Summary As opposed to the traditional view of the prodigium as a part of a divination that augurs divine wrath, in this article we regard episodes of prodigies as ancient societies’ expression of their connection with their gods. Prodigious episodes are the evidence of divine presence or absence within a community.

While scholarship on Livy’s political thought has concentrated on the 1st decade, this article takes up the 3rd decade to argue that Livy makes the case for Republican Rome at the time of the 2nd Punic War as the best form of government. The excellence of Republican Rome is seen in its superiority to the imaginary cities of Greek political theory, and in its mixed constitution, which provides remedies for the pitfalls of the simple forms of (...) democracy and aristocracy. Livy makes the latter case through allusions to Thucydides, whose implications I draw forth to show that Livy is contrasting Republican Rome with Athens and Sparta, and comparing Scipio Africanus with Alcibiades. Livy’s claim that wisdom is to be found in the study of the past, and his preference for the concrete as a means of investigating politics, suggest that his history is a form of political philosophy. (shrink)

En tant que mineures juridiques, les femmes romaines sont normalement exclues des privilèges politiques tel que le droit de vote, tout comme elles sont exemptes des devoirs des citoyens (armée ou charges fiscales). Les femmes bénéficiaient cependant pleinement des privilèges garantis par le droit civil. Et bien que leur prise de parole dans des contextes politiques relève de l’exceptionnel, les lieux d’exercice de la citoyenneté leur étaient accessibles. C’est dans la religion publique que le terme civis Romana apparaît finalement. De (...) cette étude, il résulte que la citoyenne romaine existait bel et bien, et que cette citoyenneté se rapprochait de la civitas sine suffragio. La société romaine reposait avant tout sur des inégalités et une hiérarchie omniprésentes : entre les hommes citoyens de plein droit, entre eux et les citoyens sans suffrage, et entre citoyens et femmes citoyennes. Cependant, tous pouvaient expérimenter une forme de citoyenneté à travers des actes civiques. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Introduction:Women in Public Life in Republican RomeHarriet I. Flower and Josiah OsgoodThe five articles in this special issue of AJP seek to advance our understanding of republican Rome by paying close attention to women in relation to space. Using a range of sources and approaches, contributors find women throughout the city of Rome—on the streets, in the Forum, in houses (some of which were owned (...) by women), and at temples and sacred structures such as the Regia, a building the Romans believed had once been the house of their kings. Contributors consider how women participated in political and legal discussions, accrued and controlled property, and fulfilled ritual obligations deemed vital to the community's well-being, often side by side with men. Access to different kinds of spaces afforded women social status, recognition, and influence within society at large.A central concern of the authors is to show that public life, broadly defined, involved women as well as men. By public life, we mean, in part, activities that occurred in the open, where large numbers might gather, watch, listen, and respond. In his contribution to the issue, Lewis Webb shows how women of very different statuses held religious roles—some as priestesses—roles that required them to move through the city and carry out sacrifices and other rites in a highly visible manner. In her article studying non-elite women's part in politics in the late Republic, Celia E. Schultz looks at various women who traveled in the entourages of male politicians and the attention they drew to themselves. Josiah Osgood, in his discussion of high-ranking women in the same period, shows how women introduced their concerns into politics, through conversations [End Page 1] held in domestic settings but also by protesting publicly and testifying as key witnesses at criminal trials.Public life encompassed activities that were of concern to the community, such as religious rituals performed on behalf of that same community. As Meghan DiLuzio points out in her article on women in the Regia, "visibility is not the only way of thinking about what made a ritual public." The Romans defined a ritual as public (publicus) if it was "paid for by the community and performed on behalf of the people." In her contribution, Harriet I. Flower points out that political discussions and negotiations could happen in houses (Roman politicians did not have separate offices) and then considers examples of such conversations that are attested in houses owned or controlled by women. In Livy's narrative of the so-called Bacchanalian conspiracy of 186 b.c.e. (39.8–19), Flower investigates how a series of pivotal conversations each took place in women's houses. Narrative historians of Rome often focused on warfare, other activities of magistrates, and formal political debate at contiones and in the Senate, spheres in which women's voluntary participation was typically precluded, and this view of what mattered often gets repeated today, at times in general treatments. Closer attention to women, and to the spaces in which they were present and active, opens up a fuller picture of republican culture. In this culture, religion was not a scholarly sub-field but a central part of social and political experience, and political debate and decision-making comprised far more than individual orators standing on the Rostra or in the Curia.This special issue of AJP grew out of a particular interest in space as a focus for historical analysis. We wanted to ask basic questions about where women spent their time, what discussions and decision-making fora they could be a part of, and how they moved through the city. Meanwhile, no answer to these questions can omit religious activities, which feature heavily in most of the following articles. A third, fundamental topic which joins these papers together is women's influence. Space, religion, and influence are, therefore, interlocking themes of central importance in the lives of women in the Roman Republic, and we briefly introduce each of these three principal areas here, since they inform the papers collected here. In addition, these three themes highlight many connections between the contributions in this volume and link these... (shrink)

