Dans la Grèce ancienne comme dans l'Antiquité romaine, plusieurs mots sont utilisés pour désigner le peuple, mais leur signification, positive ou négative, peut varier en fonction du point de vue de l'utilisateur. Comme la nôtre, la culture gréco-romaine distingue le peuple comme masse capricieuse et le peuple en tant qu'entité souveraine à laquelle se réfèrent les orateurs et les hommes politiques. Dans tous les cas, il faut se garder d'extrapoler à partir d'un seul texte. La tendance à déprécier le peuple (...) est une réalité à toutes les époques comme la polarisation entre riches et pauvres , mais dans la Rome impériale, cette dernière prend des proportions inédites. Si, depuis l'époque de César, il n'a jamais été mauvais de se réclamer du peuple contre l'aristocratie, il y a lieu de s'interroger sur le pouvoir réel dont jouissait le populus.In Ancient Greece and Rome, several words were used to refer to the people, but their signification, positive or negative, might vary with the point of view of the user. As in our own culture, there was a distinction in the Greco-Roman culture between the capricious mass and the people as a sovereign entity to which the orators and the politicians always referred. In any case, care must be taken not to extrapolate from a single text. The tendency to depreciate the people is a reality during all the periods of polarization between the rich and the poor , but in Imperial Rome this trend grew unusually. While it has always been good to claim one’s identification and side with the people against the aristocracy since Caesar’s time, one has every reason to question the real power of the populus. (shrink)

The public banquet category, which opposed convivium privatum and convivium publicum, existed in Roman society. Contrary to popular belief, the Latin term epulum did not always and, not only, refer to the public banquet, because the words convivium and cena could also be used. Originally, public banquets – ritual banquets or investiture banquets for priests and magistrates (cena aditialis) – concerned only priests and magistrates, sometimes senators (Epulum Iovis). These participants had the epulandi publice ius. In 217, the Saturnales banquet (...) was opened to the populus but this case remained isolated in the ritual setting. On the other hand, from the beginning of the 2nd century, nobles made it a habit to offer banquets to the people at their family funerals, then in the 1st century, the imperatores did so first during the Tithe of Hercules and then during their triumphs. In these circumstances, the convivium publicum then became the epulum populi romani and the epulandi publice ius concerned the members of the populus, probably listed. Such an evolution shows that the presence of the populus was not consubstantial, under the Republic, at the public banquet. It also shows that the public character of a banquet was not determined by the status of the donor or the origin of the funds but by the status of representatives of the city of the beneficiaries (magistrates, senators or citizens), as well as by its location in a public place. (shrink)

The argument consists of two main parts. First, it is shown that Augustine understood a people (populus) as a natural entity that is neither completely depraved (the city of Man) nor saintly (the city of God). While Augustine considered the city of God the true republic, he conceded that political bodies approximated its true justice and that they too deserve to be considered republics. This understanding is implicit in his reformulation of Cicero's definition of a people, and his reformulation (...) maintains the classical concept of political friendship. Second, for Augustine, a people can articulate itself through a republican mode. Neither a monarchy nor a pure democracy, Augustine understood a republic to include the functions of governors and governed (possibly being traded among different individuals), which means that a republic possesses democratic, aristocratic and monarchic parts. Augustine accounts for the monarchic part in his analysis of what in Rome was called the dictator, the office taken up by someone without formal political power and used to save the republic in crisis situations. (shrink)

로마 공화정 이래, 인민(populus)은 정치 공동체의 전체이면서 동시에 부분인 어떤 집합을 나타낸다. 현대 민주주의에서도 인민은 민주주의의 주체로서의 다수 대중이라는 의미로 사용되면서, 동시에 국가 내에서 시민권을 가진 사람들의 집합, 국민 전체를 지칭하는 개념으로 사용되기도 한다. 이러한 인민 개념의 다층성과 모호성으로 인해, 다양한 인민주권의 구호들이 상이한 맥락에서 등장하여, 서로 대립하는 정치세력들이 사용할 수 있는 양가적이고 모호한 대상이 되었다. 그렇다면 우리는 인민 개념 역시 이러한 모호함으로 인해 의미를 상실한 개념이라고 진단해야 하는가? 그러나 민주주의의 핵심인 인민주권 이념이 사라진다면, 민주주의는 더 이상 인민의 주체적 (...) 참여 속에 구성되는 정치적 권력이라는 관점을 유지할 수 없을 것이다. 본 논문은 인민주권이 보여주는 역설들을 지적하면서, 그러한 역설들 속에서도 결국 ‘미완의’, ‘도래할’ 인민주권 개념이 현대 민주주의의 사유에서 포기될 수 없는 것임을 동시에 보여주고자 한다. 이를 위해 본 논문은 인민주권 개념의 역사적 기원을 설명하고, 인민주권이 처한 역설적이고 모순적인 성격에 대한 지적들을 살펴본다. 마지막으로 이 글은 인민주권을 그것이 처한 역설 속에서도 포기할 수 없다는 주장을 제시하기 위해 라클라우, 발리바르, 버틀러의 관점을 검토한다. (shrink)

