Roman Politics Research Articles

ROMANO-PARTHIAN MACHINATIONS FROM CARRHAE TO THE ASSASSINATION OF JULIUS CAESAR

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to reveal the scheming and plotting behind the veneer of the narrative of an earth-changing era in Roman history, in a new way, by demonstrating that Roman and Parthian worlds influenced, and impinged upon, each other in ways not always covered in extant modern literature.
 Methodology: The methodology applied throughout this article is that of historical analysis, using ancient sources in light of modern scholarship. However, this is done in a unique, learned sense, in that it seeks to look at the period covered by this article in a more broad sense geographically than most treatments on the Late Republic do, but doing so still by focussing upon an aspect of history, namely the historical interchange between Rome and Parthia.
 Findings: This article finds that Roman politics was not performed in a vacuum. Rather, it existed in a world where examples, and precedents, inspired a range of remonstrations, and official duties. Thus, it is shown that the worlds of Rome and Parthia were closer, politically, than is often recognised during the period covered by this article.

Capua in Roman Politics Between 59 and 36 BCE

In the present study, I focus on the significance of Capua in Roman politics between 59 BCE, when the town officially became a colony, and 36 BCE, when Octavian settled new colonists in the town. I argue that, despite the numerous promises of Roman politicians, only in 36 BCE new Roman colonists were introduced to the town, even though a colony was formally created before that time. Moreover, I explain the causes and circumstances that prompted Caesar not to establish a colony in Capua after 47 BCE, as well as the reasons that led Mark Antony to found a colony there. I highlight Capua as a flashpoint between Mark Antony and Octavian and argue against the traditional view that Octavian founded a colony there immediately after the Battle of Philippi.

REVIEW: Sorin Mitulescu, ed. Sociologi în comunism. Începuturile unei profesii fără statut

“Sociologists in Communism. The beginnings of a profession without status” is a collective volume coordinated by Sorin Mitulescu and contains the stories of some sociology graduates in 1975 and of some of their teachers at that time. The book is both an essay in sociology and a collection of oral history papers. We understand from reading the book that sociology was at that time the victim of the oscillations in Romanian politics between the desire for modernization (especially technological) and the fearful and dogmatic conservatism that had penetrated all social levels. Sociologists in communism want to be a starting point in a broader debate on the role of sociology and the sociologist, both in the past and in the present. He discusses several topics such as the relationship between sociology and power, the professional mobility of sociologists, the relationship between personal life and the career of a practicing sociologist.

Cold war, hot stuff. The official critical discourse and the desirability of film stars in socialist Romania

This article examines the ways in which Romanian socialist politics and state-sanctioned film journalism intersected around film sexuality and foreign film stardom, in order to reinforce the official discourse on sexual morality in the 1960s and 1970s. The ‘60s represented a decade of political and ideological semi-relaxation in socialist Romania. Film audiences retained some access to Western productions, and foreign film stars carried significant erotic appeal to viewers. The state-funded Cinema magazine aimed to disrupt these tendencies either by arguing that the objects of desire were representative of lower quality cinema, or, in full-on Cold War style, by building the case for the decline of Western capitalism through pinpointing all manifestations of sexuality as a symptom of it. This article looks at the ways in which ideological arguments to “redact” film sexuality, while failing to repurpose it, managed to redirect it and reposition it as alien to socialist culture. The article also explores the continuation of this trend during the 1970s, when film stardom and the seductive appeal of film stars were validated by their conformation to political and historical ideologies directly linked to the concerns of the Romanian Communist Party.

Elite Women as Tools of Power in First-Century C.E. Rome

For the patrician class, marriage was a form of power intended to uphold Roman patriarchy by providing opportunity for social, political, and economic advancement. However, history has shown that the power of marriage also extended to the women involved in these couplings as well. Through marriage, elite Roman women had the power to perpetuate or decimate Rome’s social order. Thus, gender norms were created and enforced in order to maintain patriarchy. Women who did not live up to the social expectations set by these norms were met with opposition. By examining Roman poetry and literature, Roman politics, and profiling the lives and reputations of real imperial women, we discover that the treatment of women in Rome was a direct reflection of Rome's patriarchal values.

