The Crowd In Rome In The Late Republic

A major work on the power of the crowd

A sourcebook on Late Republican Rome (88-31 BC), with a range of translated primary texts to support ancient history students.

This book highlights the role played by public, political discourse in shaping the distribution of power between Senate and People in the Late Roman Republic. Against the background of the current debate between 'oligarchical' and 'democratic' interpretations of Republican politics, Robert Morstein-Marx emphasizes the perpetual negotiation and reproduction of political power through mass communication. It is the first work to analyze the ideology of Republican mass oratory and to situate its rhetoric fully within the institutional and historical context of the public meetings (contiones) in which these speeches were heard. Examples of contional orations, drawn chiefly from Cicero and Sallust, are subjected to an analysis that is influenced by contemporary political theory and empirical studies of public opinion and the media, rooted in a detailed examination of key events and institutional structures, and illuminated by a vivid sense of the urban space in which the contio was set.

This book adopts a new approach to the classical world by focusing on ancient popular culture.

This book analyses senatorial political conversations and illuminates the oral aspects of Roman politics; it offers a new perspective of Roman politics through the proxy of conversations and meetings.

This second edition examines all aspects of Roman history, and contains a new introduction, three new chapters and updated bibliographies.

Rome, the Greek World, and the East: Volume 1: The Roman Republic and the Augustan Revolution