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"The Romans' early establishment of the sanctity of their city and the desire to protect it -- from not only the ravages of military conflict beyond its confines but the dangers of authoritarian rule at home -- took a variety of forms, legal, political, and military. These were codified in social practices, and thus established behaviors and rituals that, as they set these practices in the public eye, served as a continuing self-justification of Rome's growing dominance in the Mediterranean world. Koortbojian examines the transformation of Rome from Caesar to Constantine from several different points of view to reveal the primordial distinction between matters civic and military, and how the 'crossing of the pomerium,' the evanescent boundary that divided them, provided the crux of a historical interpretation of distinctly Roman endeavors. Koortbojian sets the background and then expands upon the long-vexed problem of the presence of men at arms in the city of Rome; long-standing legal and political practices that were adapted in the face of new military engagements and the crisis of civil war; and how Roman commanders attended to established religious practices while on campaign, and how those practices mirrored traditional customs and inverted the manner of their performance so as to acknowledge a profound Roman distinction between civic and military acts. As a whole, the book demonstrates how certain fundamental principles of law, politics, and military life -- and the practices that followed from them -- were interwoven in a narrative of continuity and change across three centuries of Roman imperial rule"
About the author
Michael Koortbojian
Summary
A multifaceted exploration of the interplay between civic and military life in ancient Rome
The ancient Romans famously distinguished between civic life in Rome and military matters outside the city—a division marked by the pomerium, an abstract religious and legal boundary that was central to the myth of the city's foundation. In this book, Michael Koortbojian explores, by means of images and texts, how the Romans used social practices and public monuments to assert their capital's distinction from its growing empire, to delimit the proper realms of religion and law from those of war and conquest, and to establish and disseminate so many fundamental Roman institutions across three centuries of imperial rule.
Crossing the Pomerium probes such topics as the appearance in the city of Romans in armor, whether in representation or in life, the role of religious rites on the battlefield, and the military image of Constantine on the arch built in his name. Throughout, the book reveals how, in these instances and others, the ancient ideology of crossing the pomerium reflects the efforts of Romans not only to live up to the ideals they had inherited, but also to reconceive their past and to validate contemporary practices during a time when Rome enjoyed growing dominance in the Mediterranean world.
A masterly reassessment of the evolution of ancient Rome and its customs, Crossing the Pomerium explores a problem faced by generations of Romans—how to leave and return to hallowed city ground in the course of building an empire.
Foreword
An examination of the ways in which central institutions—military, civil, and religious—in Roman life were marked as separate while also being interwoven across three centuries of Roman imperial rule.
Additional text
"I . . . appreciated the clarity of [Koortbojian’s] written expression, including the use of sub-head-ings to mark out the individual building-blocks of his arguments, and the lavish illustrations. I have no hesitation in recommending this book to all those interested in Roman art, politics, religion and the processes of thinking about them."---Penelope Goodman, Gnomon
