Tag: Politics in the Ancient World

Articles

POMPEY’S POLITICS AND THE PRESENTATION OF HIS THEATRE-TEMPLE COMPLEX, 61–52 BCE

In spite of all this triumph Pompey also returned to Rome under unfavourable conditions. The majority of the senate did not respect the great general. He came from a recent noble family of late distinction, he did not rise through the ranks of the cursus honorum in the venerable Roman tradition, and he was not familiar with the protocol of the Roman senate…

Articles

Suetonius and his treatment of the Emperor Domitian's favourable accomplishments

Suetonius’ negative portrayal of emperors was not limited to Domitian. Emperors Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero and Vitellius also received negative portrayal in accordance with the senatorial influence and damnatio memoriae evident in the literature of the period. This attitude towards these condemned emperors matched the views of the senatorial aristocracy who were the patrons of literary commissions and their authors.

Articles

DEMOCRATISATION OF GREEK SOCIETY DURING THE ARCHAIC ERA?

In the modern scholarship of the Ancient Greek history there is a well known and well established conception of an universal democratisation of Greek society during the Archaic and Early Classical periods. It could be summarised roughly as follows:1 Af- ter the fall of the Bronze Age Mycenaean civilisation, in the so-called Dark Ages (11th to 8th centuries B.C.), the Greek communities were governed by the kings (basilees).

Articles

Modern States and Ancient Greek History

The problem is that there had already been a certain continuity of knowledge, in part of the Greek language but mostly of Greek history, thanks to historical works of Latin literature in general and along the lines of universal history. These had become the accepted version of history and of the Christian conception of human events; universal history is a model that lends itself perfectly to Christianity and was by then “exemplary”.