Magistracy and the Historiography of the Roman Republic
Politics in Prose

An innovative, literary approach to historical accounts of politics, this book reveals the wide-ranging significance of Roman republican magistracy.

Ayelet Haimson Lushkov (Author)

9781108820097, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 May 2020

213 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.2 cm, 0.3 kg

The study of Roman republican magistracy has traditionally been the preserve of historians posing constitutional and prosopographical questions. As a result, one fundamental aspect of our most detailed contemporary and near-contemporary sources about magistracy has remained largely neglected: their literariness. This book takes a new approach to the representation of magistrates and shows how the rhetorical and formal features of prose texts - principally Livy's history but also works by Cicero and Sallust - shape our understanding of magistracy. Applying to the texts an expanded concept of exemplarity, Haimson Lushkov shows how a rich body of anecdotes concerning the behaviour and speech of magistrates reflects on the values and tensions that defined the republic. A variety of contexts - familial, military, and electoral, among others - flesh out the experience of being, becoming, and encountering a Roman magistrate, and the political and ethical problems highlighted and negotiated in such circumstances.

Introduction: exemplarity, magistracy, and narrative
1. Magisterial authority and the politics of affection
2. Authority in crisis: the Caudine Forks
3. Elections and the generation of exempla
4. Elections as narratives of magistracy
Epilogue: staging authority.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Historiography [HBAH], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]