No populism’s land? Religion and gender in Romanian politics

ABSTRACT While populism is one of the most analysed aspects of contemporary politics, we know little about its interaction with religion and about motivations leading political parties to oppose or support a secular appropriation of religious themes and symbols beyond any spiritual or doctrinal dimension. This paper aims to disentangle the intersection of religion and populism in Romania with regard to the concept of family, by exploring how parliamentarians use religious symbols and contents within their speeches during the debates preparing the 2018 referendum on family in Romania. The analysis is based on a dataset of parliamentary debates covering the adoption of the referendum in the Parliament (2012–2018) and the follow-up period (2018–2020). We aim to provide a nuanced understanding of how political actors conceive and represent religion and gender in contemporary politics based on a case-study in which overtly populist parties remain isolated in the extra-parliamentary arena.

Post-Classical Greek Elegy and Lyric Poetry

Abstract This volume traces the development of Greek elegy and lyric in the hands of Hellenistic and Roman-era poets, from literary superstars such as Callimachus and Theocritus to more obscure, often anonymous authors. Designed as a guide for advanced students and scholars working in adjacent fields, this volume introduces and explores the diverse body of surviving later Greek elegy and lyric, contextualizes it within Hellenistic and Roman culture and politics, and surveys contemporary critical interpretations, methodological approaches, and avenues for future study.

Tacitus on Political Failure: A Realist Interpretation

ABSTRACT This article offers a realist interpretation of Tacitus’s analysis of political failure. Tacitus described the early Roman Empire as a balance between the conflicting and irreconcilable values and interests of the emperor, the army, and the senate. For him Stoic-republican morality in itself—without the intervention of a political standard demanding political agency in every circumstance—cannot provide an all-purpose guide to action. He provides a fine-grained analysis of types of political failure, such as failing to act, or to realize one’s limited scope for maneuver, or the inevitability of failure given particular political circumstances. Tacitus also describes Thrasea, a moderate member of the senatorial opposition to Nero, as an exceptionally laudable figure. His preference for moderate politics places Tacitus on the side of contemporary status-quo oriented, liberal, realists (e.g., Bernard Williams), rather than on the side of radical realists (e.g., Raymond Geuss, Enzo Rossi), but the central lesson of his understanding of Roman politics is not so much that political order is fragile as that the cost of political failure can indeed be unbearably high.

Laurens Tacoma, Roman Political Culture. Seven Studies of the Senate and City Councils of Italy from the First to the Sixth Century AD. Oxford, Oxford University Press 2020

Article Laurens Tacoma, Roman Political Culture. Seven Studies of the Senate and City Councils of Italy from the First to the Sixth Century AD. Oxford, Oxford University Press 2020 was published on April 1, 2021 in the journal Historische Zeitschrift (volume 312, issue 2).

Paradoxes of the political romanticism of Kireevsky I.V.: between an universal monarchy and a national state

The article deals with the political views of Ivan Vasilievich Kireevsky in connection with the history of censorship prohibition of the journal “European” published by him. The text of the report due to which the journal was closed is analyzed. Special attention is paid to the idea of “merging minds together”, interpreted in the text of the denunciation as the basis of Republican beliefs. The author reconstructs Kireevsky's political views in the context of the influence of German romantic ideas on Russian social thought in the first half of the XIX century. The author clarifies Kireevsky's attitude to the ideals of the Great French Revolution and concludes that his views are opposed to the radical vector of the European Enlightenment as a whole. The author demonstrates the historical context in which the views of young Kireevsky are formed, and focuses on the contrast between the Enlightenment and the Romanticism era, which is associated in Russia with the counter-enlightenment reaction of the times of the Holy Union. The author reconstructs Kireevsky's religious and philosophical views, which, following V.S. Solovyov, are characterized as philosophical, romantic Christianity. Kireevsky's ideas are compared with those of representatives of other trends of Russian social thought that were influenced by German Romanticism − theorists of official conservatism, as well as P.Ya. Chaadaev. Their conceptual differences in understanding the relationship between “world” and “national” are revealed. The author demonstrates Kireevsky's socio-political concept, in which the “organic” development of people's life is contrasted with the “violent” establishment of social institutions. It is concluded that the primacy of spiritual unity over political aspirations in Kireevsky's worldview leads him away from both republican beliefs and official imperial conservatism.

