Content area
Full text
THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 529
Roman literary and cultural historians should read this book, and it will also be widely influential in many other fields of ancient studies. The volume places Roman evidence in the broader fields of comparative history and post-colonial studies and so will encourage interdisciplinary discussion. In short, there is a great deal to like in it. W. has provided a vigorous and exciting investigation of a major set of problems at the heart of the Roman imperial experience, and he deserves the highest praise.
Rice University M I C H A E L M A A S mailto:[email protected]
Web End [email protected]
R E P U B L I C A N I S M A N D E M P I R E
W I L K I N S O N ( S . ) Republicanism during the Early Roman Empire.
Pp. vi + 263. London and New York: Continuum, 2012. Paper, 19.99 (Cased, 65). ISBN: 978-1-4411-2052-6 (978-1-4411-3793-7 hbk).
doi:10.1017/S0009840X13001042
Scholarship on the history of ancient Rome has traditionally been kept to two very distinctive categories one either writes on the Republic or on the Empire. Even though scholars generally understand that the Roman Republic, as a governing institution, ended more or less officially with Octavians victory at the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C., there is still considerable evidence, both literary and material, which indicates that the spirit and memory of the Republic lingered well into the first century of the rule of emperors. W.s book comes upon a wave of recent concentrated interest in the Roman Republic, its systems of government (F. Pina Polo, The Consul at Rome: the Civil Functions of the Consuls in the Roman Republic [2011]), its imperialism (N. Rosenstein, Rome and the Mediterranean, 290 to 146 BC: the Imperial Republic [2012]) and its ultimate demise (C.S. MacKay, The Breakdown of the Roman Republic: from Oligarchy to Empire [2009]). The legacy of the Republic in the early Roman Empire has already been given consideration in A.M. Gowings The Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture (2005), but primarily from the perspective of memory. But in contrast to these other works, W. brings to bear the legacy of the Roman Republic and its impact on the...