The Roman Cultural Revolution

This book is a multidisciplinary attempt to understand the Roman Revolution as a cultural phenomenon. Contributors draw on the latest approaches in literary and cultural studies to integrate literature, art and history into a new account of Roman culture during the transition from Republic to Empire. In Part I the changes in cultural systems are discussed under the topics of authority, gender and sexuality, status and space in the city of Rome, and in Part II texts and artifacts are shown to refract social, political and economic changes.

Introduction; Part I. The Transformation of Cultural Systems: 1. Mutatio morum: the idea of a cultural revolution Andrew Wallace-Hadrill; 2. The invention of sexuality in the world-city of Rome Thomas Habinek; 3. Recitatio and the reorganization of the space of public discourse Florence Dupont; Part II. Texts and Contexts: 4. The boundaries of knowledge in Virgil's Georgics Alessandro Schiesaro; 5. Ut arte emendaturus fortunam, Horace, Nasidienus and the art of satire Ellen Oliensis; 6. Horace and the material culture of Augustan Rome: a revisionary reading Eleanor Winsor Leach; 7. Images of the city: Propertius' new-old Rome Elaine Fantham; 8. Livy's revolution: civic identity and the creation of the Res publica Andrew Feldherr; 9. Concealing/revealing: gender and the play of meaning in the monuments of Augustan Rome Barbara Kellum; 10. Questions of authority: the invention of tradition in Ovid's Metamorphoses 15 Philip Hardie; 11. A preface to the history of declamation: whose speech? whose history? Martin Bloomer.