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The Challenge to the Auspices presents an investigation into the interaction of Roman magistrates during the Middle Republic with the practice of auspices, with a focus on attempts to avoid, ignore, or resist this requirement.
List of contents
- 1: Dictator and Magister Equitum
- 2: Imperium and auspices
- 3: Dictator
- 4: Magister Equitum
- 5: Drowning the Chickens
- 6: Dictator interregni caussa
- 7: The road to perdition
- 8: The challenge to the auspices
- Appendix: Consular abdication and interregnum
About the author
C. F. Konrad studied at the Universities of Oregon and North Carolina. He has worked at the University of California, Santa Barbara, University of Colorado, and the Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, D.C. He currently works as an Associate Professor of Classics at Texas A&M University, and is the editor of Augusto augurio: Rerum humanarum et divinarum commentationes in honorem Jerzy Linderski (2004) and the author of Plutarch's Sertorius: A Historical Commentary (1994).
Summary
The Challenge to the Auspices presents an investigation into the interaction of Roman magistrates during the Middle Republic with the practice of auspices, with a focus on attempts to avoid, ignore, or resist this requirement.
Additional text
The volume offers important insights to various aspects of the Roman auspices and therefore will enrich the studies on this key theme of Roman religious practice as well as on politics in the middle Roman republic... By closely examining several case studies as important keys to the understanding of the importance of augural practices to Roman politics the book under review fruitfully connects the fields of politics and religion and thereby will find his place within the series of publications on Roman religion as well as on Roman government.
