Compitum

Miriam T. Griffin, Politics and Philosophy at Rome: Collected Papers, Oxford, 2018.

Éditeur : Oxford University Press
832 pages
ISBN : 9780198793120
120 £

This volume presents the collected papers of Miriam T. Griffin, an eminent scholar of Roman history and ancient thought whose work has played a central role in forging links between scholarship on the history of the Graeco-Roman world and its philosophies. Spanning a period of over forty years and a distinguished career as Fellow of Somerville College at Oxford, these papers include both published works, many of them now difficult to find in their original printings, and previously unpublished lectures.
The collection covers a range of topics in Roman Republican and Imperial history, Roman historiography, and the interplay of Latin philosophy and Roman politics, as well as featuring a host of key Latin authors, most notably Cicero, Seneca, and Tacitus. The last of these categories, the interplay of philosophy and politics in Rome, is also the most prominent in the volume: though deeply interested in ancient philosophy, and especially Stoicism, Miriam Griffin writes primarily as a historian concerned with how Roman thinking was related to political circumstances and actions. Many of the essays have opened up new areas of discussion and formed the basis of later scholarship dealing with history and philosophy, and although some of them are quite general, serving as useful introductions to the subject area, others are more detailed and technical, inviting discussion and controversy. The style throughout is consistently dynamic and engaging, resulting in a fascinating and formidable collection from a scholar unrivalled as an expert in both the history of the Graeco-Roman world and its philosophies, and a true pioneer in the bridging of these two spheres.

Gesine Manuwald, Cicero, Agrarian Speeches Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary, Oxford, 2018.

Éditeur : Oxford University Press
544 pages
ISBN : 9780198715405
110 £

The Agrarian Speeches (Orationes de lege agraria) were delivered in January 63 BCE, just after Cicero had entered office as consul; they are his inaugural orations and therefore the first element of his consular activity. They not only provide valuable testimony for approaches to agrarian legislation in the late Republic, but also show how the new consul presented himself before the Senate and the People at the beginning of his consular year, a significant political event for which very few extensive sources remain.

Steven J. Green (éd.), Grattius. Hunting an Augustan Poet, Oxford, 2018.

Éditeur : Oxford University Press
304 pages
ISBN : 9780198789017
60 £

Grattius' Cynegetica, a Roman didactic poem on hunting with dogs, is the author's only surviving work, though it reaches us now in an incomplete form. Thanks to a passing reference by Ovid in his Epistulae ex Ponto it can confidently be dated to the Augustan period, and yet while his literary contemporaries have been and continue to be subjects of academic scrutiny, Grattius is seldom read and remains almost completely unappreciated in classical and literary scholarship.

William Fitzgerald et Efrossini Spentzou (éd.), The Production of Space in Latin Literature, Oxford, 2018.

Éditeur : Oxford University Press
320 pages
ISBN : 9780198768098
65 £

Recent decades have seen a marked shift in approaches to cultural analysis, with the critical role of location and spatial experience in the formation of the human subject gaining increasing prominence. This volume applies the insights and concerns of the 'spatial turn' to this specifically Roman engagement with space, and explores its representation and manipulation in Latin literature. The terrain covered by the contributions is broad, both temporally (from Catullus to St Augustine) and in terms of genre, with lyric, epic, elegy, satire, epistolography, and historiography all finding their place in discussions that focus mainly on movement and the mobile subject in the experience and making of space. Offering a detailed exploration of Roman engagement with space, the ideological stakes of this engagement, and its intersections with empire, urbanism, identity, ethics, exile, and history, the volume contains a wealth of insights for readers across and beyond the discipline of classical studies: those looking equally for new approaches to ancient texts and authors or to explore the relationship between the materiality of antiquity and its literary aspects will find these discussions illuminating.

Maureen Carroll, Infancy and Earliest Childhood in the Roman World, Oxford, 2018.

Éditeur : Oxford University Press
336 pages
ISBN : 9780199687633
75 £

Despite the developing emphasis in current scholarship on children in Roman culture, there has been relatively little research to date on the role and significance of the youngest children within the family and in society. This volume singles out this youngest age group, the under one-year-olds, in the first comprehensive study of infancy and earliest childhood to encompass the Roman Empire as a whole: integrating social and cultural history with archaeological evidence, funerary remains, material culture, and the iconography of infancy, it explores how the very particular historical circumstances into which Roman children were born affected their lives as well as prevailing attitudes towards them. Examination of these varied strands of evidence, drawn from throughout the Roman world from the fourth century BC to the third century AD, allows the rhetoric about earliest childhood in Roman texts to be more broadly contextualized and reveals the socio-cultural developments that took place in parent-child relationships over this period. Presenting a fresh perspective on archaeological and historical debates, the volume refutes the notion that high infant mortality conditioned Roman parents not to engage in the early life of their children or to view them, or their deaths, with indifference, and concludes that even within the first weeks and months of life Roman children were invested with social and gendered identities and were perceived as having both personhood and value within society.

Dylan Kelby Rogers, Water culture in Roman society, Leyde, 2018.

Éditeur : Brill
Collection : Ancient History
xii, 118 pages
ISBN : 9789004368941
70 €

Water played an important part of ancient Roman life, from providing necessary drinking water, supplying bath complexes, to flowing in large-scale public fountains. The Roman culture of water was seen throughout the Roman Empire, although it was certainly not monolithic and it could come in a variety of scales and forms, based on climatic and social conditions of different areas. This article seeks to define ‘water culture' in Roman society by examining literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence, while understanding modern trends in scholarship related to the study of Roman water. The culture of water can be demonstrated through expressions of power, aesthetics, and spectacle. Further there was a shared experience of water in the empire that could be expressed through religion, landscape, and water's role in cultures of consumption and pleasure.

Source : Brill