Models are of central importance in many scientific contexts. The centrality of models such as inflationary models in cosmology, general-circulation models of the global climate, the double-helix model of DNA, evolutionary models in biology, agent-based models in the social sciences, and general-equilibrium models of markets in their respective domains is a case in point (the Other Internet Resources section at the end of this entry contains links to online resources that discuss these models). Scientists spend significant amounts of time building, (...) testing, comparing, and revising models, and much journal space is dedicated to interpreting and discussing the implications of models. In short, models are one of the principal instruments of modern science. (shrink)

GRW Theory postulates a stochastic mechanism assuring that every so often the wave function of a quantum system is `hit', which leaves it in a localised state. How are we to interpret the probabilities built into this mechanism? GRW theory is a firmly realist proposal and it is therefore clear that these probabilities are objective probabilities (i.e. chances). A discussion of the major theories of chance leads us to the conclusion that GRW probabilities can be understood only as either single (...) case propensities or Humean objective chances. Although single case propensities have some intuitive appeal in the context of GRW theory, on balance it seems that Humean objective chances are preferable on conceptual grounds because single case propensities suffer from various well know problems such as unlimited frequency tolerance and lack of a rationalisation of the principal principle. (shrink)

Il est commun, aujourd'hui, d'associer la démocratie au consensus, et ce d'une double manière : d'une part en admettant qu'elle est le meilleur régime politique possible, d'autre part en considérant que l'accord vaut intrinsèquement mieux que le désaccord, et l'entente que le conflit: La qualité de la démocratie tiendrait à ses débats publics, qui à la fois rendent possible la confrontation des points de vue, tout en y mettant fin par l'obtention de consensus éclairés et légitimés par la règle de (...) la majorité. Et si le conflit, au contraire, dans certaines conditions, devait servir de principe à la vie politique? Il ne suffit pas de vivre en démocratie pour rendre la démocratie vivante. La démocratie n'est pas un régime mais un questionnement. Elle exige des citoyens une interrogation continue sur le bien commun à suivre. Machiavel n'était pas un démocrate. Mais c'est étrangement en actualisant sa pensée, dans le sillage des travaux de Lefort, qu'il est possible d'associer le conflit civil avec l'imaginaire social pour redynamiser la démocratie par la tension conflictuelle entre l'idéologie et l'utopie. Penser la démocratie à partir de ce que donne à penser Machiavel : voilà ce que s'efforce de faire Sébastien Roman, pour proposer dans une perspective républicaine le modèle d'un espace public dissensuel."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Models are of central importance in many scientific contexts. The centrality of models such as the billiard ball model of a gas, the Bohr model of the atom, the MIT bag model of the nucleon, the Gaussian-chain model of a polymer, the Lorenz model of the atmosphere, the Lotka-Volterra model of predator-prey interaction, the double helix model of DNA, agent-based and evolutionary models in the social sciences, or general equilibrium models of markets in their respective domains are cases in point. (...) Scientists spend a great deal of time building, testing, comparing and revising models, and much journal space is dedicated to introducing, applying and interpreting these valuable tools. In short, models are one of the principal instruments of modern science. -/- Philosophers are acknowledging the importance of models with increasing attention and are probing the assorted roles that models play in scientific practice. The result has been an incredible proliferation of model-types in the philosophical literature. Probing models, phenomenological models, computational models, developmental models, explanatory models, impoverished models, testing models, idealized models, theoretical models, scale models, heuristic models, caricature models, didactic models, fantasy models, toy models, imaginary models, mathematical models, substitute models, iconic models, formal models, analogue models and instrumental models are but some of the notions that are used to categorize models. While at first glance this abundance is overwhelming, it can quickly be brought under control by recognizing that these notions pertain to different problems that arise in connection with models. For example, models raise questions in semantics (what is the representational function that models perform?), ontology (what kind of things are models?), epistemology (how do we learn with models?), and, of course, in philosophy of science (how do models relate to theory?; what are the implications of a model based approach to science for the debates over scientific realism, reductionism, explanation and laws of nature?). (shrink)

