Magistracy and the Historiography of the Roman Republic: Politics in Prose
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| Anteprima |
The
study of Roman republican magistracy has traditionally been the
preserve of historians posing constitutional and prosopographical
questions. As a result, one fundamental aspect of our most detailed
contemporary and near-contemporary sources about magistracy has remained
largely neglected: their literariness. This book takes a new approach
to the representation of magistrates and shows how the rhetorical and
formal features of prose texts - principally Livy's history but also
works by Cicero and Sallust - shape our understanding of magistracy.
Applying to the texts an expanded concept of exemplarity, Haimson
Lushkov shows how a rich body of anecdotes concerning the behaviour and
speech of magistrates reflects on the values and tensions that defined
the republic. A variety of contexts - familial, military, and electoral,
among others - flesh out the experience of being, becoming, and
encountering a Roman magistrate, and the political and ethical problems
highlighted and negotiated in such circumstances.
