Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World - John Baines
24. Roman Republican History in Imperial Rhetorical Exercises
Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World - John Baines
Henriette van der Blom [+]
University of Birmingham
Description
Ancient historians of the classical period often operate with a major change in Roman society with the fall of the republican system of government and the advent of the monarchy under the emperors. With the change in political system, the republican past became a flexible means to further a number of agendas: political, social, religious, literary. An aspect where the use of the past was a tradition carried forward from the Republic and into the imperial period was the employment of historical exempla in oratory and rhetorical works, but it was a tradition which had to come to terms with the change in political system. This chapter analyses the ways in which figures from the Roman republican period were depicted and deployed in imperial rhetorical exercises. These written versions of oral exercises offer a substantial body of material of four major collections of declamations (as opposed to the very fragmentary record of written speeches) and a window into Roman culture. The discussion focuses on the employment of republican exempla and its reflection of imperial consciousness of the republican past.