Le processus révolutionnaire de 2011 a fourni les conditions nécessaires à l’émergence d’une forme particulière d’activisme ayant pour objet principal le territoire urbain. L’activisme urbain égyptien milite pour l’abandon des instruments de la planification urbaine rationnelle et dénonce les dérives des pratiques gouvernementales et des actions des agences de développement internationales calquées sur celles de l’entreprise privée. En renouant avec les grandes lignes des politiques néolibérales du régime de Moubarak qui ont échoué à résorber la pauvreté urbaine, la politique de (...) grands projets lancée par Sissi remet en question les quelques avancées observées depuis la révolution de 2011 dans le champ de l’urbanisme et de l’aménagement du territoire. (shrink)

The rapid turnover of senatorial families during the Principate is a well-known phenomenon, but one which awaits satisfactory explanation. Comparative evidence shows the rate of turnover to have been unusually high. For example, the old aristocratic families of early modern Europe gave way to new at a much slower rate. Patterns of Roman property-holding and of the transmission of wealth from one generation to the next must have been closely associated with this rapid turnover. When an aristocratic family (...) produced no offspring who reached adulthood, the normal pattern of passing the bulk of the estate from one generation to the next within the family was interrupted. On the other hand, if a family produced many children, it might well become impoverished in the process of providing for all of them. Consequently, to perpetuate the family line with its status intact required careful financial and family planning. It was necessary to use or to take into account the various laws and customs regarding the family, including those regulating division of the estate among heirs, adoption, dowry and so on. (shrink)

The rapid turnover of senatorial families during the Principate is a well-known phenomenon, but one which awaits satisfactory explanation. Comparative evidence shows the rate of turnover to have been unusually high. For example, the old aristocratic families of early modern Europe gave way to new at a much slower rate. Patterns of Roman property-holding and of the transmission of wealth from one generation to the next must have been closely associated with this rapid turnover. When an aristocratic family (...) produced no offspring who reached adulthood, the normal pattern of passing the bulk of the estate from one generation to the next within the family was interrupted. On the other hand, if a family produced many children, it might well become impoverished in the process of providing for all of them. Consequently, to perpetuate the family line with its status intact required careful financial and family planning. It was necessary to use or to take into account the various laws and customs regarding the family, including those regulating division of the estate among heirs, adoption, dowry and so on. (shrink)

Marie-Sophie Caruel Articulé autour de huit chapitres, l’ouvrage de L.E. Tacoma sur les migrations romaines aborde les questions liées au genre aux chapitres sur la famille (chap. 4) et sur le travail (chap. 6). La place faite aux femmes demeure donc relativement modeste et assez conventionnelle même si les apports sur la question ne sauraient être qualifiés de négligeables pour un sujet longtemps en marge des études sur la mobilité. Le cadre théorique proposé dans cet ouvrage est celui d’une...

Fundamentally, Roman economic history is the study of how and why inhabitants of the Roman world produced, distributed and exchanged goods and services. By understanding the economic actions, events, institutions and products of the Roman world, Roman economic historians come to understand better the Romans themselves: their motivations, values, relationships and identities, among other things. With such a broad remit, today's Roman economic and monetary historians not only scour traditional sources for evidence of Roman (...) commerce, prices, labour, capital and contracts, but they now deploy an ever-broadening range of methodologies, theories and approaches – some of which originate well outside the disciplines of both history and economics. Some Roman economic historians, for example, create, investigate and run simulations, using massive digital archives of data gleaned from ancient evidence. Others compare micro-nutrients in ancient wheat varieties with their modern counterparts to gain a better understanding of diet, nutrition and economic prosperity in Roman cities. Increasingly, specialists in some aspect of the Roman economy find themselves members of internationally funded interdisciplinary teams seeking to understand what Arctic ice cores or North-American tree rings say about money production in the Roman principate. Roman economic historians’ scholarly sprawl has never been more challenging to describe, but I believe it is possible to group recent developments in the field into three overlapping areas: digitisation, particularisation and consilience. (shrink)

