Download Free Texts And Violence In The Roman World Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Texts And Violence In The Roman World and write the review.

From the bites and scratches of lovers and the threat of flogging that hangs over the comic slave, to murder, rape, dismemberment, and crucifixion, violence is everywhere in Latin literature. The contributors to this volume explore the manifold ways in which violence is constructed and represented in Latin poetry and prose from Plautus to Prudentius, examining the interrelations between violence, language, power, and gender, and the narrative, rhetorical, and ideological functions of such depictions across the generic spectrum. How does violence contribute to the pleasure of the text? Do depictions of violence always reinforce status-hierarchies, or can they provoke a reassessment of normative value-systems? Is the reader necessarily complicit with authorial constructions of violence? These are pressing questions both for ancient literature and for film and other modern media, and this volume will be of interest to scholars and students of cultural studies as well as of the ancient world.
A wide-ranging study of violence in Latin literature, across the spectrum of texts and genres from Plautus to Prudentius.
What was crime in ancient Rome? Was it defined by law or social attitudes? How did damage to the individual differ from offences against the community as a whole? This book explores competing legal and extra-legal discourses in a number of areas, including theft, official malpractice, treason, sexual misconduct, crimes of violence, homicide, magic and perceptions of deviance. It argues that court practice was responsive to social change, despite the ingrained conservatism of the legal tradition, and that judges and litigants were in part responsible for the harsher operation of justice in Late Antiquity. Consideration is also given to how attitudes to crime were shaped not only by legal experts but also by the rhetorical education and practices of advocates, and by popular and even elite indifference to the finer points of law.
Goodman presents a lucid and balanced picture of the Roman world examining the Roman empire from a variety of perspectives; cultural, political, civic, social and religious.
The first in a four-volume set, The Cambridge World History of Violence, Volume 1 provides a comprehensive examination of violence in prehistory and the ancient world. Covering the Palaeolithic through to the end of classical antiquity, the chapters take a global perspective spanning sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East, Europe, India, China, Japan and Central America. Unlike many previous works, this book does not focus only on warfare but examines violence as a broader phenomenon. The historical approach complements, and in some cases critiques, previous research on the anthropology and psychology of violence in the human story. Written by a team of contributors who are experts in each of their respective fields, Volume 1 will be of particular interest to anyone fascinated by archaeology and the ancient world.
In 146 BC, the armies of the Roman Republic destroyed Carthage and Corinth, two of the most spectacular cities of the ancient Mediterranean world. It was a display of ruthlessness so terrible that it shocked contemporaries, leaving behind deep scars and palpable historical traumas. Yet these twin destructions were not so extraordinary in the long annals of Roman warfare. In Spare No One, Gabriel Baker convincingly shows that mass violence was vital to Roman military operations. Indeed, in virtually every war they fought during the third and second centuries BC, the Roman legions killed and enslaved populations, executed prisoners, and put cities to the torch. This powerful book reveals that these violent acts were not normally the handiwork of frenzied soldiers run amok, nor were they spontaneous outbursts of uncontrolled savagery. On the contrary—and more troublingly—Roman commanders deliberately used these brutal strategies to achieve their most critical military objectives and political goals. Bringing long-overdue attention to this little-known aspect of Roman history, Baker paints a fuller, albeit darker, picture of Roman warfare. He ultimately demonstrates that the atrocities of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have deep historical precedents. Casting a fresh light on the strategic use of total war in the ancient world, he reminds us that terror and mass violence could be the rational policies of men and states long before the modern age.
A comparative examination and interpretation of religious violence in the Graeco-Roman world and Late Antiquity.
This book evaluates a hundred years of scholarship on how empire transformed the Roman world, and advances a new theory of how the empire worked and was experienced. It engages extensively with Rome's Republican empire as well as the 'Empire of the Caesars', examines a broad range of ancient evidence (material, documentary, and literary) that illuminates multiple perspectives, and emphasizes the much longer history of imperial rule within which the Roman Empire emerged. Steering a course between overemphasis on resistance and overemphasis on consensus, it highlights the political, social, religious and cultural consequences of an imperial system within which functions of state were substantially delegated to, or more often simply assumed by, local agencies and institutions. The book is accessible and of value to a wide range of undergraduate and graduate students as well as of interest to all scholars concerned with the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.
Examines how location confers cultural meaning on acts of violence, and renders them socially acceptable--or not
The inspiration for this volume comes from the work of its dedicatee, Brent D. Shaw, who is one of the most original and wide-ranging historians of the ancient world of the last half-century and continues to open up exciting new fields for exploration. Each of the distinguished contributors has produced a cutting-edge exploration of a topic in the history and culture of the Roman Empire dealing with a subject on which Professor Shaw has contributed valuable work. Three major themes extend across the volume as a whole. First, the ways in which the Roman world represented an intricate web of connections even while many people's lives remained fragmented and local. Second, the ways in which the peculiar Roman space promoted religious competition in a sophisticated marketplace for practices and beliefs, with Christianity being a major benefactor. Finally, the varying forms of violence which were endemic within and between communities.