Reconstructing the Roman republic
Subtitle: an ancient political culture and modern research
By: Karl-J. Hölkeskamp ; translated by Henry Heitmann-Gordon ; revised, updated, and augmented by the author
Contributors: Heitmann-Gordon, Henry
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Princeton, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 189
ISBN-13: 9780691140384
Work titles: Rekonstruktionen einer Republik
Description: In recent decades, scholars have argued that the Roman Republic's political culture was essentially democratic in nature, stressing the central role of the "sovereign" people and their assemblies. The author challenges this view in this book, warning that this scholarly trend threatens to become the new orthodoxy, and defending the position that the republic was in fact a uniquely Roman, dominantly oligarchic and aristocratic political form. He offers a survey of the modern debate surrounding the Roman Republic. He looks at the ongoing controversy first triggered in the 1980s when the "oligarchic orthodoxy" was called into question by the idea that the republic's political culture was a form of Greek-style democracy, and he considers the important theoretical and methodological advances of the 1960s and 1970s that prepared the ground for this debate. He renews and refines the "elitist" view, showing how the republic was a unique kind of premodern city-state political culture shaped by a specific variant of a political class. He covers a host of fascinating topics, including the Roman value system; the senatorial aristocracy; competition in war and politics within this aristocracy; and the symbolic language of public rituals and ceremonies, monuments, architecture, and urban topography.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Table of contents: title: From 'provocation' to 'discussion' : a plea for continuation; title: 'Reality' versus 'system' : conventional conceptualizations of a 'constitution'; title: From 'system' to 'structure' : new questions about the social framework of politics; title: From 'structures' to 'concepts' : problems of (self-)conceptualization of an alien society; title: From 'concepts' to 'political culture' : the benefits of theory; title: Between 'aristocracy' and 'democracy' : beyond a dated dichotomy; title: Consensus and consent : necessary requirements of a competitive culture; title: Symbolic capital as social credit : locating the core of the consensus; title: An end of the beginning : a new ancient history and its topicality.