1st Edition
Roman Masculinity and Politics from Republic to Empire
This volume explores the role that republican political participation played in forging elite Roman masculinity. It situates familiarly "manly" traits like militarism, aggressive sexuality, and the pursuit of power within a political system based on power sharing and cooperation.
In deliberations in the Senate, at social gatherings, and on military campaign, displays of consensus with other men greased the wheels of social discourse and built elite comradery. Through literary sources and inscriptions that offer censorious or affirmative appraisal of male behavior from the Middle and Late Republic (ca. 300–31 BCE) to the Principate or Early Empire (ca. 100 CE), this book shows how the vir bonus, or "good man," the Roman persona of male aristocratic excellence, modulated imperatives for personal distinction and military and sexual violence with political cooperation and moral exemplarity. While the advent of one-man rule in the Empire transformed political power relations, ideals forged in the Republic adapted to the new climate and provided a coherent model of masculinity for emperor and senator alike. Scholars often paint a picture of Republic and Principate as distinct landscapes, but enduring ideals of male self-fashioning constitute an important continuity.
Roman Masculinity and Politics from Republic to Empire provides a fascinating insight into the intertwined nature of masculinity and political power for anyone interested in Roman political and social history, and those working on gender in the ancient world more broadly.
List of figures
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction
Masculinity, individuality, and the persona
Chapter outline
Chapter One: The Roman Vir
Power, aggression, and dominance
Tyranny and the vir malus
"Republican" masculinity
Conclusion
Chapter Two: The Old Boys’ Club in the Middle Republic
Early values: the convivial brotherhood
Father knows best: imitatio patris
The censor’s task
Militiae: the bad man abroad
Militiae: the good man abroad
Domi: the bad man at home
Domi: the good man at home
Competition from within: electoral contexts
Competition from below: the business class
Conclusion
Chapter Three: Vir and Populus in the Late Republic
A changed political world
Courting the populus
Changes to training and education
Cato and Caesar
Popular apotheosis
Vir divus: Pompey’s command in the East
Conclusion
Chapter Four: Decline and the Imperial Senate
The motif of the decline of manliness
Forging a moral consensus
Imperial electioneering
Competition in performative oratory and literature
Oppositional stances
Agricola’s gloria through obsequium
Chapter Five: Good Emperors and Good Men
Pliny’s optimus princeps
Tiberius in the SC de Cn. Pisone Patre
Imperial exemplarity
Youth’s alternative: Caligula and Nero
Epilogue
Bibliography
Biography
Charles Goldberg is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Bethel University, USA. He studies Greek and Roman political culture, and has published on the history of gender, imperialism, and religion.