By Sheila Murnaghan Abstract: This chapter highlights the paradoxical status of the tragic chorus: as a group of musical performers, the chorus is a manifestation of social and political order, but as a group of…
By Barbara Kellum Abstract: This chapter argues that Octavian’s victory at Actium and the final demise of the senatorial republic created a new world of opportunities for the municipal elite of Italy and for freedmen,…
By Harriet I. Flower Abstract: This chapter asks what civil war does to a republic, arguing that civil war destroys not only people and property but the whole social contract that gives a republic coherence. It…
By Rhiannon Ash Abstract: This chapter examines three conspicuous instances of historiographical synkrisis in Tacitus’ Histories (Histories 1.50.2–3; 2.38; 3.51) in which the republican civil wars are the lens through…
By Andreola Rossi Abstract: This chapter offers a reading of the shield of Aeneas that shows civil war to be disturbingly present in an artefact announced as a history of Rome’s triumphs: civil war fights for space…
By Rebecca Langlands Abstract: This chapter turns to the less often discussed, negative side of Suetonius’ generally laudatory biography of Augustus, arguing that the portrayal of the emperor’s private relationships…
By Donna W. Hurley Abstract: This chapter looks at Suetonius’ method of arranging the material of the Caesars into thematic and chronological sections. Suetonius is generally said to begin his biographies with a…
By Cynthia Damon Abstract: This chapter surveys Suetonius’ prose style, particularly his tendency to include the emperors’ own words in verbatim quotation. The metaphor of the ‘ventriloquist’ is apt for Suetonius, who…
By C.S. Kraus and A.J. Woodman Abstract: In recent decades there has been a complete revolution in the way we read the historians of Greece and Rome. Their works have been shown to be quite different in nature from…
By Amanda Claridge, with contributions by Judith Toms and Tony Cubberley Abstract: The ultimate guide to all the important archaeological sites in the city of Rome from the period 800 BC to AD 600, with over 200 site…