The Lost Memoirs of Augustus and the Development of Roman Autobiography

Smith, C. (Author)/ A., Powell (Author)/ Cornell, Tim (Author)/ Pelling, Christopher (Author)/ Thein, Alexander (Author)

ISBN 10: 1914535707 / ISBN 13: 9781914535703

Published by John Wiley & Sons, 2008

About this Item

240 pages. In Stock.

Seller Inventory # __1914535707

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Lost Memoirs of Augustus and the Development of Roman Autobiography
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1914535707
• ISBN 13: 9781914535703
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Brand New
• Weight: 0.39 kilograms

About this title

Synopsis

Augustus' Memoirs, written probably in the mid 20s BC, might have been one of the most revealing texts of Roman history - had they survived. Far longer than his surviving Res Gestae, the Memoirs seem to date from a period at which the wounds of Rome's civil wars were fresh, and the emperor's partisan past might be recalled with discomfort. Existing fragments and testimonia have suggested that the work was apologetic in purpose. In this, the first ever comprehensive study of the subject, a cast of internationally-respected scholars reconstruct aspects of the work, its importance for historians, and its relation to Roman literary genre. The book also contains, by kind permission of Oxford University Press, the fragments and testimonia of the Memoirs as they will appear, newly edited by Christopher Smith, in The Fragmentary Roman Historians.

About the Author

Christopher J. Smith is Professor of Ancient History at the University of St Andrews, Executive Chair of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UKRI), and Chair of the National Library of Scotland. He was Director of the British School at Rome (2009-2017). Select publications include: Early Rome and Latium: Economy and Society c. 1000-500 BC (1996); The Roman Clan: The Gens from Ancient Ideology to Modern Anthropology (2006); The Roman Kingship (2020). He has edited Sovereignty: A Global Perspective (2022); co-edited Praise and Blame in Roman Republican Oratory (2011), Imperialism, Cultural Politics, and Polybius (2012), Transformations of Value: Lived Religions and the Economy (2019), Middle Republican Rome - from the conquest of Veii to the battle of Zama (in Italian; 2021).