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The great modern biography of Augustus, founder of the Roman Empire Born to a plebeian family in 63 BC, Octavian was a young solder training abroad when he heard news of Julius Caesar's brutal assassination - and discovered that he was the dictator's sole political heir. With the opportunism and instinct for propaganda that were to characterize his rule, Octavian rallied huge financial, military and political backing to eliminate his opponents, end the bloody turmoil that had so long wracked Rome and, finally, take autocratic control of a state devoted to republicanism. He became Augustus - Rome's first Emperor, and the founder of the greatest empire the world had ever seen. In this monumental biography, translated into English for the first time by Anthea Bell, Jochen Bleicken tells the story of a man who found himself a demi-god in his own lifetime and paints a portrait of one of the most dramatic periods of Roman history.
In the days of the Roman Empire, the emperor was considered not only the ruler of the state, but also its supreme legal authority, fulfilling the multiple roles of supreme court, legislator, and administrator. The Emperor of Law explores how the emperor came to assume the mantle of a judge, beginning with Augustus, the first emperor, and spanning the years leading up to Caracalla and the Severan dynasty. While earlier studies have attempted to explain this change either through legislation or behaviour, this volume undertakes a novel analysis of the gradual expansion and elaboration of the emperor's adjudication and jurisdiction: by analysing the process through historical narratives, it arg...
In this first book-length study of positive law, James Bernard Murphy rewrites central chapters in the history of jurisprudence by uncovering a fundamental continuity among four great legal philosophers: Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, and John Austin. In their theories of positive law, Murphy argues, these thinkers represent successive chapters in a single fascinating story. That story revolves around a fundamental ambiguity: is law positive because it is deliberately imposed (as opposed to customary law) or because it lacks moral necessity (as opposed to natural law)? These two senses of positive law are not coextensive yet the discourse of positive law oscillates unstably between them. What, then, is the relation between being deliberately imposed and lacking moral necessity? Murphy demonstrates how the discourse of positive law incorporates both normative and descriptive dimensions of law, and he discusses the relation of positive law not only to jurisprudence but also to the philosophy of language, ethics, theories of social order, and biblical law.
Girolamo Zanchi’s De religione christiana fides offers an insight into his mature theology and reflects the development of Reformed dogmatics and polemic more generally in the late 16th century. It therefore provides an interesting picture of the theology of a whole era.
Through a series of original essays by leading international scholars, The Roman Empire in Context: Historical and Comparative Perspectives offers a comparative historical analysis of the Roman empire’s role and achievement and, more broadly, establishes Rome’s significance within comparative studies. Fills a gap in comparative historical analysis of the Roman empire’s role and achievement Features contributions from more than a dozen distinguished scholars from around the world Explores the relevance of important comparativist themes of state, empire, and civilization to ancient Rome
MERGEFIELD AI_Copy In 1933, Jews and, to a lesser extent, political opponents of the Nazis, suffered an unprecedented loss of positions and livelihood at Germany’s universities. With few exceptions, the academic elite welcomed and justified the acts of the Nazi regime, uttered no word of protest when their Jewish and liberal colleagues were dismissed, and did not stir when Jewish students were barred admission. The subject of how German scholars responded to the Nazi regime continues to be a fascinating area of scholarship. In this collection, Rabinbach and Bialas bring some of the best scholarly contributions together in one cohesive volume, to deliver a shocking conclusion: whatever diverse motives German intellectuals may have had in 1933, the image of Nazism as an alien power imposed on German universities from without was a convenient fiction.
Das vorliegende Buch bietet erstmals eine holistische und diachrone Untersuchung aller Ehrenstatuen der römischen Provinz Sizilien. Auf Grundlage eines umfangreichen Katalogs von meist unpubliziertem archäologischen und epigraphischen Material werden Fragen zu deren Entwicklung und zum räumlichen sowie sozialen Kontext beantwortet. This book presents the first comprehensive survey of honorary statues in Sicily. A wealth of previously unpublished material reconstructs the spatial and social contexts of honorary statues, offering a unique window on urbanism and society of the first Roman province.
No public action of the Roman state, the populus Romanus, at home or at war, was to be carried out without prior permission from Iuppiter Optimus Maximus. Permission was obtained, in a procedure known as auspices, by the magistrate in charge of the intended action-usually a Consul, Praetor, or Dictator. Auspices thus occupy a fundamental place in the-unwritten-constitution of the Roman State. Yet especially in the 3rd century BCE, acceptance of the principle was not always universal. The Challenge to the Auspices presents an investigation into the interaction of Roman magistrates during the Middle Republic with the practice of auspices, with a focus on attempts to avoid, ignore, or resist th...
Until the eighteenth century, Western societies were hierarchical ones. Since then, they have transformed themselves into societies dominated by two features: participatory democracy and the protection of human rights. In Modern Isonomy, distinguished political theorist Gerald Stourzh unites these ideas as “isonomy.” The ideal, Stourzh argues, is a state, and indeed a world, in which individual rights, including the right to participate in politics equally, are clearly defined and possessed by all. Stourzh begins with ancient Greek thought contrasting isonomy—which is associated with the rule of the many—with “gradated societies,” oligarchies, and monarchies. He then discusses th...
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. Karl-J. Hölkeskamp challenges this view in Reconstructing the Roman Republic, 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. Hölkeskamp offers a comprehensive, in-depth 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 que...