Phenomenology of music has been a perspective trend of phenomenological aesthetics for more than a hundred years. The topic of the paper is fixation the main problems and vectors of development of phenomenology of music. The authors execute an analysis of Roman Ingarden’s position in the discussions concerning the methodological and ontological problems of phenomenology of music. The paper aims at revealing succession in Roman Ingarden’s solutions to the phenomenology of music problems. The other aim is reflection on (...) the originality of Ingarden’s ideas in the context of phenomenological interpretations of music in 20th and 21st centuries. The solution to these tasks allows the authors to fix key problems and identify the principal positions of phenomenology of music. The main sources of the comparative and historical analysis are the studies carried out by Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Clifton, and Ihde. The most important ontological problems of phenomenology of music are: spatiotemporal constitution of music, reduction of a work of music to its performance, and ontological status of a work of music. The analysis of Ingarden’s position on these problems allows us to characterize it as something different from the existing versions. According to the conception, the time of music is a special type of time, that is, quasi-time. A piece of music is a purely intentional, heteronomous, and intersubjective object. There are a number of methodological specificities of Ingarden’s approach: a refusal of reduction of musical theoretical data, a tendency for independence of a piece of music from conscious and mental processes, and an interpretation of a piece of music as a non-sounding phenomenon. In conclusion, the authors demonstrate how the originality and radical nature of Ingarden’s conclusions made his position defenseless against critique and simultaneously marked the tendency in the contemporary phenomenological studies of music. (shrink)

Le christianisme a mené une guerre contre le paganisme et ses manières végétales de faire des mondes, qui ont été reléguées dans l'indifférence ou la simple ornementation. Refoulées, elles n'ont cessé pourtant de rejaillir : en philosophie, mais aussi dans l'architecture ou la littérature. La description de la cathédrale gothique, de l'arabesque musulmane ou du roman proustien, par exemple, ouvrent un nouveau champ pour l'esthétique, comprise comme l'ensemble des expériences faites sur un monde commun pour créer des mondes nouveaux. (...) Un principe de floraison dégagé au ras des herbes et de la poussée des plantes remplace alors le principe de raison sacrificielle juché au surplomb du monde, qui nous rend incapables d'entendre les forces imperceptibles de la croissance végétale. Comme un premier pas sur le chemin d'une nouvelle philosophie de la Nature... (shrink)

The Upanisads, the basic philosophical texts of Hinduism, represent the height of Vedic philosophy. Many of the older Upanisads can be dated in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. This newly reissued scholarly work by S. Radhakrishnan, first published in 1953 and long out of print, contains in full the classical Upanisads, those commented on or mentioned by the eighth-century Indian philosopher Shankara. The Sanskrit text, transliterated into Roman script, is followed, verse-by-verse, with an English translation. The volume also (...) includes a commentary on the argument, notes on the vocabulary, and a very detailed introduction by Dr. Radhakrishnan. (shrink)

"Le concept, principal ressort de l'abstraction philosophique, est aujourd'hui, paradoxalement, inadéquate pour exprimer les arguments philosophiques qui font débat en Afrique noire. Trop aride, trop étroit, trop univoque, le concept réduit ce qui est vécu comme un 'conflit de cultures' à un simple 'conflit intellectuel'. Pour éviter cet appauvrissement, le concept exige le détour par la fiction romanesque. En témoignent deux romans L'aventure ambiguë de Cheikh H. Kane et Entre les eaux de V.Y. Mudimbe. À travers eux, le romancier se (...) fait philosophe, et le philosophe pleinement écrivain. Autant dire que le discours philosophique exige un 'dehors', une extériorité radicale capable de l'éclairer. 'Philosopher en Afrique noire' relève autant du faire voir que du penser, tous deux inséparables l'un de l'autre."--Page 4 de la couverture. (shrink)

Sovereign Order of Royal El Roman Intro-angeles (polygyny) Family Sub-mission of the Jesus Christ' Holy See Teachings on His Kingdoms Mission, called the SOVEREIGN ORDER OF ROYAL EL-ROMANIA, The SO°RER†‡ Mission is a Bible scriptures studies, research, publications and teachings oriented sovereign polygyny family household basis mission order whereas Council of the Queens is the major organ and Queens are the principal research associates of the mission organization, Sovereign Order of Royal El-Romania, which aim to print a book entitled (...) "Christ Ministries Words: A Book of Bible Explanatory Testimonial of His Kingdom'', as Gen Hari Seldon's co-authors. Furthermore, the scope of the mission is to studies of the Holy Bible scriptures analysis to understand the doctrines of sacred theology of God's plan towards continuing development of humanity. (shrink)

