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This book explores the uniquely Roman articulation of pride as a negative emotion and traces its partial rehabilitation that begins in the texts of the Augustan poets at the time of great political change using a combination of a lexical approach and a script-based approach that considers the emotion as a process.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Pride and Roman Pride
- Scripts and Words
- Scope
- Structure
- Part One: Scripts and Words: General Approaches to Roman Pride
- Chapter One: Semantics
- adrogantia
- fastus
- insolentia
- Chapter Two: Stages
- Causes of Pride
- Proud Behaviors
- Reacting to Pride
- Chapter Three: The Peculiar Case of the superbia Group
- Conclusion (Part 1)
- Part Two: Scripts: Institution and Place
- Chapter Four: Kingship
- The Pretenders
- Spurius Cassius Vecellinus
- Spurius Maelius
- Marcus Manlius Capitolinus
- The counterexample: Scipio Africanus
- Cicero and Other Kings
- Chapter Five: Capua
- Ausonius' urbs nobilis
- Capua as a Rival Capital in Cicero's Agrarian Speeches
- Hannibal, Capua, and the Second Punic War in Livy and Silius Italicus
- Conclusion (Part 2)
- Part Three: Words: The Transformation of superbia
- Chapter Six: Vergil's Aeneid, Pride Unsettled
- Troy
- Carthage
- Athletic Victories
- The Iliadic Half
- Turnus and the End
- Tarquinius and Brutus, Agrippa and Augustus
- Appendix: Gods' Lovers, Gods' Helpers, Gods' Human Pets
- Chapter Seven: Transformation of Pride in Augustan Poetry
- Triumph and Defeat in Horace, Carmina 1
- Pride and Love
- Pride and Poetry
- The Late-Augustan Aftermath
- Chapter Eight: Positive Pride in Post-Augustan Literature
- Poetic Pride
- Pride in the Public Sphere
- Pride by Association
- Flavian Epic
- Positive Pride in Pliny the Elder
- Conclusion (Part 3)
- Coda
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
About the author
Yelena Baraz is Kennedy Foundation Professor of Latin Language and Literature, Professor of Classics, and Acting Director, for the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at Princeton University. She received a BA in Latin from Brooklyn College, CUNY, PhD in Classics from University of California, Berkeley, and was the American Fellow at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in Munich.
Summary
Pride is pervasive in Roman texts, as an emotion and a political and social concept implicated in ideas of power. This study examines Roman discourse of pride from two distinct complementary perspectives. The first is based on scripts, mini-stories told to illustrate what pride is, how it arises and develops, and where it fits within the Roman emotional landscape. The second is semantic, and draws attention to differences between terms within the pride field. The peculiar feature of Roman pride that emerges is that it appears exclusively as a negative emotion, attributed externally and condemned, up to the Augustan period. This previously unnoticed lack of expression of positive pride in republican discourse is a result of the way the Roman republican elite articulates its values as anti-monarchical and is committed, within the governing class, to power-sharing and a kind of equality. The book explores this uniquely Roman articulation of pride attributed to people, places, and institutions and traces the partial rehabilitation of pride that begins in the texts of the Augustan poets at the time of great political change. Reading for pride produces innovative readings of texts that range from Plautus to Ausonius, with major focus on Cicero, Livy, Vergil, and other Augustan poets.
