Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Lowrie, Michèle, author.

Title Civil war and the collapse of the social bond : the Roman tradition at the heart of the modern / Michèle Lowrie, University of Chicago ; Barbara Vinken, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich
Published Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2023
©2023

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xv, 366 pages) : illustrations (chiefly color)
Series Classics after antiquity
Classics after antiquity.
Contents Figures of discord -- Oriental empire : Vergil, Georgics -- Empire without end : Vergil, Aeneid, and Lucan, De bello civili -- The eternal city : Augustine, De civitate Dei -- The republic to come : Hugo, Quatrevingt-treize -- The empire to come : Houellebecq, Soumission
Summary "Can civil war ever be overcome? Can a better order come into being? This book explores how the Roman civil wars of the first century BCE laid the template for addressing perennially urgent questions. The Roman Republic's collapse and Augustus' new Empire have remained ideological battlegrounds to this day. Integrative and disintegrative readings begun in antiquity (Vergil and Lucan) have left their mark on answers given by Christians (Augustine), secular republicans (Victor Hugo), and disillusioned satirists (Michel Houellebecq) alike. France's self-understanding as a new Rome - republican during the Revolution, imperial under successive Napoleons - makes it a special case in the Roman tradition. The same story returns repeatedly. A golden age of restoration glimmers on the horizon, but comes in the guise of a decadent, oriental empire that reintroduces and exposes everything already wrong under the defunct republic. Central to the price of social order is patriarchy's need to subjugate women"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on October 17, 2022)
Subject Civil war -- Rome
Social structure -- Rome
War and society -- Rome
HISTORY / Ancient / General.
Civil war
Social conditions
Social structure
War and society
SUBJECT Rome -- History -- Republic, 265-30 B.C. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85115116
Rome -- Social conditions -- 510-30 B.C. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh95002997
Subject Rome (Empire)
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
Author Vinken, Barbara, 1960- author.
LC no. 2022013574
ISBN 9781009029995
1009029991
9781009034852
1009034855