Ce livre comprend deux parties principales: 1) une introduction generale et un essai de synthese; 2) un dictionnaire de plus de 100 auteurs actifs dans le domaine de la philosophie. Le College des Jesuites a Cracovie et - a partir de 1932 - la Faculte de Philosophie erigee par la Congregation Vaticane pro Institutione Catholica dans le meme College fut le principal centre philosophique des jesuites en Pologne. Jusqu'en 1989, il y avait seulement les jesuites - sauf quelques rares exceptions (...) - qui pouvait etudier a la Faculte. Leur nombre variait suivant les annees. Entre les deux guerres mondiales, il y en avait 84 en 1932 et 127 en 1935, dont 20 etrangers. Apres la guerre, leur nombre a diminue. On note le plus grand nombre d'etudiants en 1955/56 - 104. En meme temps, il y a eu 14 professeurs. (shrink)

Summary The article examines unofficial imperial nicknames, sobriquets and appellatives, from Octavian Augustus to Julian the Apostate, in the light of traditions of Roman political humour, and argues that in the political field during the Principate there were two co-existing competing modes of emperors’ naming: along with an official one, politically loyal, formalised and institutionally legitimised, there existed another – unofficial, sometimes oppositional and even hostile towards individual emperors, frequently licentious, humorously coloured and, in this regard, deeply rooted (...) in Roman Republican traditions of political humour. Many of the known imperial nicknames and appellatives belong to a specific kind of folklore and express popular public opinion. They survived for us because of ancient authors’ interest in using such material for their literary and ideological intentions, particularly to express better the individual characteristics of the historical personages. But, for the very same purposes, Greek and Roman writers could invent some names and sobriquets, following special rhetorical and moralising principles, or mere love of ridicule. All in all, most imperial nicknames, both authentic and made-up, reveal a rather good quality of humour and mockery constructed by expressive linguistic devices and various rhetorical tropes. An apt derisive nickname marked anti-values, mocked the ruler’s badness and could vilify his reputation to the extreme, stigmatise his personality, or else become a widely-used quasi-cognomen. Many nicknames and appellatives were of ephemeral, ad hoc nature, their sense and effect largely dependent on the particular context; but, taken as a whole, they demonstrate the possible scope of and common trends in naming practice. The political system of the Principate and its very atmosphere of hypocrisy did promote double meaning and double thinking reflected in the double system of the rulers’ nomenclature. Imperial nicknames were a counter-hegemonic transcript and a weapon in the struggle for symbolic capital. All the efforts which many emperors took to control their nomina were ultimately powerless against the strength of the inevitable humorous counter-naming by the ruled. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Global Empires and The Roman ImperiumBrent D. ShawP. Fibiger Bang, C. A. Bayly, and W. Scheidel, eds. The Oxford World History of Empire. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021; xxviii + 552 pp.; xxxiv + 1,318 pp.The volumes under review are an impressive if unequal diptych. The first, the slimmer of the two, entitled "The Imperial Experience," comprises a series of analytical studies on the creation, management, (...) and ideologies of empires, and forms of resistance to them. The second, "The History of Empires," is a forbidding tome of forty-four specific studies of individual empires and imperial ventures, from Ur III and Middle Kingdom Egypt to the Mongols and the British, ending, naturally, with America's "global imperium." In the analytics, the usual suspects, including Michael Doyle, Frederick Cooper and Jane Burbank, are on display; and the conceptual approaches of Michael Mann and Ernest Gellner are favorite points d'appui. For premodern empires, the ideas of the Maghribi thinker Ibn Khaldūn provide a different focus, so it is heartening to see Bang and others applying them more consistently (e.g., 1:13, 40, 326–9; 2:162, 246–8, 253). Especially for premodern empires, these volumes can be seen as an extension of earlier handbooks devoted to the state, one devoted to the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean state and another on ancient empires.1 As an aspect of world history, the endeavor is the culmination of a decades-long project on the history of empires fronted by Peter Bang.2 He has usefully produced detailed historical introductions not only to both volumes, but also to the subsections in each of them. Perhaps not surprisingly, empire turns out to be a virile enterprise. As Ian Morris notes, "the story of empire... is so strongly gendered that it [End Page 505] seems reasonable to call rulers and commanders 'he' throughout" (1:162 n. 14). The muscular subject is mirrored by its principal actors and by its students. All the editors are men. Reflecting the same balance, out of the forty-five authors of individual studies in the large history of empires volume, there are five (lonely) female voices. In both volumes, women as subjects of empire are, for all intents and purposes, absent.3From the perspective of an historian who has actually worked on the history of an empire, it must be plainly stated that almost all of the theories, adequately reviewed by Bang (1:20–48), are worth about as much as the paper or pixilated screens on which they have been written. Obvious and serious exceptions to every one of the definitions and hypotheticals abound. In fact, a fair number of the exemplary histories in the second volume do not obey the strictures of most of the theories advanced in the first. So it is with a sense of relief that one turns from theory to the hard quantities offered by Walter Scheidel (1:chap. 2). To a considerable degree, his analysis depends on the well-known measurements made by Rein Taagepera. Rather alarmingly, Taagepera counted as an empire "any large sovereign political entity whose components are not sovereign," say, like the well-known empires of Algeria, Finland, or Canada.4 What an analysis of these global entities confirms is that size or orders of magnitude mattered, and that the first entities to count as empires emerged in the 7th to 5th centuries bce in southwestern Asia (1:53; 2:161, 245). The neo-Assyrian empire was the first super-large territorial state and its successor, the Achaemenid empire, was the first "hyper-power without rival" (1:172; 2:83, 111, 161). Subsequent premodern empires were able to reach higher levels of millions of square kilometers of territory and larger populations of dozens of millions of subjects nominally under their aegis. The magnitudes reached by a given generation of super-states set base-lines above which a successor might be able to reach greater sophistication of rule, numbers of subjects, and extent of territory. In some cases, being able to piggy-back on existing empires, they were able to skip early developmental stages and to advance quickly to imperial status, as a succession... (shrink)

