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Beyond Polybios: quantifying Roman imperialism east and west

Seeing the elephant: beyond the querelle of “Roman imperialism” in the Hellenistic world

How should we define and interpret Roman “imperialism” in the Hellenistic world during the third and second century BCE? The answers to this question have exhibited three major characteristics.

Quintilian, Minor Declamations 340 and 342 both address cases brought under the same declamatory statute: QUI VOLUNTATE DOMINI IN LIBERTATE FUERIT, LIBER SIT. In the first instance a boy-slave is sent past the customs officers dressed in the toga praetextata of a free citizen child. In the second a maid is sent out to the pirate chief dressed as a Roman matron and playing the part of the sister of a captured youth.

This paper applies James Scott’s concept of official and hidden transcripts of asymmetric power relationships to a reading of the events in Chariton’s Callirhoe that lead up to the enslaved heroine Callirhoe’s decision to marry her owner in exchange for the freedom of her unborn child. A reading of these events as an official transcript, that is, a product of the slave owner, contrasts the nobility of Dionysius, the owner, and Callirhoe (who is not a “real” slave) with the servile qualities of “real” slaves in Dionysius’ household.

“Dey would come in [to our religious meetings] and start whippin’ an’ beatin’ the slaves unmerciful. All dis wuz done to keep yo’ from servin’ God …” (Mrs. Minnie Fulkes, former slave, 1937 interview). Testimonies of this kind enabled Albert Raboteau to undertake his pioneering reconstruction of the religious world of African-American slaves (Raboteau 1978/2004).

Who belonged to the populus in the city of Rome in the 200s BCE, and what did they think of the men at the top? Low-class speakers in the extant palliata express scorn and dislike for those whom they label the summi viri. Balancing the perspective of the chief analysts of Roman political culture (Rosenstein 2006, Hölkeskamp 2010), this paper will argue that comedy offers voices that do not "acquiesce" in the rule of the elite, but critique it.

This paper uses the exordium of the Alexandreis as a test case to argue for a new theoretical model for reading postclassical imitation of classical poets. Traditionally, scholars, who have analyzed Walter’s debts to classical poets, have visualized a direct conversation between two authors: Walter and the classical poet being discussed (Christensen, Wiener, Ratkowitsch, Zwierlein).

Archpoet is the assigned title to a 12^th century author who belongs to the so-called Goliardic movement of the Medieval Latin literature. From his writings, ten poems were preserved; one of them, which begins with the verse Archicancellarie, vir discrete mentis (4 in Eberle’s edition, 5 in Langosch’s) deserves notice for its metapoetical and “über-generic” character.

Sometime after 829, the poet Ermoldus Nigellus composed three poems: two short verse-epistles to Pepin, King of Aquitaine, and a lengthy panegyric dedicated to Louis the Pious, Pepin’s father. All three demonstrate the author’s ready knowledge of Classical and Late Antique poetry, Scripture, and contemporary literary sources that range from pop songs to intellectual works available to a jobbing poet in the court of a sub-king.

In November 417, a day after departing from Rome on the voyage described in his fragmentary De reditu, Rutilius Namatianus and his fellow travellers arrived at the port of Centumcellae (mod. Civitavecchia), and traveled three miles inland to the Thermae Taurinae (mod. Terme Taurine). These hot springs, Rutilius says, are so called because tradition holds that a bull was first to unearth them.