Harriet I. Flower

Ancestor masks and aristocratic power in Roman culture

In the first comprehensive study of Roman ancestor masks in English, Harriet Flower explains the reasons behind the use of wax masks in the commemoration of politically prominent family members by the elite society of Rome. Broadening her approach from the purely art historical, Flower traces the functional evolution of ancestor masks, from their first appearance in the third century BC to their last mention in the sixth century AD, through the examination of literary sources in both prose and verse, legal texts, epigraphy, archaeology, numismatics, and art. It is by putting these masks, which were worn by actors at the funerals of the deceased, into their legal, social, and political context that Flower is able to elucidate their central position in the media of the time and their special meaning as symbols of power and prestige.

The Crisis of the Republic

TIBERIUS GRACCHUS AND THE CONFLICT OVER LAND REFORM When Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus took office as tribune of the plebs on 10 December 134 B.C., everything in the Roman Republic seemed to be in fine working order. Romes dangerous rival Carthage had been destroyed; the kingdom of Macedonia had become a province; the whole world of the Hellenistic states was now under Roman control. Rome faced the annoyance of a slave revolt in Sicily and a guerilla war around the town of Numantia in Spain, but neither conflict posed a serious threat, and both were already in the process of being brought to a successful conclusion. In the city of Rome itself, the leading men of the most prominent political families, the nobility of office (nobilitas), dominated political life from their seats in the senate. They knew how to bring one or the other recalcitrant magistrate to heel, and the same applied to the occasional tribune of the plebs who might prove too independent. They were flexible enough to integrate talented and ambitious social climbers into their ranks and clever enough to include all the citizens in the making of political decisions in the various types of assemblies - and particularly to entrust to them the choice between the rival candidates in the competition for political office. Less than a year later, everything had fundamentally changed, according to Appian of Alexandria, writing in the preface to his history of the Roman civil wars. A political clash had ended in assassination and death; further fighting would follow, first in the city and then for the city, eventually culminating in the short-lived domination of Caesar and finally in the establishment of the principate by Augustus.

Alternatives to written history in Republican Rome

This volume is about historical writing at Rome from the first emergence of historiography to its full flowering in the high imperial period and its later influence in European culture. As such this book serves as a companion to a series of prose authors who chose to write formal “written history” in terms both of genre and of content. Every ancient text has something to tell us about the past, particularly about the society in which it was written. By contrast Roman historians consciously set out to give an account of the past, mostly in relation to their own times and to its political culture. Our picture of Roman history is heavily dependent on the historiographical texts that have survived, aswell as on other prose histories, now lost, that served as the sources and models of the works we can still read. For the Romans themselves, however, the past was recalled and represented by many different types of texts, monuments, and rituals, both before and after historiography became a formal written genre of prose literature at Rome. Moreover, the vast majority of Romans could not read and only had very limited access to literary texts. Historiography as a literary genre is, therefore, by definition the alternative that emerged around 200 BCE to a wide variety of more or less traditional forms of memory making in Roman culture.

Rome and Carthage

The wars between Rome and Carthage, the Punic Wars, were arguably the most critical Rome ever fought. Before the first, Rome was a purely Italian power and its forces had never operated outside peninsular Italy; by the end of the last, its armies had fought in Sicily, Africa, Albania, France, Spain, Greece, and Turkey, and it had acquired its first provinces in Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, and Africa and now dominated the Mediterranean world. After Hannibals brief appearance before Rome in 211 (all dates are B.C. unless otherwise noted), it was to be over 600 years before a foreign enemy next appeared at Romes gates. The first war (264—241) was mainly fought in and around Sicily, apart from one or two Carthaginian raids on the Italian coast and a brief and disastrous Roman invasion of Africa in 256/5. It ended with the defeat of a Carthaginian fleet bringing supplies to the citys beleaguered army in Sicily. By the terms of the peace, Carthage was obliged to pay a huge indemnity and to withdraw its forces from Sicily and the islands between Sicily and Africa. Three years later, Rome used the opportunity of Carthages involvement in a savage war with its mercenary army to increase the indemnity and seize Sardinia.

The Republican Economy and Roman Law: Regulation, Promotion, or Reflection?

The half millennium that runs from the revolution of 509 to the beginning of the principate saw the transformation of the Roman state from a regional power into a world empire. Thus, to speak of the Roman economy in the singular is misleading, as there is little justification, other than the common denominator of the political institutions referred to as “republican,” to consider in one and the same chapter an economic system that underwent the most drastic changes, while showing endless diversity with regard to times and places, structures and scales, or actors and goods. Clearly, however, a family of small farmers settled in the vicinity of Rome throughout the period would have seen much less change than their counterparts in the more rapidly developing area surrounding Paris from the Renaissance until our time. Although a substantial part of the population in Antiquity remained involved in agricultural production at all times, the Roman people of the republican period went through a series of social and economic revolutions of global historical significance. Roman imperialism in Italy and around the Mediterranean Sea was accompanied or followed by economic and fiscal exploitation of newly formed overseas provinces. It resulted in uneven demographic growth, the enrichment of the upper classes, some degree of urbanization linked with colonization, and the development of municipal institutions.