Roman Model Research Articles

Women Writing the English Republic, 1625–1681 by Katharine Gillespie

Reviewed by: Women Writing the English Republic, 1625–1681 by Katharine Gillespie David Norbrook Women Writing the English Republic, 1625–1681, by Katharine Gillespie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. 354pp. $120.00 cloth; $96.00 ebook. Women Writing the English Republic, 1625–1681 centers on the English republic of the mid-seventeenth century, but as the dates indicate, its scope extends earlier and later, and the author also aims to challenge assumptions behind much scholarship on early American republicanism. Katharine Gillespie’s book is brimming with ideas and fresh readings of works in print and in manuscript by six women with varied backgrounds and interests, some well known and others likely to be unfamiliar to specialists in the period. To link women with republicanism involves challenging some expectations. Feminist scholars have noted that the foundation of the Roman republic was grounded on Lucretia’s self-sacrifice, an image of passive rather than active virtue. Republicanism as an ideology has often been seen as inherently patriarchal, suspicious of women’s alleged emotional instability and confining them to a private sphere. Many studies of the English republic, my own included, have largely or completely excluded women from consideration. Modern scholarship has centered on secular models for republics while most of the women Gillespie studies were intensely religious, a sphere sometimes assumed to have been largely private and conformist. Gillespie argues, however, that women played an important role in challenging the traditional boundaries of political authority, in some cases through direct engagement with political struggles and in others through utopian re-imagining. Each chapter presents a different political or philosophical paradigm. Lady Eleanor Davies, whose obscure prophetic texts have been dismissed as insane, is here shown to have pioneered and steadily extended a radical critique of Charles I’s regime, which centered on the image from the biblical book of Revelation of the woman in the wilderness who opposed the earthly church. Gillespie draws parallels between Davies’s representations of Charles I as Samson and John Milton’s Samson Agonistes (1671) and argues that such works developed a “common culture of narrative elements” that were to inform John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) (p. 71). Another Puritan woman, Lady Brilliana Harley, is best known as a dutiful wife who defended her family home against a royalist siege in her husband’s absence; Gillespie argues that these public actions were grounded in her earlier reading, recorded in her commonplace book, in which she synthesized Seneca and John Calvin and articulated a vision of the individual and the wife as agents in resisting tyranny. Gillespie shows how Harley instructed her son in these principles through her letters, fashioning him “as a citizen for a new sociopolitical dispensation” in [End Page 482] “an early example of republican motherhood” and was ready to give advice to her husband too (pp. 127, 128). Less well known (and perhaps not fitting well into the republican paradigm) is Isabella Twysden, whose manuscript comments on printed almanacs Gillespie interprets as formulating an innovative skeptical ideology. Anne Bradstreet was long criticized by feminist critics on the rather odd grounds that poetry about the history of politics was not an appropriate subject for a woman, but Gillespie traces the gendered humoral imagery of her earlier poetry as implying a sustained critique of monarchy and argues that Bradstreet’s The Tenth Muse Lately sprung up in America (1650) implied a model for the American colonies’ status as more independent or Greek than the Roman model favored by the republican government. Anne Venn’s little-studied chronicles of her spiritual experiences practice an ideal of strenuous independence of thought. Gillespie argues that she is “as pivotal a part of the war against tyranny as are soldiers” and shows how the publication of her writings in 1658 made a political statement (p. 272). Lucy Hutchinson’s Order and Disorder (1679) is read as preserving republican ideals after the Restoration through alchemical imagery. Gillespie’s work is a rich and kaleidoscopic interdisciplinary study, combining detailed contextual study of individual women’s political agency with more general theoretical concerns. Gillespie proposes her book as inaugurating a “mythopoeic turn” in republican studies, complementing earlier linguistic, cultural, religious...