En este artículo, nos preguntamos si es pertinente un análisis del personaje de Medea de Eurípides, y más concretamente, de su filicidio, a la luz de la doctrina aristotélica de la acción. Resulta dudoso, y quizás equívoco, hablar de "responsabilidad" (en sentido aristotélico) en el caso de la heroína, ya que sus motivaciones, como las de todo héroe trágico, tienen un doble signo: enfrentado a una ἀνάγκη superior, también desea lo que está forzado a hacer. Además, Medea no es una (...) mujer común: es un personaje ontológicamente complejo que participa, más de lo que frecuentemente se ha enfatizado, del plano divino. In this article we wonder if it is pertinent to analyse the character of Euripides' Medea and, more precisely, her filicide, in the light of Aristotle's doctrine of action. With regard to the heroine, it is doubtful and perhaps confusing to talk about "responsibility" (in Aristotelian terms) because her motivations, as all tragic heroes', are two-sided: faced to a superior ἀνάγκη he wants what he is forced to do as well. In addition, Medea is not an ordinary woman: she is an ontologically complex character that has a share in the divine level, a share which is more crucial than what has usually been emphasized. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Laws, & Gods: Magistrates & Ceremony in the Regulation of Public Lands in Republican RomeT. Corey BrennanGargola, D. J. Lands, Laws, & Gods: Magistrates & Ceremony in the Regulation of Public Lands in Republican Rome. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. x 1 270 pp. Cloth, $43.95. (Studies in the History of Greece and Rome)“Nothing could have contributed more to the safety, (...) strength and profit of the state.” Thus Niccolò Machiavelli (Disc. II 6), one of the first of a long line of moderns to expatiate on the phenomenon of Roman Republican colonization. The latest (at time of writing) is D. J. G[argola], with his learned Lands, Laws, & Gods, which has its origins in the author’s 1989 University of North Carolina dissertation. The book takes as its general subject not just Republican colonization but also another well-trod area of Roman public policy—the agrarian legislation that distributed state land and regulated its use—as well as the religious and technical aspects of Roman land definition.Can we really expect much new on these traditional topics? Perhaps not, [End Page 143] especially now that we have Dieter Flach’s Römische Agrargeschichte (Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft 3.9, Munich 1990)—a masterly synthesis that G. oddly has missed. Yet G. independently manages to come up with a work of value. The bulk of G.’s book (chapters 2–7) consists of detailed reconstructions, especially from the evidence of Livy 21–45 (not much used by Flach), of how colonies were established, viritane plots assigned, and land sold or leased in the mid-Republic. Here G. has sifted through a small mountain of difficult evidence (and bibliography) of widely varying worth and succeeded in shaping a coherent narrative. He has a keen eye for technical and conventional language, and sound judgment on the limits of applying evidence from the various Gromatici (none of whom were writing much before the second century a.d.) to the Republican situation. In short, G. in these pages has crafted a reliable and readable English language work of reference on all sorts of res agrariae.The emphasis in chapters 2–7 is not so much on evolution in the administration of agrarian and colonial legislation—G. argues (somewhat provocatively) that there was not much development of institutions within this period—but on creating a composite picture of how things worked. G. realizes “the result is necessarily an idealized portrait,” in which the system appears more regular than it perhaps was (10–11). One additional trouble, however, is that this approach sometimes flattens potentially significant details. Take for instance the two commissions of colonial IIIviri created under a lex Aelia of late 194 (Liv. 34.53.1–2), one of which went on to found Copia (193), the other Valentia (192). Now, the reported terms of this law provided that the commissioners hold imperium—quite striking, though G. misses that detail—for three years (i.e., 193–91) to colonize the ‘ager Thurinus’ and the ‘Bruttii’ respectively. G. is over-optimistic in calling these territories “stable, long pacified regions” (63). If so, why the imperium? One possible explanation. The territorial parameters placed on each of these commissions (especially ‘the Bruttii’) were quite loose. Those IIIviri may have been expected to take wide-ranging measures to strengthen Roman control over dissidents in this area (cf. App. Hann. 61.252–53), even after they established their colonies. (Note that each of these commissions completed their ostensible tasks before their triennium expired.) If true, how many other colonial commissions were like these?It is only in chapters 8 and 9, where G. surveys agrarian programs from the Gracchi to the end of the Republic, that we see an attempt to show real development. The Gracchi in their agrarian legislation sought to achieve broader effects than any of their predecessors, argues G. in chapter 8, and so introduced agrarian laws that “ended the rigid separation of categories found in mid-Republican legislation” (176). Consider the lex Sempronia agraria of 133, which, in its final form, established IIIviri a(gris) i(udicandis) a(dsignandis) to settle coloni on public land taken from illegal possessores. In this law... (shrink)

