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I, who in a looke, | Learnd more by rote, then all the scribes by booke. 1 ‘SACRA PARADISI IN SEDE LOCAVIT’: SOUTHWELL’S ROMAN LIFE 2 Rome was the centre of Southwell’s world. Here his writing matured and took on its colours and textures; but
A monastery’s relationship with Rome raises fundamental questions about its origins and nature. Exemption privileges form an important part of this story – a connecting link between the centre in Rome and the Christian periphery. This chapter questions the monastery’s impetus for seeking special exemption from Rome by examining the practice’s development from the papal perspective. I seek to understand the gravitational pull of ‘Rome’s orbit’, which reveals the precedent, pragmatism, and vision of early medieval popes in the organisation
In his 1930 essay ‘Civilisation and its discontents’, Sigmund Freud contrasted the human mind with the city of Rome. In the Eternal City, he wrote, the ‘remains of ancient Rome are found dovetailed into the jumble of a great metropolis which has grown up in the last few centuries since the Renaissance. This is the manner in which the past is preserved in [such] historical sites …’. 1 Unlike the human mind, which in Freud’s view almost inevitably functioned as a repository of multiple memories and
How do you create a fictional story out of an historical period? What do you need to know about the people, the places, the events? What’s the better inspiration: historical scholarship or popular knowledge? A writer’s guide to Ancient Rome serves as inspiration and a guide to the Roman population, economy, laws, leisure, and religion for the author, student, general reader seeking an introduction to what made the Romans tick. The Guide considers trends and themes from roughly 200 BCE to 200 CE with the occasional foray into the antecedents and legacy on either side of the period. Each chapter explicates its main themes with examples from the original sources. Throughout are suggestions for resources to mine for the subject at hand and particular bits affected by scholarly debate and changing interpretation based on new discoveries or reinterpretation of written and material remains. It’s up to you whether or not you will produce a work of careful verisimilitude or anachronistic silliness (or one of the flavours in between). That’s your call as creator. This little guide is but a brief survey of a vast quantity of resources, sources, and scholarship on the Classical world that is available for reflection, evaluation, interpretation, and creativity. It is intended to open doors for further reading and consideration as you construct your own Roman world – it’s a welcome mat inviting you in to listen to the stories of the Romans and to contribute tales of your own.
On August 24, 410 AD, the heart of the Roman Empire was fatally breached. On that late summer night, the eastern Germanic tribes massed outside Rome, the self-styled eternal citadel of 800,000 people. Their mighty leader, Alaric – an imposing, fierce and dark-clad overlord – led his Visigoth army into the breaches. The Goths had arrived. 19 The collapse of the Empire’s most iconic city was met with unbridled horror. ‘In one city,’ wrote theologian and Catholic priest St. Jerome, ‘the whole world
The eighteenth-century English landscape garden 2 From Rome to Stourhead and thence to Rome again: the phenomenon of the eighteenth-century English landscape garden John Harrison Ancient and contemporary Roman influences in Stourhead gardens The literature, architecture and culture of ancient Rome had a profound influence on eighteenth-century Britain. Richardson writes that the early eighteenth century vision for ‘a new Britain was something like the enlightened age of Augustus, the Roman emperor who reigned from 27 BCE to CE 14 – the time of Virgil, Horace
Chapter 3 The Glory that was Rome Rome lacked the rich mythological sources available to Greek propagandists, so it created a mythology of its own to provide examples for its citizens to emulate. Indeed, the Romans were exceptional creators of mythological propaganda and their writings often tell us more about contemporary Roman attitudes than they do about the actual historical record. One story stated that Rome was founded by the survivors of Troy and the very best aristocratic families claimed to be able to trace their lines back to the arrival of those
13 Mussolini and the city of Rome Eugene Pooley The idea that Rome reveals and sustains plural identities has been understood as an essential mark of its distinction.1 Commonly characterised as a palimpsest and a city possessed by diverse sets of values, Rome has surpassed the inherent sense of multiplicity and conflict generated in every city to become understood as a ‘symbolically over-determined’ site, a place of ‘excessive memory’.2 Establishing its own position in relation to Rome’s multilayered, challenging identity, the Fascist regime undertook a socio
7 The Maronite college in early modern Rome: Between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Letters Aurélien Girard and Giovanni Pizzorusso Introduction The Maronite college, founded by Pope Gregory XIII in 1584, was one of a number of ‘national’ colleges created in Rome in the early modern period.1 It was intended to accommodate young Maronite Christians, who were near-eastern Catholics of the ancient patriarchate of Antioch, and lived in Arabic provinces of the Ottoman Empire, under Islamic jurisdictions. Like other foreign students, they were to receive an
John Fletcher’s Rome is the first book to explore Fletcher’s engagement with classical antiquity. Fletcher was the most influential playwright of the Jacobean era, whose canon amounts to around 10 per cent of the extant plays of the early modern commercial theatre. Like his more celebrated contemporaries Shakespeare and Jonson, Fletcher wrote, alone or in collaboration, a number of Roman plays: Bonduca, Valentinian, The False One, and The Prophetess. Unlike Shakespeare’s or Jonson’s plays, however, Fletcher’s Roman plays have seldom been the subject of sustained critical discussion. This groundbreaking study examines these plays as a group for the first time, identifying disorientation as the unifying principle of Fletcher’s portrayal of imperial Rome. John Fletcher’s Rome argues that Fletcher’s dramatization of ancient Rome exudes a sense of scepticism regarding the authority of ancient models that is connected to his irreverent approach to classical texts. In doing so, the book sheds new light on Fletcher’s intellectual life, provides fresh insights into his vision of history, illuminates the interconnections between the Roman plays and the rest of his canon, and offers a corrective to dominant narratives that equate Shakespeare’s Rome with ancient Rome as perceived in the early modern imagination in general. As we approach the quatercentenary of Fletcher’s death in 2025, John Fletcher’s Rome offers a worthwhile reappraisal of a playwright who produced a dispirited yet vibrant dramatization of the ancient Roman world that shines as a uniquely gripping instance of the reception of the classical past on the early modern stage.