GRECKIE I RZYMSKIE WZORCE KONSTYTUCJI STANÓW ZJEDNOCZONYCH AMERYKI

GREEK AND ROMAN MODELS FOT THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION Summary The question of the use that the Founding Fathers made of the theoretical achievements and practical experience of ancient political thinkers and politicians has been occupying American scholars for a long time. There is no doubt that they knew the Classics and relied on them. However, this does not automatically mean that their own work benefited from the achievements of the past, as many researchers indicate. The article reviews various aspects and areas of potential indebtedness. The area where the creators of the Constitution sought guidance most intensively was the issue of relations between the federal government and individual states. Rome did not provide guidance in this area but turned out to be much more useful in the discussion of the structure of the legislature. The discussion shows that the Founding Fathers, even when they clearly fell back on the examples taken from Antiquity, did not feel constrained by them. They used whatever facts they needed, freely interpreted others, ignored still others, and did not feel obligated by precedents. In other words, they displayed a clearly utilitarian approach to historical sources and interpreted them so as to best suit their own political goals.

Managing the world: conceptions of imperial rule between republicanism and technocracy

SUMMARYThe article examines a technocratic vision of empire arising in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and its implications for the theorization of empires, the legitimation of large-scale political orders, and their spatial imagination. The role of the Roman model for the British in the decades after 1870 as a resource of policy advice, legitimation, and identity-building serves as a case study for analyzing the role of historical precedence for imperial elites. This analysis opens the perspective onto a notion of empire that significantly differs from the one discussed in recent debates on liberalism and empire: British political actors and observers delineate a concept of empire that is not universalist, but heterogeneous, hierarchical, and technocratic.

The early development of concrete in the domestic architecture of pre-Roman Pompeii

Because of its exceptional state of preservation, Pompeii has traditionally been viewed as an ideal site at which to study the early development of Roman architecture. Scholars have looked to the Pompeian evidence in order to provide parallels for periods and classes of buildings that in Rome are less well documented archaeologically. The focus of recent debate has been on the Mid- to Late Republican transition, with an emphasis on building types whose introduction at Pompeii would demonstrate a direct cultural link with practice at Rome. The prevailing view is that both the town-planning and the architecture of Pompeii in the 3rd-2nd c. B.C. were strongly influenced by Roman models or prototypes. Similarly, there has been a tendency to refer to the Pompeian materials as the missing link for the high dating of early Roman concrete architecture in Rome, which would have been introduced around the same period. In a recent review of the evidence from Rome, I have argued for a later chronology, which, inevitably, prompts a reconsideration of the development and cultural significance of concrete construction at Pompeii.

The Latins and Their Legal Status in the Context of the Cultural and Political Integration of Pre- and Early Roman Italy

Summary:Traditional concepts of ‚Romanization‘ prior to the Social War are currently meeting with growing criticism. Converging developments in Italy are no longer uniformly explained with deliberate Roman agency or an inescapably attractive Roman model. This context offers an intriguing framework for a renewed discussion of the ‚Latin Rights‘: while previously viewed as a major catalyst for legal and political integration, a recent study has argued that the Latins were barely ‚privileged‘ prior to ca. 125 BC, when the Romans radically changed their attitude to them, and the legal conditions accordingly. Responding to various criticisms, this article corroborates the paradigm shift and seeks to highlight further ramifications.

Aspectos constructivos y decorativos de la villa romana de Puente de la Olmilla (Albaladejo, Ciudad Real)

El esquema constructivo de esta villa responde al modelo típico romano: una serie de estancias distribuidas alrededor de un patio central, que las ilumina y desde el que se accede a ellas mediante los pasillos circundantes, cubiertos con pisos de mosaico, al igual que varias habitaciones (dos de ellas adornadas con mosaicos figurativos). Puente de la Olmilla tenía un pórtico en la fachada, combinación que corresponde a un tipo de construcción poco común en Hispania. Esta villa es un claro testimonio del profundo proceso romanizador sufrido por el medio rural en este territorio. Sin duda, este ámbito de la Meseta Sur tenía para los romanos un carácter estratégico por su privilegiado emplazamiento geográfico dentro de la Península Ibérica y esa fue una de las causas de que lo incluyeran en su red viaria.