This article challenges and reevaluates the model of the domesticated, invisible Roman woman, and seeks out the relationships between female visibility, religion, and urban spaces in Republican Rome. I adopt an intersectional approach to female visibility, focusing especially on religious rites, temporality, and on status symbols. I argue that women of various backgrounds used and were visible in numerous urban spaces, drawing on instances of their regular and episodic female religious activity, and on matronal vehicles and mobility privileges. (...) At times, the Urbs was visibly female. (shrink)

Although modern Republicanism, which highly values the right of freedom of speech, finds its inspiration in the historical reality of the Roman Republic, it seems that in the course of the Republican period citizens shared a recognised ability to speak freely in public, but did not enjoy equal status with one another in the domain of speech as protected by law. Of course, Republican Rome knew laws regulating free speech and perhaps even later provisions had been passed (...) concerning iniuria. However, in these cases, as later on under Augustus, these measures acted as means of restraint and inhibition and did not directly address the right of the individual to speak freely. The fundamental question this paper addresses is why, in the course of the Republic, the right to speak freely was not protected by law and never came to be recognised as a formalised subjective right in Republican Rome. The answer, I argue, lies in the fact that in Rome speaking freely was conceived as the positive moral quality that characterised a natural ability of human beings, and thereby it could not have provided a field of legislation. It follows that the Roman Republic would not have passed the ‘straight talk test’ that modern Republicanism requires for the establishment of a free and just society. However, Republican Rome invites us to think about liberty of speech as belonging to the realm of ethics: as a moral quality sustained by contemporary social norms, not subject to legislation, which inevitably ends up protecting the interests of a group or groups and their specific speech regimes. (shrink)

