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Introduction

Valentina Arena and Jonathan Prag

The decision to dedicate an entire volume to the study of the political culture of the Roman Republic reflects what is currently the most comprehensive approach to the subject traditionally labelled as Roman Republican politics (for a definition of the concept of ‘political culture’ and its history in the field of Roman studies, see Chapter 1). This volume analyses the Roman political world through the wider lenses of ‘Roman political culture’, in full recognition that, alongside the working of the political and religious institutions and their related officers, a system of shared values, traditions and communicative strategies played a fundamental role in the social and political life of Rome throughout the Republic

The subject has been at the centre of an intensely contested debate for centuries and Part I (supplemented by Chapter 1) traces the modern history of this. Needless to say, the subject goes right back to contemporary discourse, beginning for us with Polybius, whose account perhaps already foreshadows some of the wider approaches now being advocated – and it is to the ancient accounts that Part II is dedicated. More recently, modern historians have broadly approached the study of the Republican political life of Rome following three main strands: first, the study of its legal system, its institutions and rules and regulations; second, the investigation of the social interactions amongst the members of the elite (which, under the impetus of neo-Marxist approaches of the later twentieth century, extended to a growing interest in their interactions with the wider Roman people and the latter’s socioeconomic demands); and finally, the analysis of the ‘political grammar’, as Meier (1980 [1966]) called it, which put an emphasis on shared beliefs, values, myths, traditions and symbolic communication of the political system. Each of these approaches has yielded important results, which, however, taken separately, provide a somewhat fragmented view of Roman political world.

By bringing together an analysis of the fundamental components of Roman political culture (ideas and values in Chapters 28 and 30; civic and religious rituals in Chapters 1, 33 and 34; myths, imaginary and space in Chapters 34 and 35; communicative strategy in Chapter 32, the idea and practice of justice in Chapter 31 and the role of violence and bribery in Chapter 29) with the study of institutions, including magistracies and priesthoods (Part III) and the investigation of the political actors in Roman Republican society (Part IV), we aim to provide the first integrated view of the political life of the Roman Republic, although without superimposing one uniform reading on the volume or on individual chapters.

For the first time, this volume gathers what is new in the study of Roman political culture in one place and includes studies of Roman Republican institutions analysed in their formal rules and prescriptions (Part III) and in their shared ritual practices, informing values, foundation myths and stories (Part V). Joined with considerations of the social dimension of this political system (Part IV), this approach sheds light on the cultural, ethical and symbolic network of opinions and beliefs, and integrates it with its institutional contexts and actions in specific historical contexts (Part VI). It follows that, to a certain extent, it is appropriate to say that one of the ambitions of the collection as a whole is to explore further the heuristic potential of the model that Martin Jehne (2005) has labelled Institutionalität. This approach moves away from an understanding of institutions as formalised structures and conceives them rather as patterns of social organisation, whose basic principles are provided with symbolic expressions and claims to validity that, in turn, are essential to their creation and preservation (Jehne 2006). Exploring a methodological avenue that has already borne interesting fruit in the study of Greek history (see, for example, the work by Matthew Simonton 2017 and Mirko Canevaro 2019), these chapters together explore the potential of ‘new institutionalism’ to provide a holistic view of the political world of the Roman Republic. We hope that the book goes some way to deepen and further nuance our understanding of the political life of Republican Rome and that it will provide a useful tool for students and scholars alike.

To this end, drawing together these hitherto disparate approaches and methodologies, we commissioned 40 chapters from scholars across the field, from various generations as well as different intellectual and academic traditions. They draw on the best scholarship of recent decades, adopting a variety of approaches, highlighting problems that remain open and contributing to set the agendas for future research to provide a new, updated and comprehensive view of the political world of Republican Rome. A very substantial amount of this work has been done in languages other than English by a wide range of international scholars and we have sought to make much of this available here in English, sometimes for the first time (and we are grateful to those who have undertaken the work of translation).

The resulting book is structured around three themes covered in Parts III, IV and V: respectively, Institutionalised Loci; Political Actors; Values, Rituals and Discourse. Each of these parts encompasses a brief introduction, which delineates the contours of the scholarly debate and places the contributions onto that map. They are complemented by a section on the history of the interpretation of the political life of the Roman Republic, both in the early modern and modern period (Part I), as well as in ancient times (Part II), and by a section that includes five case studies (Part VI). A contribution by Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp on the notion of political culture in the study of the political world of the Roman Republic (Chapter 1) prefaces the whole discussion.

The section on the reception of this political system, which covers the ways in which Roman political culture has been reinterpreted both by contemporary as well as later interpreters, is based on the assumption that the shifting interpretations of this political system are an integral part of the task of the historian. The way in which interpreters engage with it becomes an intrinsic part of its nature (see Introduction to Part I). The book’s final section of five case studies (Part VI) examines five pivotal moments of the history of the Republic, ranging from the third century down to the first century BCE, where the dynamic interplay of institutional context, understood within the above meaning, shows different aspects of Roman political culture in action. Read in sequence, these case studies seem to us to offer a glimpse of the heuristic potential of current approaches to the political culture of the Republic and of the way that the transformation of the Republic is part and parcel of its political culture.

Geographically, the centre of our investigation is Rome and both its Italian neighbours and territories further afield are considered in relation to the focal point of power. Chronologically, the chapters cover approximately five centuries of Republican history, although there is inevitably a convergence towards the Middle and Late Republic, and those historical moments that are best attested in the ancient evidence. Most authors have used a diachronic approach; others, as per their remit, have focused on specific case studies, or have given closer attention to particular historical moments when the mechanisms of Roman political culture come more sharply into focus. The intention is to cover some of the main topics and show the directions in which current scholarship is now moving. The aim is not – and never could be – to be exhaustive, but rather to trace major lines of enquiry and highlight key ideas, frequently founded upon case studies and examples, and so to show the richness of Roman political life and of the scholarly approaches dedicated to its investigation. We hope thereby to contribute to the study of its centrality in the cultural world of later generations and of its contributions to our world.

Sadly, while this project was in its final stages, Fergus Millar, whose work and intellectual legacy punctuates each page of this volume, and Guido Clemente, who was also one of its contributors, passed away. Both were instrumental in our own intellectual formation and this volume is dedicated to their memory.

REFERENCES

1 Canevaro, M. 2019. ‘Nomothesia e amministrazione finanziaria: frammenti epigrafici di “costituzionalizzazione” e sviluppo istituzionale nell’Atene di IV secolo.’ Historika 9: 485–524.

2 Jehne, M. 2005. ‘Die Volksversammlungen in Mommsens “Staatsrecht”, oder: Mommsen als Gesetzgeber.’ In Nippel, W. and Seidensticker, B., eds. Theodor Mommsens langer Schatten. Das römische Staatsrecht als bleibende Herausforderung für die Forschung. Hildesheim, 131–160.

3 Jehne, M. 2006. ‘Methods, Models, and Historiography.’ In Morstein-Marx, R. and Rosenstein, N., eds. A Companion to the Roman Republic (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World). Oxford, 3–28.

4 Meier, C. 1980 [1966]. Res publica amissa: eine Studie zu Verfassung und Geschichte der späten römischen Republik. Frankfurt am Main.

5 Simonton, M. 2017. Classical Greek Oligarchy: A Political History. Princeton, NJ.