Civil wars, more than other wars, sear themselves into the memory of societies that suffer them. This is particularly true at Rome, where in a period of 150 years the Romans fought four epochal wars against themselves. The present volume brings together exciting new perspectives on the subject by an international group of distinguished contributors. The basis of the investigation is broad, encompassing literary texts, documentary texts, and material culture, spanning the Greek and Roman worlds. Attention is devoted not only to Rome's four major conflicts from the period between the 80s BC and AD 69, but the frame extends to engage conflicts both previous and much later, as well as post-classical constructions of the theme of civil war at Rome. Divided into four sections, the first ("Beginnings, Endings") addresses the basic questions of when civil war began in Rome and when it ended. "Cycles" is concerned with civil war as a recurrent phenomenon without end. "Aftermath" focuses on attempts to put civil war in the past, or, conversely, to claim the legacy of past civil wars, for better or worse. Finally, the section "Afterlife" provides views of Rome's civil wars from more distant perspectives, from those found in Augustan lyric and elegy to those in much later post-classical literary responses. As a whole, the collection sheds new light on the ways in which the Roman civil wars were perceived, experienced, and represented across a variety of media and historical periods.

Autorentext

Brian Breed is Associate Professor of Classics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Cynthia Damon is Professor of Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania. Andreola Rossi has taught at various institutions, including Princeton University, Harvard University, and Amherst College.

Inhalt

Preface About the contributors List of figures Introduction I. Beginnings, Endings 1. The Two-Headed State: How Romans Explained Civil War, T. P. Wiseman 2. Word at War: The Prequel, William W. Batstone 3. Rome's First Civil War and the Fragility of Republican Political Culture, Harriet I. Flower 4. Civil War? What Civil War? Usurpers in the Historia Augusta, Cam Grey II. Cycles 5. "Learning from that Violent Schoolmaster": Thucydidean Intertextuality and Some Greek Views of Roman Civil War, Christopher Pelling 6. Tarda moles civilis belli: The Weight of the Past in Tacitus' Histories, Rhiannon Ash 7. Aeacidae Pyrrhi: Patterns of Myth and History in Aeneid 1-6, David Quint 8. Ab urbe condita: Roman History on the Shield of Aeneas, Andreola Rossi III. Aftermath 9. Creating a Grand Coalition of True Roman Citizens: On Caesar's Political Strategy in the Civil War, Kurt A. Raaflaub 10. Spurius Maelius: Dictatorship and the Homo Sacer, Mich?le Lowrie 11. Representations and Re-Presentations of the Battle of Actium, Barbara Kellum 12. Discordia Fratrum: Aspects of Lucan's Conception of Civil War, Elaine Fantham IV. Afterlife 13. "Dionysiac Poetics" and the Memory of Civil War in Horace's Cleopatra Ode, Andrew Feldherr 14. Propertius on Not Writing about Civil Wars, Brian W. Breed 15. "Caesar Grabs my Pen": Writing Civil War Under Tiberius, Alain M. Gowing 16. Intestinum scelus: Preemptive Execution in Tacitus' Annals, Cynthia Damon 17. Doing the Numbers: The Roman Mathematics of Civil War in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Denis Feeney 18. "My Brother got Killed in the War": Internecine intertextuality, Richard Thomas 19. Bibliography