Generalized exponential geometric extreme distribution

ABSTRACTRecently, Louzada et al. proposed a new three-parameter distribution with decreasing, increasing, and unimodal hazard functions. They have provided several properties of the distribution, and discussed different inferential issues. In this article we discuss a generalized version of the model following the approach of Marshall and Olkin. The proposed model is more flexible than the Louzada–Marchi–Roman model, although they have the same number of parameters. The model has three unknown parameters, and the hazard function can take different shapes. We propose using the expectation–maximization (EM) algorithm to compute the maximum likelihood estimators of the unknown parameters. We further consider the bivariate generalization of the proposed model and discuss its different properties. The EM algorithm can be used to estimate the unknown parameters in case of the bivariate model also. One bivariate data set has been analyzed for illustrative purposes, and the performance is quite satisfactory.

Exercitus barbarorum. Organizacja i działania wojsk ludów germańskich osiadłych w V i VI wieku w basenie Morza Śródziemnego

Organization of the armies of the barbarian states that emerged on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea in the 5th and 6th centuries can only partially be recon­structed. Primary sources and archeological records vary depending on the state. The preserved evidence relating to the military power of the Vandals and Goths is relatively good, much less is known about the Svevs. All of the discussed barbar­ian armies were presumably grouped into units based on ten. Better insight can only be provided into the top military ranks. An interesting issue presented in the thesis is to what degree the former tribal structures were preserved and how far the Roman models were followed by the barbaric people. None of the armies of the kingdoms referred to above can fully be compared with the Germanic army that existed in the north of the Medieval Europe, which inevitably leads to sub­stantive errors. All the foregoing kingdoms had armies mostly composed of native warriors which, however, did not guarantee their purely Germanic character. The author tries to determine to what extent the Roman population or inhabitants of certain provinces, e.g. the Moors joined the military organizations of kingdoms under the Germanic rule. Examples of the Roman officers and commanders who sought carrier in the Gothic army or representatives of subdued nations serving in the Vandals’ navy or auxiliaries encourage to perform further study in this field.

Emulation on the Shakespearean Stage by Vernon Guy Dickson (review)

Vernon Guy Dickson. Emulation on Shakespearean Stage. Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013. Pp. xx + 189. 60.00 [pounds sterling]. Early in Emulation on Shakespearean Stage, Vernon Guy Dickson quotes Quintilians The Orators Education: I do want Paraphrase to be mere passive reproduction, but to rival and vie with original in expressing same thoughts (quoted 11). Appearing in final paragraph of Dicksons book, another quotation from The Orators Education tempers ancient rhetoricians teaching on contentious imitation: no man can draw level with man in whose footsteps he feels bound to tread (quoted 172). In Dicksons account, in English combined these precepts. At once competition and homage, textual expression and lived behavior, emulation was seen as rote repetition but as an act of or construction, self-construction in daily life--governed by decorum, though also potentially generative of transgressive invention (12). This understanding of moreover, created that bred individuals who read selves closely like texts and attempted to shape themselves based on wide range of models, and persons, historical and contemporary--sometimes as agonists, sometimes as exemplars, sometimes simply as peers (xvii). In mounting case for this culture of emulation, Dickson draws on and deviates from Rene Girard's mimetic rivalry, Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance self-fashioning, and Thomas M. Greenes era of imitation. Emulation on Shakespearean Stage thus ends up enacting very concept it examines. The result is study of English rhetorical and dramatic practice that provides useful review of scholarship and reads early modern drama in often generative ways. Emulation on Shakespearean Stage begins with genealogy of of in which early modern dramatists and their audiences engaged. In chapter 1 Dickson reviews principal early theories of imitation, with particular attention to Aristotle and Quintilian and to Thomas Wilson, Roger Ascham, and Sir Philip Sidney. This chapter proves especially useful in demonstrating differences in priorities between ancient and early modern rhetoricians and among English writers. For instance, although they all emphasize self-fashioning through emulative education, Wilson privileges imitation in context of classroom learning; Ascham, of social codes of behavior; and Sidney, of virtuous action (14-24). This blurring of texts (fiction and nonfiction, art and life), Dickson argues, is only foundational to emulative theory in but also the necessary condition of humanist ideal of an emulative theater on Shakespearean stage (62). The next four chapters closely read plays by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Philip Massinger that take classical Rome, including its texts, culture, and ethos, as object of emulation. Each of plays also portrays a confounding enactment of Roman models (29). This compelling turn of phrase appears in chapter 2, arguably strongest chapter in book. Here, Dickson demonstrates how in Andronicus characters compete to outdo available texts and each others imitations of these texts and precedents, constructing a destructive pattern of conflicted, partial, and uncritical emulations (28). Classroom learning sets Shakespearean stage for Roman patterns of behavior that ought to promote social and political action worthy of but miscalculations in characters' discernments of what and how to emulate lead to escalating retributive violence rather than mercy. Although not as overt as Titus (53), Hamlet enacts failure of emulative reading of classical models to yield anything other than rote repetition. In chapter 3 Dickson focuses on Hamlet and lapse of decorum (match[ing] deeds to . …

