E-Books →Restraint, Conflict, and the Fall of the Roman Republic

Free Download Restraint, Conflict, and the Fall of the Roman Republic by Paul Belonick
English | December 20, 2022 | ISBN: 0197662668 | 240 pages | PDF | 3.77 Mb
Strongly-held values can stabilize a society. They can also splinter it. In Restraint, Conflict, and the Fall of the Roman Republic, Paul Belonick explores the moral paradoxes of Republican Rome. He describes how aristocrats engaged in "performative politics," aggressively seeking self-advancement with a competitiveness that fueled the expansion of an empire. But, paradoxically, Roman orators and authors also emphasized the need for self-control, moderation, and temperance. Scholars have long suggested that this moral obsession with self-control was merely a social marker of aristocratic status, but Belonick argues that the Roman focus on self-control solidified their peculiar, competitive, semi-formal government.