Roman Political Thought is the first comprehensive treatment of the political thought of the Romans. Dean Hammer argues that the Romans were engaged in a wide-ranging and penetrating reflection on politics. The Romans did not create utopias. Instead, their thinking was relentlessly shaped by their own experiences of violence, the enormity and frailty of power, and an overwhelming sense of loss of the traditions that oriented them to their responsibilities as social, political, and moral beings. However much the Romans are known for their often complex legal and institutional arrangements, the power of their political thought lies in their exploration of the extra-institutional, affective foundations of political life. The book includes chapters on Cicero, Lucretius, Sallust, Virgil, Livy, Seneca, Tacitus, Marcus Aurelius, and Augustine and discussions of Polybius, the Stoics, Epicurus, and Epictetus.

Roman Political Thought: From Cicero to Augustine

History

Hammer, Dean

Ancient Civilizations

Cambridge University Press

Wily Odysseus. Bold Achilles. Brave Hektor. Beautiful Helen of Troy. For centuries, people around the world have been fascinated by these figures and their tragic war as recounted in Homer's Iliad, long admired and studied as one of the foremost epic poems of the ancient world. In The Iliad as Politics, Dean Hammer revisits this epic with a new perspective. In this first full-length treatment of the Iliad as a work of political thought, Hammer demonstrates how Homer's epic is also an ancient Greek discussion on political ethics. Hammer redefines political thought as the activity of addressing issues of collective identity and organization. Using this understanding of politics, he discusses how the characters in the Iliad, through their larger-than-life actions and interactions, embody community issues of authority, conflict, judgment, and the interrelationship between personal and collective identity. The characters' many quarrels, laments, reconciliations, and vows of loyalty and friendship all critically model the principles and controversies of underlying Greek political ethics of communal responsibility and relationship. Much of modern Western political thought focuses on classical Greek discussions of political philosophy. Hammer demonstrates that the Iliad constitutes another such ancient Greek political discussion.

The Iliad as Politics: The Performance of Political Thought (Volume 28) (Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture)

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

University of Oklahoma Press

Links modern political theorists with the Romans who inspired them Roman contributions to political theory have been acknowledged primarily in the province of law and administration. Even with a growing interest among classicists in Roman political thought, most political theorists view it as merely derivative of Greek philosophy. Focusing on the works of key Roman thinkers, Dean Hammer recasts the legacy of their political thought, examining their imaginative vision of a vulnerable political world and the relationship of the individual to this realm. By bringing modern political theorists into conversation with the Romans who inspired them―Arendt with Cicero, Machiavelli with Livy, Montesquieu with Tacitus, Foucault with Seneca―the author shows how both ancient Roman and modern European thinkers seek to recover an attachment to the political world that we actually inhabit, rather than to a utopia―a “perfect nowhere” outside of the existing order. Brimming with fresh interpretations of both ancient and modern theorists, this book offers provocative reading for classicists, political scientists, and anyone interested in political theory and philosophy. It is also a timely meditation on the hidden ways in which democracy can give way to despotism when the animating spirit of politics succumbs to resignation, cynicism, and fear.

Roman Political Thought and the Modern Theoretical Imagination (Volume 34) (Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture)

Rome and America: Communities of Strangers, Spectacles of Belonging

Americas

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Books by Hammer, Dean