기원전 63년 룰루스(P. Servilius Rullus) 농지 법안 재고: 기원전 103년‒기원전 63년 로마 공화정 후기 농지 정책 변천사

In contrast to the voluminous scholarship on the Gracchan agrarian reforms, the agrarian history of Roman Italy of the last century of the Roman Republic is in need of a systematic analysis. Modern discussions of the agrarian legislation after the Gracchi tend to be fragmented; it has been generally considered as a contributing factor in narratives of political struggles of the final phase of the Republic, if not treated as an epilogue to the significant Gracchan period. This paper reassesses the agrarian proposal of P. Servilius Rullus in 63 BC, primarily in the context of the Roman agrarian policy after the Gracchi, rather than seeing it from the perspective of Roman politics at that time. This paper examines the way in which Rullus’ proposal reflects provisions of earlier measures and attempts to contribute to a better understanding of the innovations of Rullus’ proposal. The provision of the purchase of land for re-distribution with public funds in Rullus’ proposal was first introduced in Saturninus’ agrarian law in 100 BC, which then seems to have been adopted in Plotius’ agrarian law in 70/69 BC. Rullus also revived Livius Drusus’ colonial foundations in Italy in 91 BC, rejecting, however, Sulla’s coercive measures in 82 BC. This paper concludes by suggesting that Rullus’ agrarian proposal was in the tradition of the Gracchan agrarian reforms, which was continued by Flavius in 60 BC and Caesar in 59 BC.

THE ROLE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT SYSTEM IN SOUTH ASIA: A CASE STUDY OF PAKISTAN

Pakistan is a democratic country in the region of South Asia, but it has been deprived of political backdrop from its independence from the British Empire in 1947, notably in the field of local self-government. Pakistan's history demonstrates that inconsistency in civilian norms hampered the establishment of a robust democratic culture at all levels of government. The military has repeatedly swallowed the civil-military political romance. Each military commander instituted local self-government; General Ayyub instituted the Basic Democratic System in his dictatorship, and General Zia instituted local government as well; their primary goal was to legitimate their own authority and that of the military. However, the decentralisation changes in Pakistan may be traced back to the last military takeover led by General Musharraf in 1999. Under General Musharraf's leadership, recent decentralisation measures in Pakistan have been examined in this article. We emphasise the most important features of this reform and examine its growth in the context of history to better recognize the probable causes for the current decentralisation of power. In Pakistan, the history of local government reforms is particularly intriguing as, on request of a non-representative centre, each of the top three reform efforts has been executed using a "top-down" strategy for the reform process. It should be noted that each of these reforms is an add-on to the broader constitutional reengineering agenda that is designed to centralise the political authority of a non-representative centre further. In these cases, we would propose that the design of local government reforms is endogenous rather than exogenous for centralization purposes of the non-representative centre. Pakistan's analysis aims to provide understanding into the good economics of why non-representative governments were keen to promote local decentralisation, which has been dismay formerly

Hindus Us, Muslims, and the Rest Others in Roy's the Ministry of Utmost Happiness

This study explores self and othering in Roy's novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Roy took twenty years to complete this political romance. The narrator of this political romance talks about the others of Indian society, i.e., religious minorities, political traitors, and low caste groups. These others are always striving to secure a place in a biased Indian society. Their quest for identity has often led them to a blind alley where they have found themselves helpless and oppressed evermore. The situation has become worse under the government of the right-wing Hindu party BJP. This study is an attempt to explore the ways how the weaker part of the society is treated as another and outcast in a so-called secular state. Roy has presented the true face of India. This research tries to comprehend her mind and investigates The Ministry of Utmost Happiness multidimensional and multi-layered tale.

