Contested Triumphs: Politics, Pageantry, and Performance in Livy's Republican Rome / Edition 1

by Miriam R. Pelikan Pittenger

Overview

This pathbreaking analysis of Roman political culture in the middle Republic focuses on the concerns of the Roman Senate as it decided whether or not to award a victorious general triumphal honors. Miriam R. Pelikan Pittenger's strikingly original approach illuminates this process by examining several Senate debates as reported by the historian Livy. The conduct of these debates illustrates the competitive ethos in the elite and mirrors creative tensions between the magistrates, the Senate, and the people of Rome. Contested Triumphs shows how Livy dramatized the process of history in the making and vividly demonstrates how it is the struggle itself that remains most vital.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520241398
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	02/10/2009
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Miriam R. Pelikan Pittenger is Associate Professor of Classics at Hanover College in Indiana.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: Livy’s Republican Rome

PART I. SETTING STANDARDS: IMPERIO AUSPICIO DUCTU FELICITATE

1. Triumphal Decision Making and the SPQR
2. Consular Tribunes and Privati cum Imperio: Magistracy and Triumph
3. Crossing Provincial Boundaries: Joint Campaigns and Overlapping Jurisdictions
4. The Importance of Closure
5. Body Counts; or, Who Killed Whom
6. Patterns of Success

PART II. THE PERFORMANCE OF POLITICS AND THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE

7. Prologue: The Triumphs of the Second Punic War
8. L. Furius Purpureo in 2: The Centrality of Narrative
9. L. Cornelius Merula in 193: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
10. L. Cornelius Scipio Nasica in 191: Family Ties and the Art of Persuasion
11. M. Fulvius Nobilior in 187: Staging Hostilities
12. Cn. Manlius Vulso in 187: Beyond Allowable Limits?
13. M. Popillius Laenas in 173: Inverting the Paradigm
14. L. Aemilius Paullus in 167: Rogatio ad Populum and the Soldiers’ Revenge

Conclusion: Triumphs and Roman Values
Appendix A: Fasti Liviani: Requests for Triumphs, 218 – 167 B.C.
Appendix B: Success Rates of Triumph Requests, 218 – 167 B.C.
Bibliography
Index Locorum
General Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Beautifully crafted. . . . The clarity of her prose and this level of accessibility should encourage researchers in related fields to engage with Pittenger's work."—Bryn Mawr Classical Review (Bmcr)

Editorial Reviews

Beautifully crafted. . . . The clarity of her prose and this level of accessibility should encourage researchers in related fields to engage with Pittenger’s work.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR)