Models from the Past in Roman Culture
A World of Exempla

Presents a coherent model for understanding historical examples in Ancient Rome and their rhetorical, moral and historiographical functions.

Matthew B. Roller (Author)

9781316614907, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 22 August 2019

341 pages, 3 b/w illus. 1 map
23 x 15 x 2 cm, 0.5 kg

Historical examples played a key role in ancient Roman culture, and Matthew B. Roller's book presents a coherent model for understanding the rhetorical, moral, and historiographical operations of Roman exemplarity. It examines the process of observing, evaluating, and commemorating noteworthy actors, or deeds, and then holding those performances up as norms by which to judge subsequent actors or as patterns for them to imitate. The model is fleshed out via detailed case studies of individual exemplary performers, the monuments that commemorate them, and the later contexts - the political arguments and social debates - in which these figures are invoked to support particular positions or agendas. Roller also considers the boundaries of, and ancient alternatives to, exemplary modes of argumentation, morality, and historical thinking. The book will engage anyone interested in how societies, from ancient Rome to today, invoke past performers and their deeds to address contemporary concerns and interests.

Introduction: the work of examples
1. Horatius Cocles: commemorating and imitating a great deed
2. Cloelia: timelessness and gender
3. Appius Claudius Caecus: positive and negative exemplarity
4. Gaius Duilius: exemplarity and innovation
5. Fabius Cunctator: competing judgements and moral change
6. Cornelia: an exemplary matrona among the Gracchi
7. Cicero's house and 'Aspiring to Kingship'
Conclusion: exemplarity and stoicism.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Historiography [HBAH], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]