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The problem of power is one of perennial interest and importance in human life, but at no period in history has it presented itself with greater urgency and insistence than in the days of St. Augustine. For, during his manhood, the Empire, which for so many centuries had guarded the frontiers of organized society, was tottering to its fall. Everywhere…

The Landmark Julius Caesar: The Complete Works. Kurt A. Raaflaub, ed. and trans. New York: Pantheon Books, 2017.
 
As part of The Landmark Series, The Landmark Julius Caesar is another brilliant presentation of primary sources combined with a collection of maps, pictures, and notes to make ancient works navigable to new readers. The accounts in this edition – the Gallic War,…

The Age of Caesar: Five Roman Lives. Plutarch. Translated by Pamela Mensch with Preface and Notes by James Romm and Introduction by Mary Beard. New York: W. W. Norton, 2017.
 
Born around 45 AD, Pluatrch (later Romanized as Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus) grew up and spent most of his life in Chaeronea where he actively participated in local political and religious affairs.…

Crisis and Constitutionalism: Roman Political Thought from the Fall of the Republic to the Age of Revolution. Benjamin Straumann. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
 
Crisis and Constitutionalism is an extraordinary book that recounts the Roman tradition of constitutionalism: 1) rules that were considered entrenched; 2) rules that were of great importance through which political power was exercised; 3) rules that betrayed…

St. Augustine and Varro's Civil Theology
It is curious that both Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine, while bitterly engaged in the struggle for existential representation of Christianity, should have been almost completely blind to the nature of the issue [that the Romans had their own theology, though it was more compact.]. Nothing seemed to be at stake but the truth of…

Oakeshott on Rome and America. Eugene Callahan. Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic, 2012.
 
Oakeshott’s critique of Rationalism is the most famous part of his corpus and also the most misunderstood and controversial. From the 1940s and into the 1960s it was bold and necessary to criticize the ideological style of politics and large scale social planning. Since the predominant tendency of post-war…