The Wolf and the Hare: Boudica’s Political Bodies in Tacitus and Dio

This article analyzes how Tacitus and Dio use the concept of exemplarity in their narratives of Boudica’s revolt in order to present the queen as a complex model of female leadership. Tacitus’ Boudica assimilates herself to positive Roman models from Livy; Dio’s Boudica separates herself from Herodotean anti-models, as well as from the imperial women of Rome. In her condemnation of Nero, Dio’s Boudica criticizes the populace for succumbing to the influence of a negative model of leadership. Exempla contribute to each author’s characterization of Boudica; a comparative reading reveals significant differences in each author’s position on the efficacy of exempla in historiography.

Nijmegen, from Oppidum Batavorum to Ulpia Noviomagus, civitas of the Batavi: two successive civitas-capitals

Nijmegen is the oldest city in the Netherlands. The modern name refers to its Roman origin. The history of Nijmegen during the first centuries of the Christian era mirrors events in the north-west of the Roman Empire. Around 19 BC, at the start of the third phase of conquest to the north with much military activity, the Oppidum Batavorum was founded in the centre of modern Nijmegen. Further growth of the town was cut short by increasing pressure on the local inhabitants, culminating in the Batavian Revolt of 69-70 AD, during which the Oppidum Batavorum was destroyed. A period of integration followed, resulting in the formation of the province of Germania inferior. During this period, the Batavian capital was moved westwards, to the low-lying western part of Nijmegen, where a new vicus was founded. In about 100 AD this settlement was granted municipal status and a new name (Ulpia Noviomagus), and grew into a town after the typical Roman model. After several generations of progress and prosperity, this settlement came to an abrupt end in the last quarter of the 2nd c.

Jihad oder Parusieverzögerung?

This essay’s guiding thesis assumes that the Christianization of the Saxons as well as the spatial and legal integration of Saxony into the Frankish realm during the late 8th and 9th centuries was facilitated by the ordering or arrangement of space according to Roman models. These spatial orderings were accompanied and reinforced by historical and eschatological interpretations as well as, were implemented by the, more or less, voluntary acceptance of the new order by the Saxon nobility, who recognized the opportunities associated with the active integration into the Frankish system. Both the meaning of this process and the terms used to describe it are treated in this essay. On the one hand, in order to interpret these events and processes, it is useful – if not necessary – to take a look at the spread of Christianity within the territories of the former Roman Empire up till 800 (i. e., Charlemagne’s coronation as Imperator Augustus), for this development appears to serve as the constructive basis for Charles’ (and that of his contemporaries) interpretation of the course of history. On the other, it is just as important to compare the interpretations of these events (including contemporary perspectives) in order to do justice to the historical significance of Saxony’s integration into the Frankish realm as the successful successor to the Roman Empire.While this contribution primarily treats the historical sources, the title of this essay was decidedly inspired by more contemporary studies: Hans-Dietrich Kahl’s work on the escalation of the Saxon wars, Yitzhak Hen’s analysis »Charlemagne’s jihad« (2006), as well as several other equally influential contemporary works focusing on the eschatological meaning of the year 800 as well as on the continuity of the Roman Empire as a force delaying the Parousia of Christ in the theological debate since the Ascension Day almost two millennia ago.

