Browsing by Subject "Caesar"
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Item Paving the past: Late Republican recollections in the Forum Romanum(2009-05) Bartels, Aaron David; Davies, Penelope J. E.; Clarke, John R.; Riggsby, Andrew M.The Forum was the center of Roman life. It witnessed a barrage of building, destruction and reuse from the seventh century BCE onwards. By around 80 BCE, patrons chose to renovate the Senate House and Comitium with a fresh paving of tufa blocks. Masons leveled many ruined altars and memorials beneath the flooring. Yet paving also provided a means of saving some of Rome’s past. They isolated the Lapis Niger with black blocks, to keep the city’s sinking history in their present. Paving therefore became a technology of memory for recording past events and people. Yet how effective was the Lapis Niger as a memorial? Many modern scholars have romanced the site’s cultural continuity. However, in fifty years and after two Lapis Nigers, the Comitium had borne a disparity of monuments and functions. Rome’s historians could not agree on what lay beneath. Verrius Flaccus reports that the Lapis Niger ‘according to others’ might mark the site of Romulus’s apotheosis, his burial, the burial of his foster father Faustulus, or even his soldier, Hostius Hostilius (50.177). Nevertheless, modern archaeologists have found no tombs. Instead of trying to comprehend these legends, most scholars use them selectively to isolate a dictator, deity or date. We must instead understand why so many views of the Lapis Niger emerged in antiquity. Otherwise, like ancient antiquarians, we will re- identify sites without end. Recreating how these material and mental landscapes interacted and spawned new pasts tells us more about the Lapis Niger than any new attribution.Item The Policy of Clodius from 58 to 56 B.C.(The Classical Quarterly, 1927) Marsh, Frank BurrItem The lure of leadership : lessons from Plutarch on the nature of an exceptional statesman(2022-05-02) Davis, Emily Anne; Pangle, Lorraine Smith; Stauffer, DevinIn this paper, I show that Julius Caesar’s character, appeal, and motivations (as seen in Plutarch’s Life) were much more complex than most scholars believe. It is true that Plutarch’s Caesar felt an irresistible ambition for power and that he often drew on his strategic brilliance to serve his own political interests. Yet power for power’s sake was far from enough for him. Plutarch demonstrates, in fact, that Caesar’s drive to become an absolute ruler stemmed not only from his longings for power and glory, but also from his desire to distribute benefits and justice to his subjects and to deserve the honor and gratitude they gave him in return. Caesar’s overweening confidence in his ability to establish new, just orders was hugely attractive to the Roman people, who felt unfairly oppressed by the existing laws. Though Plutarch indicates that Caesar’s self-assessment was unsupported by serious examination of questions regarding justice, he also suggests that Caesar’s (and his people’s) deep concern for justice played a key role in his rise to the throne.Item The origins of Augustan portraiture : typology and dissemination of the pre-Actium Types(2017-05) Topping, Sarah Charlotte; Clarke, John R., 1945-The following paper explores the provenance, typology, and significance of the pre-Actium Type portraits of Augustus Caesar. These types are the Béziers-Spoleto Type, Lucus Feroniae Type, and Type B. The provenance, when available, is traced to the location of origin and analyzed in historical context. A detailed typological analysis is offered for each type with a focus on Stirnlockenanalyse. Deviations from the ideal model are addressed and evaluated. Finally, the significance of the three types is reevaluated in light of the provenance and new typological analysis.Item Triumphal literature, or a literary triumph? : Caesar’s Commentaries and the Roman triumphal procession(2023-07-24) Welch, David George, Jr.; Riggsby, Andrew M.; Haimson Lushkov, Ayelet; Chaudhuri, Pramit; Damon, Cynthia; Ostenberg, IdaThis dissertation examines the relationship between Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War and the Roman triumphal procession. I use the modern theory of intermediality, which posits the possibility of relationships of influence between works of different media, to argue that the Commentaries’ uniqueness in the ancient literary canon can be in part explained by recognizing the significant influence they draw from the triumph. The institution of the triumph meets modern theorists’ criteria for the “historical work,” and there was a long tradition of various forms of writing accompanying individual triumphs – this combination of factors meant that a literary production could not only easily imitate the communicative strategies of the triumph, but we might even say it could expectedly do so. In analyzing such a relationship between the triumph and Caesar’s Commentaries, I divide the subjects presented by these media into two broad categories – the vanquished foe and the victorious Romans. The treatment of the enemy focuses on leveraging their defeat for political clout. The threat posed by the various enemies, whether that be physical or ideological, was the object of concerted emphasis in both media and, in an entirely different vein, more neutral objects of ethnographic interest like local flora and fauna became the objects of lengthier treatments as time progressed. In presenting the victorious Romans, both media focus on instilling a sense of community in their various audiences. While the triumph accomplished this by leaning on the unifying forces of the Romans’ shared history and the fact that the Romans were all physically gathered together on the day of the procession, the Commentaries use the linguistic directness afforded to literary media to more directly remind their readers of their commonality with the Roman army. I conclude by discussing the impact that the environment of aristocratic competition had on the incorporation of triumphal elements in the Commentaries. I propose that Commentaries were a natural next step in the evolving field of Republican aristocratic competition, and that their inherently Republican nature guaranteed their lack of literary successors, given their publication in the final years before the fall of the Republic and the establishment of the principate