Roman Manliness: "Virtus" and the Roman Republic - Hardcover

McDonnell, Myles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521827884 ISBN 13: 9780521827881

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2006

Synopsis

Recent studies of ancient Roman masculinities have concentrated on the private aspects of the subject, particularly sexuality, and have drawn conclusions from a narrow field of reference, usually rhetorical practice. In contrast, this book examines the public and the most important aspect of Roman masculinity: Manliness as represented by the concept of "virtus". Using traditional historical, philological, and archaeological analysis, combined with socio-linguistics and gender studies, it presents a comprehensive picture of how Roman manliness developed from the middle to the late Republic period.

About this title

Book Description:

This book examines the public and the most important aspect of Roman masculinity: Manliness as represented by the concept of virtus. Using traditional historical, philological, and archaeological analyses, together with the methods of socio-linguistics and gender studies, it presents a comprehensive picture of how Roman manliness developed from the middle to the late Republic. Arguing that virtus was not, in essence, a moral concept, Myles McDonnell shows how the semantic range of the word, together with the manly ideal that it embodied, were altered by Greek cultural ideas; and how Roman manliness was contested in the religion, culture, and politics of the late Republic.

Review:

'For historians, therefore, the study of ethics is now the study of a basic building block of the Greek and Roman world, and McDonnell ... [has] made a major contribution to the field.' The Times Literary Supplement

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0521827884
• ISBN 13: 9780521827881
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 504