SOBRE EL MODELO DE CONTRATACIÓN DE SERVICIOS REMUNERADOS EN EL DERECHO ROMANO: ALGUNOS ASPECTOS RELEVANTES DE LA LOCATIO CONDUCTIO

This paper aims to explain the main aspects that characterize service contracts in Roman Law. It is well known that paid services were considered a form of lease (locatio conductio). This approach can explain why most part of the nineteenth century civil codes considered service contracts as a kind of lease. However, this paper does not attempt to explain the reception of roman model in those civil codes, but to establish some basis upon which that study can be conducted instead. Towards this aim, the following issues of locatioconductio are addressed: its external delimitation; its internal division (the unity or trichotomy debate); and some key substantive aspects of the roman regulation of service contracts.

A Great & Wretched City: Promise and Failure in Machiavelli’s Florentine Political Thought, by Mark Jurdjevic

A Great & Wretched City: Promise and Failure in Machiavelli's Florentine Political Thought, by Mark Jurdjevic. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2014, 295 pp. $49.95 US (cloth). Mark Jurdjevic focuses on two texts written by Machiavelli in the 1520s--the Discourse on Florentine affairs after the death of the younger Lorenzo [de ' Medici] and the Florentine Histories--contrasting their political thought with his two most famous political works, The Prince and the Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livy, both written between 1513 and 1519. Jurdjevic's thesis is that the two later works represent a new direction: rejecting the individualistic emphasis of The Prince and the ancient Roman model advocated in the Discourses, Machiavelli now proposed a reform scheme based on radical institutional change. Much of Jurdjevic's argument is correct. Neither The Prince nor the Discourses is a text exclusively or even extensively focused on the particular problems of Machiavelli's native Florence: the former is directed to a potential Medici new prince in the Papal States, while the latter offers ancient Rome as a standard by which to judge modern politics (therefore including several discussions of Florence, as one among many modern states compared with the Roman paradigm). The Histories provide numerous specific examples of the disastrous institutional structures lambasted on a general level in the Discourse. Following the lead of Francesco Bausi and Humfrey Butters, Jurdjevic documents a sympathy for the traditional Florentine aristocracy in the two later works, absent from the populism dominant in The Prince and the Discourses. The most original contribution of Jurdjevic's book is a revealing demonstration that, in the Histories, Machiavelli is just as critical of the Florentine populace as he is of the Florentine elite (who replaced the ancient nobility), revising an interpretation by John Najemy, who had emphasized Machiavelli's populism in contrast to the aristocratic penchant of earlier Florentine political thinkers such as Leonardo Bruni. Nevertheless, Jurdjevic's analysis is sometimes misleading. Machiavelli did not reject reform initiatives by individuals in the two later works: in both, the reform scheme had to be implemented by Florence's Medici rulers (Pope Leo X explicitly in the Discourse, Pope Clement VII implicitly in the Histories [III. 1]). There is no evidence that Machiavelli was a friend or ally of the pro-Savonarolan leader Francesco Valori (p. 44), opposition to whose party helped Machiavelli gain appointment to the Florentine chancery in 1498. Jurdjevic repeats a blunder (p. 69) that vitiated two of his earlier publications: all Machiavelli scholars agree, on orthographical and palaeographical grounds, that the text now known as The Natures of Florentine Men was not written as a draft for unfinished chapters of the Histories but rather dates to 1506-1508. …

Ritratti di Leptis Magna: modelli, produzione, contesto tra la dinastia flavia e gli Antonini