It has long been thought that Romans did not hunt before the time of Scipio Aemilianus because hunting was not an activity for respectable citizens. This article shows that this tradition arose from a nineteenth-century bias for hunting on horseback. The tradition was supported principally by Polybius' account of Scipio's hunting and a quotation from Sallust. Although we now recognize that Greeks and Romans in general hunted on foot, this bias has predisposed the discussion against the discovery of evidence for (...) the actual practice of hunting among the early Romans. The archaeological evidence from new excavations in Latium and previously uncited historical and legal evidence for hunting in the Republican period demonstrate that, precisely as we would expect, Romans from the earliest days hunted. Hunting as an aristocratic sport, as a communal activity associated with the military preparation of soldier-citizens, and as a practical means of survival for the poorer countrymen, were all present in Roman society. Further, Polybius' account of Scipio's hunting, contrary to what has been argued, indicates that the cause of disapproval was not the fact that Scipio hunted, but rather that he hunted instead of pleading cases in the forum. Supporting evidence from Cato the Elder, Ennius, and Plautus shows that hunting was a common and accepted activity among Romans of the mid-Republic. Finally, Sallust's criticism of hunting cannot be assumed to represent Roman views, since he condemns farming and hunting together, and we know Romans highly respected farming. No evidence supporting a negative view of hunting in Roman society is found, and the positive evidence in sum demonstrates conclusively that in all periods Romans did indeed hunt. (shrink)

Whilst he was writing De principatibus, was Machiavelli really as out of touch with the Florentine politico-institutional world as his letter of December 1513 claims? Who read Il principe prior to its publication, and how? Why did the philosopher Agostino Nifo, one of the major proponents of Renaissance Averroism, plagiarize it? To what extent is the Machiavellian "principato civile" comprehensible only by way of its Medicean and Florentine affiliation? Did the young Lorenzo de' Medici's political programme seek to eliminate the (...) Roman church? What politicocultural stance is hidden behind certain political terms from the humanist tradition that Machiavelli revisited in Il principe? To what extent was the Machiavellian relationship between animality and humanity, simulation and dissimulation, influenced by Leonardo da Vinci's ceuvre? And, finally, what are the questions that remain open in Il principe? This compilation offers some possible answers to these questions, thus providing new critical tools for the study of Niccolo Machiavelli's Il principe -- Back cover. (shrink)

