0.0

credits

Average Course Rating

A well-documented feature of the middle to late Roman republic is the ferocious competitiveness of the aristocracy, and the governing class in particular. These people competed for prestige and glory on the battlefield, for offices and honors in government and administration, for visibility in public building, in forensic oratory in the courts, in deliberative oratory in various assemblies, and sometimes in literary production. Less well-understood is how the competitiveness of this group manifested itself in the early imperial age, as the emergence of the emperor shut down competition in some of these arenas and fundamentally changed the character of the competition in others. This seminar considers how some old arenas changed under the Imperial regime, and examines new forms that aristocratic competition assumed to make up for the arenas that had altogether disappeared.