AbstractDifferent types of marble portraits are discussed: both official Imperial images as well as private portraits, with the intention of illustrating the relationship to Roman models and to highlight stylistic and technical characteristics belonging to local sculptors. The portraits belonged to honourific statues dedicated in Lepcis Magna in public prestigious areas (Old Forum, Theatre, Serapeum, Hadrianic Baths). In these public meeting places the Imperial government officials, civic authorities and the privateevergeteshad the opportunity of celebrating the central power and its representatives, from the Emperor and the members of his family to provincial functionaries; personal aspirations of Romanisation and of making a political and administrative career; one's own generosity, personal wealth, preeminent role in civic society, as well as accumulating honours, visibility and social prestige. In the case of some statues of private individuals it is uncertain whether they were intended to be honourific or funerary. The chronological span, extending from the Flavian to the end of the Antonine period, corresponds to the period of greatest social stability and economic prosperity in Tripolitania and in Lepcis Magna in particular. From the analysis carried out, certain distinctive traits of Lepcitan portraiture between the first and second century AD emerge. The influence of the Graeco-Alexandrine tradition, more or less filtered through Cyrene, which held a significant role throughout the early Imperial age, tends to weaken and, at the latest by the end of the Flavian period, to disappear altogether. Local workshops, by now well trained, and in some cases identifiable through a distinctive formal language, become strongly influenced by Rome, either directly or through Carthage, capital of the province of Africa Proconsularis. Alongside this component is the growing influence of Asia Minor, fed by the increasing importation of marble from the eastern part of the empire, which would also have a great deal of influence on architectural decoration. The presence of a masterpiece in the Asiatic style, the female portrait-statue from the Serapeum, is the most striking testimonial of this evolutionary trend.

A RELEVÂNCIA DO CAPITAL SOCIAL COMO ELEMENTO PROPULSOR DA ARTICULAÇÃO DOS ATORES LOCAIS EM PROL DO DESENVOLVIMENTO REGIONAL

O presente artigo tem como objetivo analisar, no âmbito do CONDESUS, a relação existente entre capital social e o desenvolvimento regional, a partir de uma pesquisa qualitativa, de natureza descritiva e delineamento de estudo de caso. Para sistematização, utilizou-se o modelo de Román e Rodriguez (2004), que propõe as seguintes categorias: Dimensões de Capital Social (C1); Mecanismos (C2); e Resultados (C3). Os resultados apontaram que o CONDESUS possibilitou a realização de um planejamento regional, através da elaboração de projetos articulados e de planos diretores locais e regionais.

ASPECTS OF MULTICULTURALISM IN THE MULOMEDICINA OF VEGETIUS*

Thanks to the theme for this conference (i.e. Multiculturalism in Antiquity) I have been prompted to look at the Mulomedicina of Vegetius from an angle that has not yet been explored. Like other Latin medical and veterinary treatises this work synthesises Greek theories for Roman use. But the kind of opposition to Greek medical ideas that Cato had voiced in the second century BC1 and that Pliny had echoed 200 years later2 is no longer an issue in this late text. The domestic medicine of the early Romans, based on incantations and herbal compounds and applied to both people and animals, had long since assimilated Greek concepts and therapies.3 The medical principles underlying the Mulomedicina derive from the “methodist” doctrines introduced by the Greek physician Asclepiades into Rome in the second century BC or early first century BC4 But Vegetius’s Mulomedicina opens a window on to the equine healthcare models of other peoples, usually referred to collectively as “barbarians”, but specific mention is made of “the Huns”. These management practices appear to function independently of and outside the existing Roman model, thus justifying discussion of them under the label of “multiculturalism”. I intend first to set Vegetius’ treatise briefly in its literary context, then to examine those passages in the work which have bearing on late Roman contacts with non-Roman hippiatric systems.

Wagner Overthrows the Gods

Wagner Overthrows the Gods Rüdiger Safranski (bio) translated from the German by Robert E. Goodwin From Romanticism: A German Affair When Richard Wagner sets to work on Rienzi in 1838—his great opera about a failed revolution in the Rome of 1347—the Young German ideas of freedom, national unity, and progress are prominent in his mind. He is kapellmeister in Riga, thrice-humiliated by the miserable condition of the local theater, by creditors who are constantly dunning him for payment, and by his wife Minna who has run off with her lover. Wagner leaves the city in haste, bound for French soil, which he reaches after an adventurous voyage—fearful storms that force the ship to anchor off the Norwegian coast—with the unfinished score of Rienzi in his luggage. He remains in Paris until 1842, years of coldness inside and out, years of lostness and misery. He becomes friends with Heinrich Heine, who helps him financially and provides him with Romantic material for later works, the stories of Tannhäuser and the Flying Dutchman. With the sparkling success of Meyerbeer before his eyes he comes more and more to hate the city that refuses to accord him the recognition he feels is his due. He writes later, in a letter to Theodor Uhlig, “that I no longer believe in any other revolution save that which begins with the burning down of Paris” (October 22, 1850). The Paris of 1840 becomes the Rome of 1347, where the innkeeper’s son Cola di Rienzi, relying on a popular uprising against the ruling aristocracy, seeks to establish a republic after the ancient Roman model, but is then forced to suffer abandonment by the populace. In Wagner’s opera, Rienzi stands on the balcony of the capitol and tries one last time to win over the crowd that has been turned against him by a papal legate, but he receives only a hail of stones for his efforts. The building is set on fire and collapses, burying Rienzi along with his utopian vision of freedom and the people’s happiness. Rienzi and the degraded city of Rome—a constellation in which Richard Wagner, musical tribune of the people, perfectly well recognizes his own destined role. And there is another who recognizes himself in Rienzi. After attending a performance of the Romantic opera in Linz in 1906, a young man of seventeen years is led by this “blessed music” to the most consequential conviction “that I too must someday succeed in uniting the German Empire and making it great once more.” So Adolf Hitler later told Albert Speer. Richard Wagner’s opera about a failed revolutionary becomes a European success. Theatrical pomp, throng-filled scenes, and magical sets were a challenge for large stages, which is what Wagner, who wanted finally to escape the “misery [End Page 111] of the corner nook,” intended they should be. Wagner leaves Paris in 1842 a famous man. He becomes court kapellmeister in Dresden. But he is soon dissatisfied. His salary is not adequate to his lavish lifestyle. The debts are mounting up again. He sees himself and his artistic career in the stranglehold of the moneyed interests. He hatches a reform plan to enhance the effectiveness of the stage and place the whole direction in his own hands. Opera should do more than serve luxury and pleasure; it should provide progressive, democratic incentives. But he gets nowhere with his suggestions. He is bored by the routine work required by his position. It is the revolutionary unrest of 1848–49 that finally brings change. Looking back on those exciting months, he writes to Minna on May 14, 1849: Deeply dissatisfied with my position & finding little pleasure in my art . . . deeply in debt . . . I was at odds with the world, I ceased to be an artist . . . & became—in thought, if not in deed—a revolutionary plain & simple, in other words I sought fresh ground for my mind’s latest artistic creations in a radically transformed world. But Wagner became a revolutionary in energetic fact, not just in attitude. He wrote pamphlets against the aristocracy and the bourgeois plutocracy. When in April 1849 the Saxon king dissolved Dresden...

Efterkrigsritualet – En komparativ analyse af de danske krigsbytteofringer

The post-war ritual – a comparative analysis of the Danish war booty offerings and the Roman triumphsThis article is inspired by a theory, which postulates that the Roman triumphs should be seen as an inspirational source relative to the interpretation of war booty offerings found in Danish bogs, and aims to examine the validity of this claim. The so-called triumph theory originates in the discussion of whether the military equipment recovered from Danish bogs stems from defensive or offensive battles. According to the triumph theory, the war booty was brought home from battles fought in foreign parts by a victorious Germanic people. It was then was placed in a triumph procession, following the Roman model, with display of the booty, and finally sacrificed in a lake according to traditional Germanic custom.After a general introduction to the Roman triumphs (fig. 1) and the Danish war booty offerings (fig. 2), some of the elements making up these two ceremonies are presented, specifically the actual material war booty, the human captives and the animals (figs. 4-5). There are distinct differences between the two ceremonies, for example in the war booty included in the Roman triumphs (fig. 3) and the Germanic war booty offerings, respectively. One discrepancy, which is difficult to ignore, is the treatment of, and further potential for reuse of, the captured weapons of the enemy displayed in the two ceremonies. There are examples where booty from the Romans’ triumphs was later reused. This could not be the case for the Germanic war booty offerings, whereby weapons underwent such a massive process of destruction and, furthermore, were then deposited in lakes, making reuse seem impossible.The locations where the respective ceremonies took place – the city of Rome and South Scandinavian lakes – are then presented.An alternative explanation for the war booty offerings is then examined. Instead of seeing them as a Germanic version of the Roman triumphs, could the offerings be interpreted as Roman victory trophies (fig. 6)? This idea is rejected due to the lack of evidence for the sites of the offerings also being that of the actual battle field.Finally, attention is turned to the classical writers, who wrote about the Germanic and Gallic custom of depositing of military equipment, in order to extract what they can say about the gods whom the two ceremonies were intended to benefit.In the conclusion, the arguments are summed up in support of the author’s view that the triumph theory does not provide a convincing explanation for the Danish war booty offerings.Pernille Mosholm Boye ThulstrupForhistorisk ArkæologiInstitut for Kultur og SamfundAarhus Universitet