Carl Schmitt’s Political Romanticism and the Foundations of Law

Carl Schmitt’s critique of political romanticism is neglected in comparison with his other interventions from the early Weimar period, yet its analysis of the metaphysical foundations of liberalism has important implications for his legal thought. This paper examines the significance of Schmitt’s account of political romanticism from a jurisprudential perspective. It sets out from the question whether – as is often asserted or intimated – Schmitt’s own thought in the Weimar period represents a decisionistic variant of political romanticism. I contend that, while partly justified, this allegation does not take one to the centre of either political romanticism or the motivations for Schmitt’s anti-liberal jurisprudence. In order to do justice to both themes, it is necessary to reflect on the reasons for Schmitt’s inability to find a heteronomous, divine or otherwise, source of legitimation for law. Section 1 outlines the central strands of Schmitt’s polemic against political romanticism. Section 2 applies this analysis to the concept of constituent power with a view to untangling the strands of political romanticism in Schmitt’s conceptualisation of sovereignty. Section 3 then considers the extent to which Schmitt’s later appeal to ‘concrete order thinking’ (konkrete Ordnungsdenken) is capable of providing a more adequate normative foundation for legitimate legal order.

Tadeusz Świecki – przedstawiciel lokalnych elit Narodowej Demokracji

The purpose of this article is to present the political views of Tadeusz Świecki, an activist of the National Democracy in the Płock Mazovia region. The article is based on archival materials, scientific studies and journalistic articles. In structural terms it consists of two separate parts. The first one presents basic biographical data. The second part analyses political views. In order to achieve the aim, two main research methods have been used: biographical and content analysis. The main research hypothesis assumes that Tadeusz Świecki was an undoubted leader of the Płock National Democrats. According to the second hypothesis, he was an original political thinker who tried to synthesize national-democratic views with political Romanticism.

Politics and Ontology of the Image: Godard's Debt to Blanchot

This essay proposes that, beyond the play of allusions, the pervasive and enduring references to Maurice Blanchot in Jean-Luc Godard's films constitute a "clandestine friendship," a constellation of elective affinities, and a debt that thinks the ontology and the politics of the image. It identifies a specific lineage in the troubling parallel of experiences between Blanchot and Godard, that of a "political passion" to borrow the expression Blanchot once used in a letter to Roger Laporte. A singular knotting of aesthetics and politics, this political passion is also closely intertwined with a political romanticism, and at times even with a "revolutionary romanticism" determined by a shared dialogue with German Romanticism and "a fragmentary demand" allied with the strength of protest and refusal.

Materializing Difference: Consumer Culture, Politics, and Ethnicity among Romanian Roma by Péter Berta

