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Professionalism is political. This book offers a new assessment of the Roman architect Vitruvius and his treatise, On Architecture, dedicated to Augustus in the 20s BCE. Once reviled by scholars, Vitruvius emerges as an imperial expert par excellence when read alongside literary coevals through an intertextual lens. No building of Vitruvius' name survives from antiquity, but his treatise remains a formidable literary construction that partakes of Rome's vibrant textual culture. The book explores Vitruvius' portrait of the ideal architect as an imposing "Vitruvian man" at the dawn of Augustus' empire. In direct dialogue with his republican model, Cicero's ideal orator, the architect embodies a distinctly imperial civic ethos in which technically skilled partisans supersede old elites as guarantors of Augustan authority. Vitruvius promises to shape not only the emperor's legacy with architecture, but also the notion of a Roman citizen through his ideal architect.
Professionalism is political. This book offers a new assessment of the Roman architect Vitruvius and his treatise, On Architecture, dedicated to Augustus in the 20s BCE. Once reviled by scholars, Vitruvius emerges as an imperial expert par excellence when read alongside literary coevals through an intertextual lens. No building of Vitruvius' name survives from antiquity, but his treatise remains a formidable literary construction that partakes of Rome's vibrant textual culture. The book explores Vitruvius' portrait of the ideal architect as an imposing "Vitruvian man" at the dawn of Augustus' empire. In direct dialogue with his republican model, Cicero's ideal orator, the architect embodies a distinctly imperial civic ethos in which technically skilled partisans supersede old elites as guarantors of Augustan authority. Vitruvius promises to shape not only the emperor's legacy with architecture, but also the notion of a Roman citizen through his ideal architect.
The forced suicide of Seneca, former adviser to Nero, is one of the most tortured death scenes from classical antiquity. Here, James Ker offers a comprehensive cultural history of Seneca's death scene, situating it in the Roman imagination and tracing its many subsequent interpretations.
The author examines the social and political meaning of divine sonship in the Roman Empire. He analyzes the conceptual framework within which the term ''son of God'' has traditionally been considered in biblical scholarship. Then, through engagement with recent scholarship in Roman history, he offers new ways of interpreting the Christian theological metaphors of ''begotten''and ''adoptive'' sonship. He focuses on social practices and political ideology, revealing that scholarship on divine sonship has been especially hampered by mistaken assumptions about adopted sons.
Traces how the day has served as a key organizing concept in Roman culture—and beyond. How did ancient Romans keep track of time? What constituted a day in ancient Rome was not the same twenty-four hours we know today. In The Ordered Day, James Ker traces how the day served as a key organizing concept, both in antiquity and in modern receptions of ancient Rome. Romans used the story of how the day emerged as a unit of sociocultural time to give order to their own civic and imperial history. Ancient literary descriptions of people's daily routines articulated distinctive forms of life within the social order. And in the imperial period and beyond, outsiders—such as early Christians in the...
Reception studies has profoundly transformed Classics and its objects of study: while canonical texts demand much attention, works with a less robust Nachleben are marginalized. This volume explores the discipline from the perspectives of marginality, canonicity, and passion, revealing their implications for its past and future development.
A New Statesman Best Book of the Year A Church Times Book of the Year We are facing a crisis of civility, a war of words polluting our public sphere. In liberal democracies committed to tolerating active, often heated disagreement, the loss of this virtue appears critical. Most modern appeals to civility follow arguments by Hobbes or Locke by proposing to suppress disagreement or exclude views we deem “uncivil” for the sake of social harmony. By comparison, mere civility—a grudging conformity to norms of respectful behavior—as defended by Rhode Island’s founder, Roger Williams, might seem minimal and unappealing. Yet Teresa Bejan argues that Williams’s outlook offers a promising ...
Vitruvius' De architectura is the only extant classical text on architecture, and its impact on Renaissance masters including Leonardo da Vinci is well-known. But what was the text's purpose in its own time (ca. 20s BCE)? In this book, Marden Fitzpatrick Nichols reveals how Vitruvius pitched the Greek discipline of architecture to his Roman readers, most of whom were undoubtedly laymen. The inaccuracy of Vitruvius' architectural rules, when compared with surviving ancient buildings, has knocked Vitruvius off his pedestal. Nichols argues that the author never intended to provide an accurate view of contemporary buildings. Instead, Vitruvius crafted his authorial persona and remarks on architecture to appeal to elites (and would-be elites) eager to secure their positions within an expanding empire. In this major new analysis of De architectura from archaeological and literary perspectives, Vitruvius emerges as a knowing critic of a social landscape in which the house made the man.
This book introduces and translates Sedulius Scottus' Prologue (to the entire Collectaneum in Apostolum) and commentaries on Galatians and Ephesians. The introduction outlines the historical context of composition, identifies Sedulius' literary model - Servius, discusses Sedulius' organizing trope for the Prologue - the septem circumstantiae, asserts for what purpose and for whom he composed the Collectaneum, explains pertinent philological and stylistic issues, such as formatting, existing (or lack thereof) traits of Hiberno Latin, and Sedulius' knowledge of Greek, and it explores his use of exegetical and theological sources - predominantly Jerome, Augustine, and Pelagius. Since the commen...
In How Catholics Encounter the Bible, award-winning biblical scholar and historian Michael Peppard explores the paradoxical role of the Bible for Catholics--a book central to their tradition, but one which Catholics rarely read. Instead, as Peppard shows, biblical ideas influence Catholics through diverse modes of storytelling, artistic imagination, and ritual. Through examples of pilgrimage, visual arts, poetry, music, and even on Netflix, Peppard shows how the Bible thrives among Catholics, even if its printed text may be missing.