La philosophie de l'art d'Étienne Gilson n'accorde aucune place au roman. Après avoir dégagé les raisons de ce rejet et en avoir dévoilé les présupposés, nous montrons que le roman a droit de cité dans la sphère des arts majeurs, et ce même à partir des principes de la théorie de Gilson.Gilson's philosophy of art leaves no room to the novel. First, we elucidate his reasons to do so, then we disclose their presuppositions, and finally we show that (...) the novel should be considered as a major form of art even on Gilson's grounds. (shrink)

The recent article by R. P. Saller on Roman dowry in the Principate makes some interesting and important suggestions about the function of dowry and its role in the devolution of property. I am in broad agreement with a good deal of what he says, and would not dispute his views that dowry was, as shown by the requirement of collatio dotis, regarded as in a sense part of a woman's patrimony, and that the rules for the recovery (...) of dowry show that the purpose of giving dowry was not held to rest on one single principle, but included provision both for the expenses of the wife's maintenance during marriage and for a possible remarriage after divorce or widowhood. However, his remarks on both points need some qualification and amplification. Briefly, I hope to show that the oddities and anomalies noticed by Saller in the rules governing the recovery of dowry at the end of a marriage are apparent rather than real, since these rules rest, not on conflicting views about the purpose of dowry, but on the fact that the husband had full legal ownership of the dowry during marriage, together with the right of the wife or her pater to an actio rei uxoriae for recovery of dowry; that the rules for collatio dotis applied only if the woman herself chose to claim a share in her father's estate on intestacy beyond the amount of her dowry; that the use of the dowry for the wife's support was an equitable, rather than a legal, requirement. (shrink)

In every generation the overwhelming majority of those who inhabited the imperium Romanum worked on the land and derived their sustenance directly from it. The notion is commonplace and scarcely admits of debate, but its implications for long have suffered unwarranted neglect. The well-being of any society ultimately rests upon the quantity and diversity of its food supplies, but the immediacy of their contact with the soil continually reminded the Roman people of this platitude with a force which few (...) students of their history today can readily appreciate. The annual yield of wheat in particular, always a staple item in the Roman diet, and to a lesser extent of such cereals as panic and millet, acutely affected every segment of the Roman community. One example will serve to illustrate the point. The dependence of the plebs urbana upon imported surpluses is notorious, equally the intense suffering and violence which typically accompanied any disruption of their supply. Such outbreaks frequently punctuated the chaotic final decades of the Republic, but they also scarred more than one régime during the first two centuries of the Principate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"A City of Brick":Visual Rhetoric in Roman Rhetorical Theory and PracticeKathleen S. LampPerhaps none of the words Augustus, the first sole ruler of Rome who reigned from 27 BCE to 14 CE, actually said are quite as memorable as the ones Cassius Dio has attributed to him: "I found Rome built of clay and I leave it to you in marble" (1987, 56.30).1 Suetonius too discusses Augustus's building (...) program, offering an alleged quote along with an explanation of his motivation: "Since the city was not adorned as the dignity of the empire demanded, and was exposed to flood and fire, he so beautified it that he could justly boast that he had found it built of brick and left it in marble" (1998, Aug.28.3). Though Suetonius's explanation is practical, Dio argues Augustus's "city of brick" had a more metaphoric or symbolic meaning: "In saying this he was not referring literally to the state of the buildings, but rather to the strength of the empire" (1987, 56.30).Both historians, then, perceive a connection between the physical appearance of the city and Rome's place at the head of the (Roman) world. Maecenas, Augustus's right-hand man who was essentially the minister of culture, explicitly draws attention to this strategy in a speech fabricated by Dio. Maecenas advises Augustus, "Make this capital beautiful, spare no expense in doing so, and enhance its magnificence with festivals of every kind. It is right for us who rule over so many peoples to excel all others in every field of endeavor, and even display of this kind tends to implant [End Page 171] respect for us in our allies and to strike terror into our enemies" (1987, 52.30). Here Dio suggests, albeit in hindsight, that Augustus's building program was a conscious "display" of Rome's supremacy meant to elicit a reaction, particularly from those who dwelled outside the city.Though from this passage of Dio's it is possible to argue that the physical appearance of the city of Rome was meant to persuade, or at least elicit some response, the passage does not provide support for the claim that architecture, monuments, and city planning functioned rhetorically in ancient Rome. After all, Quintilian reminds us that "many other things have the power of persuasion" (1970, 2.15.6-9). Nonetheless, this passage does generate questions about the relationship between the Augustan building program, or more broadly the Augustan cultural campaigns, and rhetoric in the principate—specifically about the way in which the cultural campaigns functioned rhetorically to help Augustus gain and maintain power.Recently, I have argued that the Ara pacis Augustae, an Augustan monument commissioned in 13 BCE, functioned as a visual example of a rhetorical text, meant not only to celebrate Augustus's successful campaigns is Spain and Gaul but also to garner public support for Augustus's heir and the process of dynastic succession. Because specific rhetorical techniques often associated with the epideictic genre clearly function on the altar, the Ara pacis demonstrates that Augustus and/or his ministers were thinking rhetorically when constructing at least some Augustan monuments (Lamp 2009). Similarly, architectural historian Diana Favro has argued that certain aspects of Augustan architecture made use of rhetorical techniques related to the canon of memory (1996). These findings are perhaps not surprising given that George Kennedy, writing nearly forty years ago, acknowledged that Augustus, a figure he called "the greatest rhetorician of antiquity, " "developed new techniques of verbal and visual persuasion which took over some of the functions and adapted some of the methods of traditional oratory" (1972, 378, 382).Still, very little attention has been paid to Augustus as a rhetorical figure, which is not to say that scholars of rhetoric have paid no attention to Roman rhetoric. While the classicist Theodore Mommsen, writing in the latter half of the nineteenth century, went as far as to refer to the principate as the "end to the entire discipline of rhetoric" (1992, 125), the decline narrative in regards to Roman rhetoric is shifting. Traditionally, this decline narrative suggested that following the assassination of Cicero, traditional oratory retreated into... (shrink)