Reviewed by: Materializing Difference: Consumer Culture, Politics, and Ethnicity among Romanian Roma by Péter Berta Elena Popa Péter Berta. Materializing Difference: Consumer Culture, Politics, and Ethnicity among Romanian Roma. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. 390 pp. Located in the region of Transylvania, the Gabors are one of the many Roma ethnic populations in Romania. They are generally trilingual and have similar living standards to the non-Roma majority. In Materializing Difference, Berta meticulously follows the social life of silver beakers and roofed tankards—highly valued objects that form the core of the Gabor Roma prestige economy. The author’s oral history data suggest the Gabors have owned beakers and tankards as far back as the mid-19th century. These items were made by non-Roma silversmiths and belonged to churches and non-Roma elites, who used them to preserve wealth. The increased usage of cash and banking services has partially superseded the objects’ social and economic significance among the non-Roma. This has led to their sale, with many being acquired by Transylvanian Roma. In recent decades, Gabors have traded and pawned these objects at prices significantly higher than in antiques markets. Among the many transactions documented by Berta, the most expensive beaker sold for $1,200,000 in 2009 (63). Berta conducted 33 months of multi-sited fieldwork, between 1998 and 2019, mostly with Gabors, but also with Cărhar Roma. He also did research on Romanian and Hungarian antiques markets and monitored transnational auctions. The book draws theoretical inspiration from Appadurai’s (1986) concept of methodological fetishism, critiques of analytical groupism, and the theory of communities of practice, among others. Rather than focus on previously examined Roma “ideologies of [End Page 567] equality-centrism,” it describes and analyzes “the politics of difference”— especially prestige consumption and marriage politics—and their role in the ongoing production of Gabor Roma social and political identities, values, and hierarchies. As such, it contributes a vital perspective to the study of the Roma by showing how socio-economic and political differences are structured within one Roma ethnic population. The book depicts the Roma families as relatively integrated, both economically and socially. Many of them possess significant economic capital and have good relations with and comparable living standards to the non-Roma majority population. This portrayal, the author posits, could serve as an alternative narrative to analyses that tend to stereotypically describe Roma communities as marginalized, poor, rife with interethnic conflict, and characterized by “only slightly differentiated” social relations (14). Furthermore, Berta’s attention to the Gabors’ prestige economy, marriage politics, and hierarchies of patrilines shows convincingly that the Roma’s creation of identities does not occur necessarily in relation to the majority population, but rather in relation to intraethnic identity practices inextricably linked to Roma notions of respectability and social success. The Gabors are, thus, an example of an integrated community whose ethnicized practices construct intraethnic differences and allow them to represent their own Roma ethnic identity and belonging in relation to non-Roma or non-Gabor Roma. Such framing allows Berta to challenge the predominantly negative and homogenizing image of the Roma in Romania and Western Europe. Following the introduction, the book is divided into three parts and a conclusion. Part one comprises six chapters that illustrate the complex ways in which Gabors negotiate and materialize their belonging and difference. Chapter 1 introduces the Gabor Roma “politics of difference” and “ethics of sociability” (i.e., behavior, respectability, solidarity, and social appreciation), seen as intertwined phenomena requiring competitors seeking honor and fame to balance the two. It is this balance, and not egalitarianism, that Gabors regard “as the ideal model of social and economic relations” (52). Also, Roma politics—independent from Romanian politics—is an ethnicized form of politics conducive to hierarchies of prestige and difference organized by ethnicized goods and ideologies of values specific to Gabors’ ethnic identity and history. Thus, purchases of prestige objects and the creation of marital alliances generate reputation that does not translate into social appreciation among non-Roma. [End Page 568] In Chapter 2, Berta demonstrates the translocal, ethnicized, informal, and gendered characteristics of the Gabors’ prestige economy as a consumer subculture. The...

Imagining World Order: Literature and International Law in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 by Chenxi Tang

