generation. The contributions range over myth (Corialanus and Remus), the interplay between historiography, literature and myth-making (on Cleopatra, for instance), and art and story-telling at Boscoreale. They explore Roman drama (Pacuvius) and links between drama and Virgil's Aeneid; they discuss Catullus in Bithynia and Cicero on Greek and Roman culture. Professor Wiseman has been at the forefront of innovative research in Roman history, historiography, literature in context, drama and myth, for many years. His work is marked by the combination of a powerful historical imagination with an acute sense of the limitations of our knowledge and of the need to negotiate with the complexity of our sources.