Emergency powers are widely held to have contributed in important ways to the Roman Republic's demise and to the erection of the Principate. The debate waged during the late Republic over such powers is certainly one of the most prominent features in late Republican political thought and controversy, and it would be hard to overlook the fact that it was a debate over constitutional principle. Taking seriously the constitutional character of that debate, this article seeks to answer the (...) question of whether it makes sense to attribute to the Roman Republic something like the concept of a constitution in the first place. It is argued that on the level of political thought the term 'constitution' can indeed profitably and accurately be applied to a set of rules that were thought both to be more entrenched and to be more important than other rules. Thus it makes perfect sense to speak of a Roman Republican constitution, without scare quotes, at least in the realm of political thought. Furthermore it is suggested that it makes sense to speak of a Roman republican constitution in the realm of institutional reality as well since political and more specifically constitutional thought informed and influenced some of the republican institutions and their functioning to a considerable extent. (shrink)

In these words from the Introduction, Thomas O’Meara, currently associate professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, makes clear that his basic interest in this book is in early nineteenth-century Roman Catholic thought and not in Schelling as such. All the individuals treated in the book, to be sure, were related to Schelling either as colleagues, disciples or critics. But it is the entire movement of thought within German Catholicism of that period that is O’Meara’s principal concern, (...) not the particular contribution made by any single individual, even by Schelling himself as its chief inspiration. Accordingly, even though one might in various places yearn for a fuller development of this or that topic, more coverage for this or that individual, one has to bear in mind that this is an account of a movement of thought which embraced three generations of philosophers and theologians. Hence a detailed treatment of any single individual, even of Schelling himself in the various stages of his intellectual career, has to be sacrificed in order to keep one’s focus on the broader picture. (shrink)

In every generation the overwhelming majority of those who inhabited the imperium Romanum worked on the land and derived their sustenance directly from it. The notion is commonplace and scarcely admits of debate, but its implications for long have suffered unwarranted neglect. The well-being of any society ultimately rests upon the quantity and diversity of its food supplies, but the immediacy of their contact with the soil continually reminded the Roman people of this platitude with a force which few (...) students of their history today can readily appreciate. The annual yield of wheat in particular, always a staple item in the Roman diet, and to a lesser extent of such cereals as panic and millet, acutely affected every segment of the Roman community. One example will serve to illustrate the point. The dependence of the plebs urbana upon imported surpluses is notorious, equally the intense suffering and violence which typically accompanied any disruption of their supply. Such outbreaks frequently punctuated the chaotic final decades of the Republic, but they also scarred more than one régime during the first two centuries of the Principate. (shrink)