Virtus Romana

Politics and Morality in the Roman Historians

Bibliographic Data

ID9288087
AuthorsCatalina Balmaceda (0000-0001-8650-6421, corresponding author)
Year2017
Pages312
Publication date2017-11-06
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueVirtus Romana (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of North Carolina Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.5149/northcarolina/9781469635125.001.0001
OpenAlexW4232772815
Open LibraryOL28638404M
ISBN9781469635125
LanguageEN
Citations received9

The political transformation that took place at the end of the Roman Republic was a particularly rich area for historical analysis. The crisis that saw the end of the Roman Republic and the changes which gave birth to a new political system were narrated by major Roman historians who took the Roman idea of virtus as a way of interpreting and understanding their history. Tracing how virtus informed Roman thought over time, the book explores the concept and its manifestations in the narratives of four successive Latin historians who span the late republic and early principate: Sallust, Livy, Velleius, and Tacitus. Balmaceda demonstrates that the concept of virtus in these historical narratives served as a form of self-definition which fostered and propagated a new model of the ideal Roman more fitting to imperial times. As a crucial moral and political concept, virtus worked as a key idea in the complex system of Roman socio-cultural values and norms which underpinned Roman attitudes about both present and past. This book offers a re-appraisal of the historians as promoters of change and continuity in the political culture of both the Republic and the Empire

Ancient history · Art · Epistemology · Ideal (ethics · Literature · Morality · Narrative · Political culture · Political science · Politics · Principate · Roman Empire · The Republic · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · History · Law · Philosophy · civilization · Historiography · National characteristics, roman · Roman National characteristics · Rome

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