The fabula praetexta is a category of Roman drama about which we are poorly informed. Ancient testimonia are scanty and widely scattered, while surviving fragments comprise fewer than fifty lines. Only five or six titles are firmly attested. Scholarly debate, however, has been extensive, and has especially focused on reconstructing the plots of the plays.1 The main approach has been to amplify extant fragments by fitting them into a plot taken from treatments of the same episode in later historical sources (...) such as Livy, Dionysius, or Plutarch.2 This method was extended by Mommsen and others in their efforts to identify new titles and plots by isolating passages in the historians which seem written in a dramatic style, and could therefore be interpreted as derivations from historical plays.3 Such a line of approach is both risky and subjective. It is based on the desire to recover a lost genre, which modern scholars feel must or should have existed. It is tempting to imagine that the Romans would have encouraged a thriving national theatre on historical themes. Such a genre, it is argued, would have been influential in shaping the average Roman's view of past events and the treatment of famous episodes by later historians.4 The conclusions reached have virtually no basis in the ancient sources we actually have. The result is largely a fiction created by the scholarly imagination. (shrink)

In this classic work, now appearing in English for the first time, Claudia Moatti analyses the intellectual transformation that occurred at the end of the Roman Republic in response both to the political crisis and to the city's expansion across the Mediterranean. This was a period of great cultural dynamism and creativity when Roman intellectuals, most notably Cicero and Varro, began to explore all areas of life and knowledge and to apply critical thinking to the reassessment of tradition and the (...) development of a systematic new understanding of the Roman past and present. This movement, linked to the development of writing, challenged old forms of authority and adhesion, belief and behaviour, without destroying tradition; and for this reason this rational trend can be described not as a cultural but as an epistemological revolution whose greatest achievement, Professor Moatti argues, was the development of the system of Roman law. (shrink)

Given that in any Roman aristocratic household during the Republic elements of the future imperial court can be found, what were the key features that enabled the latter to emerge and grow? Drawing upon Elias' analysis of court societies, this chapter maintains that the transition depends upon extraordinary religious charisma, access to renewable sources of immense wealth, and the development of integrative structures linking provincial and Roman supporters in a hierarchy dependent upon an individual rather than tenure of office.

In this paper I contrast different versions of Greek rhetoric that in the late Hellenistic period were exported to Rome by both rhetoricians and philosophers, and show how with regard to Roman law these versions differed in aim and in application. With regard to the application in law, I argue that in Rome’s unique practice of resolving disputes between citizens – i.e. done with the help of specialists – the Stoic conception of rhetoric as the longer, explanatory version (...) of dialectic, aiming at what is correct and true, was useful in conveying the correct answer to non-specialists, the judge included, whereas the Academics’, and more specifically Philo of Larissa’s, conception of rhetoric, aiming at what is verisimilar, is above all useful in the public realm, that is in political and forensic speeches. (shrink)

The purpose of this interesting book is, in the words of the author, "to demonstrate that aristocratic Roman families attempted to construct ethnic identity . . . in order to advertise and celebrate themselves in Rome's political culture; to discover how these families advertised their ethnic identity; and to recover what messages they intended to convey to the Roman public via such identity advertisement. . . . [in other words, the book aims] to focus on how the ethnic identity (...) of the families of the ruling class interacted within the social and political culture of the Roman Republic". (shrink)

This article explores the cognitive link among female autonomy, political activity, sexual status, and place in the late Roman Republic. The intersection of non-elite status and political engagement could shape the public perception of a woman's moral status and, in turn, could make scandalous her presence in certain places—physical and metaphorical. When the political activities of a woman such as Praecia, Chelidon, or Volumnia brought her into contact with the men and women of the city's senatorial elite, she left herself (...) open to accusations—warranted or not—of prostitution. (shrink)

In this classic work, now appearing in English for the first time, Claudia Moatti analyses the intellectual transformation that occurred at the end of the Roman Republic in response both to the political crisis and to the city's expansion across the Mediterranean. This was a period of great cultural dynamism and creativity when Roman intellectuals, most notably Cicero and Varro, began to explore all areas of life and knowledge and to apply critical thinking to the reassessment of tradition and the (...) development of a systematic new understanding of the Roman past and present. This movement, linked to the development of writing, challenged old forms of authority and adhesion, belief and behaviour, without destroying tradition; and for this reason this rational trend can be described not as a cultural but as an epistemological revolution whose greatest achievement, Professor Moatti argues, was the development of the system of Roman law. (shrink)