Seacoasts in History: An Interview with John R. Gillis

Seacoasts in History: An Interview with John R. Gillis Donald A. Yerxa “WESTERN CIVILIZATION IS LANDLOCKED, MENTALLY IF not physically.” So begins John R. Gillis’s The Human Shore: Seacoasts in History (University of Chicago Press, 2012). Gillis challenges the “terracentric” orientation of most history writing and attempts to recover humanity’s 100,000-year coastal experience. Gillis, a professor of history emeritus at Rutgers University, is the author of several books, including Islands of the Mind: How the Human Imagination Created the Atlantic World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Senior editor Donald A. Yerxa interviewed him in March 2013. Donald A. Yerxa: What has been your own personal relationship to coasts? John R. Gillis: Rachel Carson did not arrive at the shore until she was an adult and never learned to swim. I, too, arrived late, beginning with summers on a small island off the coast of Maine, becoming bicoastal when I became a permanent resident of Berkeley upon retirement. In researching this book, I discovered that I am part of that surge to the sea that began in the last half of the 20th century and continues today at an ever-increasing rate. Today it is hard not to be aware of the shore, even if one does not live near one. Yerxa: Would you provide our readers with a brief summary of your argument inThe Human Shore? Gillis: Shores have largely been ignored by historians. Apart from Alain Corbin’s Lure of the Sea: The Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World (University of California Press, 1994) and John Stilgoe’s Alongshore (Yale University Press, 1994), they have been left to the sciences. The Human Shore makes the case for thinking of shores as central to the evolution of our species. It takes us back to the moment when Homo sapiens appeared at the southern cape of Africa about 164,000 years ago and follows their remarkably swift colonization of the world, making the case that, while we have made shores what they are today, shores have also played an important role in making us as a species. Shores are usually treated as the place history begins or ends, but I place them at the center of a historical narrative that is global in scope, a story that is by no means finished as we face the challenges posed by global warming. Modern historical writing, the product of 19th-century nation building, has been relentlessly terrestrial. The sea enters in mainly as something to be crossed, an enabling factor but not central to the territorial narrative. It is therefore important to remember that the world was discovered by sea and that most of the world’s great empires, Rome being an exception, were seaborne in nature. Like all else, conquest moved faster by water than by land. From the Phoenicians and the Greeks onward, alongshore colonies gave access to political and economic power requiring little territorial conquest. This was also the case in the early modern period, when, with the exception of Spain, all the great empires were amphibious. The British, Dutch, and French were satisfied with alongshore or riverine enclaves that gave them access to inland resources by virtue of trade without the expense of territorial conquest. The gold and silver that justified Spain’s adoption of the Roman model proved in the long run a liability. Not until the 19th century were the interiors of continents conquered, and that was made possible by the Industrial Revolution and the railroad. Today, the great trading empires have again become seaborne, a prime reason why coasts have become so populated in the early 21st century. Click for larger view View full resolution A detail from Balthasar Friedrich Leizelt, Vuë de Salem, 1770s. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-41172]. Yerxa: You stress that coasts are special places known as “ecotones.” What does that mean? And why is it important to appreciate this fact? Gillis: I first took history offshore in 2004 with the publication of Islands of the Mind: How the Human Imagination Created the Atlantic World, a history of the idea of the island in Western culture. Since then my interests have...