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This volume presents the collected papers of Miriam T. Griffin, an eminent scholar of Roman history and ancient thought whose work has played a central role in forging links between scholarship on the history of the Graeco-Roman world and its philosophies. Spanning a period of over forty years and a distinguished career as Fellow of Somerville College at Oxford, these papers include both published works, many of them now difficult to find in their original printings, and previously unpublished lectures.
The collection covers a range of topics in Roman Republican and Imperial history, Roman historiography, and the interplay of Latin philosophy and Roman politics, as well as featuring a host of key Latin authors, most notably Cicero, Seneca, and Tacitus. The last of these categories, the interplay of philosophy and politics in Rome, is also the most prominent in the volume: though deeply interested in ancient philosophy, and especially Stoicism, Miriam Griffin writes primarily as a historian concerned with how Roman thinking was related to political circumstances and actions. Many of the essays have opened up new areas of discussion and formed the basis of later scholarship dealing with history and philosophy, and although some of them are quite general, serving as useful introductions to the subject area, others are more detailed and technical, inviting discussion and controversy. The style throughout is consistently dynamic and engaging, resulting in a fascinating and formidable collection from a scholar unrivalled as an expert in both the history of the Graeco-Roman world and its philosophies, and a true pioneer in the bridging of these two spheres.
List of contents
- Frontmatter
- List of Illustrations
- List of Abbreviations
- PART I: ROMAN HISTORY
- Republican History
- 1: Cicero and Rome
- 2: The 'Leges Iudiciariae' of the Pre-Sullan Era
- 3: The Tribune C. Cornelius
- 4: Introduction to A Companion to Julius Caesar
- Imperial History
- 5: Urbs Roma, Plebs and Princeps
- 6: The Elder Seneca and Spain
- 7: Nero's Recall of Suetonius Paullinus
- 8: Claudius in the Judgement of the Next Half-Century
- 9: Tacitus, Tiberius and the Principate
- 10: Nero and the Concept of Imperial Glory
- PART II: ROMAN HISTORIOGRAPHY
- Published Papers
- 11: Tacitus as a Historian
- 12: The Lyons Tablet and Tacitean Hindsight
- 13: Un Frammento del Libro XI di Tito Livio?
- 14: Claudius in Tacitus
- 15: The Senate's Story
- 16: Pliny and Tacitus
- 17: Iure Plectimur: The Roman Critique of Roman Imperialism
- Unpublished Lectures
- 18: Writing History: The Senate vs. Tacitus
- 19: Pliny s Letters: Between History and E-mail
- 20: Nero: From Zero to Hero
- 21: Tacitus and Nero
- 22: Tiberius on Family Relations
- Occasional Pieces
- 23: Obituary of Sir Ronald Syme, 1903-1989
- 24: Show Us You Care, Ma'am
- 25: 'Lifting the Mask': Syme on Fictional History
- PART III: PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS
- 26: Philosophy, Politics, and Politicians at Rome
- 27: De Brevitate Vitae
- 28: Seneca on Cato's Politics: Epistle 14.12 13
- 29: Imago Vitae Suae
- 30: Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide: I and II
- 31: Philosophy for Statesmen: Cicero and Seneca
- 32: The Intellectual Developments of the Ciceronian Age
- 33: Philosophical Badinage in Cicero's Letters to his Friends
- 34: Cynicism and the Romans: Attraction and Repulsion
- 35: When is Thought Political?
- 36: From Aristotle to Atticus: Cicero and Matius on Friendship
- 37: The Composition of the Academica: Motives and Versions
- 38: Seneca and Pliny
- 39: Piso, Cicero and their Audience
- 40: Political Thought in the Age of Nero
- 41: Clementia after Caesar: From Politics to Philosophy
- 42: De Beneficiis and Roman Society
- 43: Th
About the author
Miriam T. Griffin was born in New York and studied at Barnard College and Radcliffe before receiving a Fulbright Scholarship to Oxford, where she completed her DPhil under the supervision of Sir Ronald Syme. She was initially the Fulford Research Fellow at St. Anne's College, later being appointed to a tutorial fellowship in Ancient History at Somerville College and a CUF Lectureship in the University, as well as holding a post as Langford Eminent scholar at Florida State University in 2008. She was the editor of The Classical Quarterly from 2002 until 2007 and is a long-standing editor of the Clarendon Ancient History series for Oxford University Press. In 2018, Dr Griffin was posthumously awarded a British Academy Medal for her lifetimes contribution to Roman history and ancient thought.
Catalina Balmaceda completed her D.Phil at Brasenose College, Oxford, and is now Associate Professor of Ancient History at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She is the author of Virtus Romana: Politics and Morality in the Roman Historians (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), Comprender el pasado: una historia de la escritura y el pensamiento histórico (with Jaume Aurell, Peter Burke, and Felipe Soza; Akal, 2013), Sallust: The War Against Jugurtha (with Michael Comber; Liverpool University Press, 2009), and several articles on Roman history and historiography.
Summary
Miriam T. Griffin is an eminent scholar of Roman history and ancient philosophy and an unrivalled pioneer in her work to bridge the two. This collection of her papers focuses on the interplay of philosophy and politics in Rome and represents a fascinating body of work of outstanding intellectual quality and scholarly significance.
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It is easy to give this a five-star rating as the work here is the result of many years of peer-reviewed polishing and the finished text is pretty well perfect in scope and in execution.
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[a] meticulously edited and skillfully produced volume Joseph Geiger, Scripta Classica Israelica
