The Roman writer Cornelius Nepos was a friend of Cicero and Catullus and other first-century BCE authors, and portions of his encyclopedic work On Famous Men are the earliest surviving biographies written in Latin. In The Political Biographies of Cornelius Nepos, Rex Stem presents Nepos as a valuable witness to the late Republican era, whose biographies share the exemplary republican political perspective of his contemporaries Cicero and Livy. Stem argues that Nepos creat...

The Roman Revolution is a profound and unconventional treatment of a great theme - the fall of the Republic and the decline of freedom in Rome between 60 BC and AD 14, and the rise to power of the greatest of the Roman Emperors, Augustus. The transformation of state and society, the violent transference of power and property, and the establishment of Augustus' rule are presented in an unconventional narrative, which quotes from ancient evidence, refers seldomly to modern authoriti...

The Migration Age is still envisioned as an onrush of expansionary "Germans" pouring unwanted into the Roman Empire and subjecting it to pressures so great that its western parts collapsed under the weight. Further developing the themes set forth in his classic Barbarians and Romans, Walter Goffart dismantles this grand narrative, shaking the barbarians of late antiquity out of this "Germanic" setting and reimagining the role of foreigners in the Later Roman Empire.The Emp...

A knowledge of the chief geographic features of Spain and its position with reference to other parts of the Mediterranean World is essential to an understanding of its history, particularly the history of the Roman conquest. Separated from Italy by a broad expanse of sea and by untamed Gallic tribes, the Iberian peninsula was difficult of access to the Romans. It was much more closely joined by nature to Africa than to Europe, and the larger rivers, with the single exception of the Ebro, a...

Cicero was one of classical antiquity's most prolific, varied and self-revealing authors. His letters, speeches, treatises and poetry chart a political career marked by personal struggle and failure and the collapse of the republican system of government to which he was intellectually and emotionally committed. They were read, studied and imitated throughout antiquity and subsequently became seminal texts in political theory and in the reception and study of the Classics. This Companion di...

Tacitus is universally recognised as ancient Rome's greatest writer of history, and his account of the Roman Empire in the first century AD has been fundamental in shaping the modern perception of Rome and its emperors. This Companion provides a new, up-to-date and authoritative assessment of his work and influence which will be invaluable for students and non-specialists as well as of interest to established scholars in the field. First situating Tacitus within the tradition of Roman hist...

Fergus Millar is one of the most influential contemporary historians of the ancient world. His essays and books, including The Emperor in the Roman World and The Roman Near East, have enriched our understanding of the Greco-Roman world in fundamental ways. In his writings Millar has made the inhabitants of the Roman Empire central to our conception of how the empire functioned. He also has shown how and why Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam evolved from within the...

Political theory professor Stuart Elden explores the history of land ownership and control from the ancient to the modern world in The Birth of Territory.Territory is one of the central political concepts of the modern world and, indeed, functions as the primary way the world is divided and controlled politically. Yet territory has not received the critical attention afforded to other crucial concepts such as sovereignty, rights, and justice. While territor...

Comprehensive and thoroughly up-to-date, this volume offers a brand new analysis of the Vestal Virgins’ ritual function in Roman religion.Undertaking a detailed and careful analysis of ancient literary sources, Wildfang argues that the Vestals’ virginity must be understood on a variety of different levels and provides a solution to the problem of the Vestals’ peculiar legal status in ancient Rome.Addressing the one official state priesthood open to women at Rome, this volum...

Fergus Millar is one of the most influential contemporary historians of the ancient world. His essays and books, above all The Emperor in the Roman World and The Roman Near East, have transformed our understanding of the communal culture and civil government of the Greco-Roman world. This second volume of the three-volume collection of Millar’s published essays draws together twenty of his classic pieces on the government, society, and culture of the Roman Empire (some of...

In the Roman republic, only the People could pass laws, only the People could elect politicians to office, and the very word republica meant 'the People's business'. So why is it always assumed that the republic was an oligarchy? The main reason is that most of what we know about it we know from Cicero, a great man and a great writer, but also an active right-wing politician who took it for granted that what was good for a small minority of self-styled 'best people' (optimates) wa...

Conspiracy theory as a theoretical framework has emerged only in the last twenty years; commentators are finding it a productive way to explain the actions and thoughts of individuals and societies. In this compelling exploration of Latin literature, Pagán uses conspiracy theory to illuminate the ways that elite Romans invoked conspiracy as they navigated the hierarchies, divisions, and inequalities in their society. By seeming to uncover conspiracy everywhere, Romans could find the need t...