Approaching The Roman Revolution

This volume collects 26 studies on Republican history by the late Sir Ronald Syme (1903-1989), drawn from the archive of his papers at the Bodleian Library. They shed light on aspects of Republican history that were either overlooked or tangentially discussed in Syme's published work. Taken as a whole, they enable us to reach a more comprehensive assessment of his intellectual and historiographical profile.

The Roman Revolution is a profound and unconventional treatment of a great theme - the fall of the Republic and the decline of freedom in Rome between 60 BC and AD 14, and the rise to power of the greatest of the Roman Emperors, Augustus. The transformation of state and society, the violent transference of power and property, and the establishment of Augustus' rule are presented in an unconventional narrative, which quotes from ancient evidence, refers seldomly to modern authorities, and states controversial opinions quite openly. The result is a book which is both fresh and compelling.

This book places culture centre-stage in the investigation of the transformation of Rome from Republic to Empire. It is the first book to attempt to understand the so-called Roman Revolution as a cultural phenomenon. Instead of regarding cultural changes as dependent on political developments, the essays consider literary, artistic, and political changes as manifestations of a basic transformation of Roman culture. In Part I the international group of contributors discusses the changes in the cultural systems under the topics of authority, gender and sexuality, status and space in the city of Rome, and in Part II through specific texts and artifacts as they refract social, political, and economic changes. The essays draw on the latest methods in literary and cultural work to present a holistic approach to the Augustan Cultural Revolution.

Coins of the best-known Roman revolutionary era allow rival pretenders to speak to us directly. After the deaths of Caesar and Cicero (in 44 and 43 BC) hardly one word has been reliably transmitted to us from even the two most powerful opponents of Octavian: Mark Antony and Sextus Pompeius - except through coinage and the occasional inscription. The coins are an antidote to a widespread fault in modern approaches: the idea, from hindsight, that the Roman Republic was doomed, that the rise of Octavian-Augustus to monarchy was inevitable, and that contemporaries might have sensed as much. Ancient works in other genres skilfully encouraged such hindsight. Augustus in the Res Gestae, and Virgil in Georgics and Aeneid, sought to flatten the history of the period, and largely to efface Octavian's defeated rivals. But the latter's coins in precious metal were not easily recovered and suppressed by Authority. They remain for scholars to revalue. In our own age, when public untruthfulness about history is increasingly accepted - or challenged, we may value anew the discipline of searching for other, ancient, voices which ruling discourse has not quite managed to silence. In this book eleven new essays explore the coinage of Rome's competing dynasts. Julius Caesar's coins, and those of his `son' Octavian-Augustus, are studied. But similar and respectful attention is given to the issues of their opponents: Cato the Younger and Q. Metellus Scipio, Mark Antony and Sextus Pompeius, Q. Cornificius and others. A shared aim is to understand mentalities, the forecasts current, in an age of rare insecurity as the superpower of the Mediterranean faced, and slowly recovered from, division and ruin.

With this classic book, Sir Ronald Syme became the first historian of the twentieth century to place Sallust—whom Tacitus called the most brilliant Roman historian—in his social, political, and literary context. Scholars had considered Sallust to be a mere political hack or pamphleteer, but Syme's text makes important connections between the politics of the Republic and the literary achievement of the author to show Sallust as a historian unbiased by partisanship. In a new foreword, Ronald Mellor delivers one of the most thorough biographical essays of Sir Ronald Syme in English. He both places the book in the context of Syme's other works and details the progression of Sallustian studies since and as a result of Syme's work.

The reign of the emperor Constantine (306-337) was as revolutionary for the transformation of Rome's Mediterranean empire as that of Augustus, the first emperor three centuries earlier. The abandonment of Rome signaled the increasing importance of frontier zones in northern and central Europe and the Middle East. The foundation of Constantinople as a new imperial residence and the rise of Greek as the language of administration previewed the establishment of a separate eastern Roman empire.

The "Arab Spring" was heralded and publicly embraced by foreign leaders of many countries that define themselves by their own historic revolutions. The contributors to this volume examine the legitimacy of these comparisons by exploring whether or not all modern revolutions follow a pattern or script. Traditionally, historians have studied revolutions as distinct and separate events. Drawing on close familiarity with many different cultures, languages, and historical transitions, this anthology presents the first cohesive historical approach to the comparative study of revolutions. This volume argues that the American and French Revolutions provided the genesis of the revolutionary "script" that was rewritten by Marx, which was revised by Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution, which was revised again by Mao and the Chinese Communist Revolution. Later revolutions in Cuba and Iran improvised further. This script is once again on display in the capitals of the Middle East and North Africa, and it will serve as the model for future revolutionary movements.