Reviewed by: Imagining World Order: Literature and International Law in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 by Chenxi Tang Andrea Gadberry Chenxi Tang, Imagining World Order: Literature and International Law in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 2018). Pp. 360; 4 b&w half-tones. $59.95 cloth. In response to Hegel's proviso "that all the great events and characters of world history occur twice, so to speak," Marx located an error: Hegel "forgot to add: the first time as high tragedy, the second time as low farce."1 Chenxi Tang's Inventing World Order: Literature and International Law in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 requires the addition of still further genres to Marx's maxim, at least when it comes to characterizing the world-historical emergence of the early modern European international legal order. In Tang's erudite book, the matter of "world order"—"as much a literary as a legal or political problem" (1)—requires that tragedy and farce make room for epic poetry, political romance, the chronicle, the mirror for princes, the tragicomedy, the sentimental novel, the Bildungsroman, and many other genres along the way.2 Inventing World Order is a generous guide through European legal and literary history. It is also an athletic performance: the book spans three centuries and, by my count, at least eight national traditions (Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, French, German, English, and Swedish—King Gustavus Adolphus makes an early appearance on behalf of Scandinavia (13)—not to mention the lingua franca of Latin!) and analyzes examples too abundant to recount in full here as it portrays both nascent international legal theory and emergent, revived, and reinvented literary genres. The book's range makes it a welcome resource for many potential readers, especially for specialists of one of the book's time periods or linguistic traditions in search of a wider historical and comparative view. In brief, across the book's introduction, six chapters, and epilogue, Tang examines how literary and legal works negotiate relationships between and among sovereigns and states. In this account, the function of literature is at once "to cope with the uncertainty, instability, and incompleteness of international law" (9) and to "leave more visible traces" (11) on an international order than it perhaps can on any individual modern state in which "rationality … mask[s] the poetic operations constitutive of it" (11). In the rules of genre, meanwhile, Tang locates a "normative character" within literary order's constitution into genres, an order which, in turn, shapes and responds to the burgeoning international order around it. The literary sphere forges legal fictions and responds to international strife, all the while indexing the tectonic shifts of early modern statecraft in a period marked by political and epistemic convulsion. The legal axis of the book, so to speak, tells the story of founding fictions and concepts designed to understand and shape "a state-centered world legal order contingent upon the voluntary actions of individual states" (57). Tang moves nimbly through legal history and a history of ideas in and through statecraft, tracing how the subjects of the international order respond to and diagnose the political and legal challenges of the early modern era. Reading Vitoria, Suárez, and Grotius, among many other legal and political philosophers, Tang narrates the emergence of reason of state and, along with it, the advent of "self-preservation, self-interest, and expediency" in the legal and political imagination (61). Along the way, Imagining World Order considers the birth of foundational narratives, concepts, and categories of many kinds. Tang leads the reader from the formation [End Page 739] of legal personality to that of private property, from the appearance of the private individual to the ideal of the cosmopolite. The reader encounters Machiavelli's tips for diplomats (always dissemble!) (50) and meets the new-fangled creature known as the "businessman" who cuts quite an international (and literary) figure as he moves in spaces "outside of a state or between states" (243). The book, then, accounts for "the classical period of international law" (1), but in showing how these famous (sometimes infamous) legal concepts take form and exert force, Tang tells a literary history simultaneously—one that...

New trajectories or accelerating change? Zooarchaeological evidence for Roman transformation of animal husbandry in Northern Italy

Throughout the Western provinces of the Roman Empire, greater economic and political connectivity had a major impact on agricultural production, which grew in scale and specialisation after integration with the Roman state. However, uniquely in Western Europe, farming strategies in Italy began to evolve centuries before the Roman conquest, and many ‘Roman’ patterns associated with livestock size and the relative proportions of different taxa first emerged during the early and middle centuries of the first millennium BC. These changes imply a significant reorganisation of production strategies well before Roman hegemony, even in relatively marginal areas of Italy. Zooarchaeological studies have documented further significant changes to livestock production in Roman times, but the relationship between these developments and earlier trends remains unclear. Through analysis of zooarchaeological data for species representation and livestock biometry from lowland northern Italy (Po–Friulian Plain), this study investigates animal exploitation between the Bronze Age and Late Antiquity in order to characterise the influence of Roman political and economic organisation on animal husbandry. Results demonstrated subregional variation in species representation, and different trajectories in the biometric evolution of cattle, sheep and goats, compared to pigs. Initial steps established in the Iron Age towards a more complex and dynamic livestock economy were accelerated and further reconfigured in Roman times, facilitated by Roman economic organisation and the specialised and large-scale production systems within it. Zooarchaeological trends continued to progress over the Roman period, until further changes at the very end of the chronology considered here—around the sixth century AD—suggest another wave of change.

Laurens E. Tacoma, Roman Political Culture: Seven Studies of the Senate and City Councils of Italy from the First to the Sixth Century AD

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