A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic. Группа авторов

enjoyed great success already during the Republic (see, for example, Cicero’s de re publica, on which most recently Schofield 2021) and during the Empire (Carsana 1990). Placing emphasis on the power of oratory, Dionysius of Halicarnassus also privileges the formal structures of this political culture, which were the focus of the Greek tradition of political and rhetorical theory to which he was indebted (Chapter 11, Gallia). Appian and, especially, Cassius Dio pay particular attention to institutions of the Republic and often refer to dynasteia and its cognates to denote personal power, as that held by Sulla, Caesar or the triumvirs (Chapter 13, Rich). The outcome of this approach is that, following ancient interpreters, modern scholars have placed considerable emphasis on institutional changes and attributed the transformation of the Republic to exceptional measures, such as, for example, the potestates extraordinariae, the granting of exceptional powers to an individual. Most interestingly, some scholars have recently argued that, out of the crisis of the late Roman Republic, the Romans were the first to invent constitutionalism (Straumann 2016; see also Part III).

      In contrast, the works by Sallust, on the one hand (Chapter 10, Rosenblitt) and by Livy, on the other, focus on ‘the informal and culturally normative aspects of Roman political behaviour’ (Chapter 11, p. 155, Gallia), which highlight the features of Roman political culture and the wider political dynamics that could not be easily constrained within the legal framework of a mixed constitution. By resorting to the use of exempla, which mediate between the particulars of a specific context and universal moral rules (Langlands 2018; Roller 2018), Livy focused on both the individual and the moral, but not on strictly constitutional concerns and their historical changes. In this context, the role of the individual assumes a certain pre-eminence as the historical agent responsible for political change and it is his relationship with the wider socioeconomic and political dynamics that, as Rosenblitt shows (Chapter 10), had indeed preoccupied Sallust throughout his works. In Plutarch’s biographies (Chapter 12, M. Beck), the qualities of the individual are the predominant factor that determines the political success or failure of the commonwealth. These qualities, in Plutarch’s opinion, are informed by an ethical underpinning, acquired through a philosophical training; that philosophical training to which Cicero resorted in order to transcend and reform, in Nicgorski’s view (Chapter 9), his contemporary political culture (on the role of philosophy in Roman political culture, see Introduction to Part V).

By assigning direct speeches to many of their protagonists, some of these authors, such as, for example, Sallust, Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus or Appian, bring to light the role of political ideas and, more widely, ideology in the political culture of the Republic (Introduction to Part V and Chapter 28, Morstein-Marx). Informed by Greek rhetoric and philosophy, these speeches were literary compositions that responded to the expectations of the author and of the author’s audience and readership (on the oral dimension of these Greek and Latin works, Wiseman 2015). Together with the speeches delivered in the Senate and in contiones and published by the orators themselves (Chapter 32, Steel), these speeches add an important dimension to the political culture of the Roman Republic (see Introduction to Part V and Chapter 1, Hölkeskamp).

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      REFERENCES

      1 Adams, J. 2003. Bilingualism and the Latin Language. Cambridge.

      2 Arena, V. 2020. ‘The Notion of Bellum Civile in the Last Century of the Republic.’ In Pina Polo, F. ed. The Triumviral Period: Civil War, Political Crisis, and Socio-Economic Transformation. Zaragoza, 101–126.

      3 Breed, B.W., Damon, C., and Rossi, A. 2000. Citizens of Discord: Rome and Its Civil Wars. Oxford; New York.

      4 Carsana, C. 1990. La teoria della “costituzione mista” nell’età imperiale romana. Como.

      5 Champion, C.B. 2004. Roman Imperialism: Readings and Sources. Oxford.

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      7 Nippel, W. 1980. Mischverfassungstheorie und Verfassungsrealität in antike und früher Neuzeit. Stuttgart.

      8 Rochette, B. 2010. ‘Greek and Latin Bilingualism.’ In Bakker, E.J., ed. A Companion to the Greek Language. Malden, MA; Oxford, 281–293.

      9 Roller, M.B. 2018. Models from the Past in Roman Culture. A World of Exemplar. Cambridge.

      10 Schofield, M. 2021. Cicero. Oxford.

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      12 Wiseman, T.P. 2015. The Roman Audience: Classical Literature as Social History. Oxford.

      13 Woodman, A.J. 1988. Rhetoric in Classical Historiography: Four Studies. London.