Natural law as a discipline was definitively institutionalized at universities in the Habsburg monarchy during the reforms of Maria Theresia after 1752. The guiding principles of these reforms were set in the instruction for the chair of natural law in Vienna which was given to Carl Anton Martini. It was Catholic in conception, but it ordered the professor to draw on Grotius. Our article reconstructs the elementary structure of Martini’s theory of natural law with a focus on his conception of (...) state. The article proves that Martini did not adopt Wolff’s conception of deducing duties and obligations from the highest principle for that would conflict with the Catholic emphasis on freedom of will. Instead of that, Martini derived duties and rights from the three God-given ends. Martini perceived the state as based on social contract, after the model of Christian Wolff. However, it seems that Martini rejected the two-contract model and acknowledged only the contract of submission as binding. Martini sought to hold the middle ground between Machiavellians arguing that the subjects lose all rights after the social contract, and radical ‘monarchomachs’ who believe that the ‘populus’ retains the supreme power. Martini argues that the ruler is limited by natural laws; the subjects retain rights to life and to property, but they are denied any right to resistance. Since Martini derived the monarch’s powers from the unlimited duty to guarantee security, he admitted even encroachments on religious freedom. He admitted coercion in matters that would threaten salus civitatis, but respected the inner libertas conscientiae. He also acknowledged a peculiar division of powers differentiating between a legislative, an inspectorial and an executive power. Even though the aim of this division was not a system of checks and balances, a precise description of the scope of the executive power helped to delimit a sphere of individual freedom. (shrink)

As part of the Common Knowledge symposium “Antipolitics” — which concerns the present confrontation and confusion of democracy and populism — this essay begins from the observation that populism is a word of Latin, not Greek, derivation. The Roman populus did not have the independent democratic power of the Athenian demos, though both words can be translated as “people.” Whereas today, in representative democracies, the conflict of populism and democracy can and does do serious damage to the latter, under (...) the regime of ancient Greek direct-democracy populism was more a demon fantasy, conjured by its diehard, oligarchic opponents, such as Plato, than a real, viable alternative mode of doing democratic politics. Thus, ancient Greek political history has its limits as a guide through our present troubles. (shrink)

The overuse of water resources in the upper reaches of the Tarim (Xinjiang, China) jeopardizes the ecosystem of the huyang (Populus diversifolia) in the middle reaches of the river, which has led the authorities to displace the population of Caohu (Luntai-xian) in the name of environmental security. This paper discusses the ethical basis of such operations by comparing different approaches, and concludes that establishing a genuine environmental ethics implies an ontological revolution: one that will replace the ‘being towards death’ (...) (Sein zum Tode) of the modern ontological topos of ‘individual body: individual person’, with the ‘being towards life’ (sei e no sonzai) of what Watsuji defined as ‘the structural moment of human existence’, in which being cannot be dissociated from context and history. This ontological revolution, which links human subjecthood with the environment itself, is by the same token the condition of sustainability, which is the most basic human security of all. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Origines Veliae In Pompeius Trogus, Prologue XVIIIWaldemar HeckelThe so-called “Prologues” (more appropriately “summaries”) of Pompeius Trogus’ Philippic History contain numerous references to people, places, and events not discussed by Justin in his abbreviation of the work. In CP 62 (1969) 162–64, V. Iliescu considered Prol. xviii (origines Phoenicum et Sidonis et Veliae Carthaginisque res gestae in excessu dictae) and argued that Veliae should be “corrected” to read Tyri. 1 (...) O. Seel, in the apparatus to his Teubner edition (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1971), writes “quae urbs contextui male convenire videtur.” But Seel remained unconvinced by Iliescu’s proposal or G. Radke’s more imaginative origines... Didonis vel Elissae.... 2 The latter is, at any rate, doubtful, as Iliescu noted (163), because origines is used in the Prologues of peoples, cities and regions, but not of specific persons (but cf. Justin xi 11.2, where Alexander consults Ammon de origine sua). These emendations are, however, unnecessary. There is good reason to suppose that Pompeius did, in fact, discuss the origins of Velia in southern Italy at precisely this point in his history.Ammianus Marcellinus xv 9.2ff. (= Timagenes, FGrH 88 F2) includes the following observation:A Phocaea vero Asiaticus populus, Harpali [sic] inclementiam vitans, Cyri regis praefecti, Italiam navigio petit. Cuius pars in Lucania Veliam, alia condidit in Viennensi Massiliam: dein secutis aetatibus oppida, aucta virium copia, instituere non pauca.But, in fact, a people of Asia from Phocaea, to avoid the severity of Harpalus [read: “Harpagus”], prefect of king Cyrus, set sail for Italy. A part of them founded Velia in Lucania, the rest, Massilia in the region of Vienne. Then in subsequent ages they established no small number of towns, as their strength and resources increased.”(xv 9.7; tr. J. C. Rolfe)Now we know from Herodotus i 163ff. that, when the Phocaeans fled to the west, some of them settled in Corsica, whither they had sent colonists some twenty years earlier. They maintained themselves through piracy until a naval coalition of Etruscans and Carthaginians met them in the so-called “battle of Alalia” (Hdt. i 166) and made the Phocaean position [End Page 309] in Corsica untenable. According to Herodotus, the Phocaeans sailed to Rhegium, from which they set out to found Elea or Velia (“they founded that city in the land of Oenotria which is now called Hyele”: Hdt. i 167.3; cf. D. Ridgway, CAH iv 2 672).Trogus’ report concerning the origins of the Phocaean colony of Velia was included in his eighteenth book, which, as we can see from Justin’s “Epitome,” dealt with the early history of Carthage from its foundation to the events of the late sixth century (cf. D. Asheri, CAH iv 2 750–52). Since the confrontation at Alalia in c. 535 B.C. formed an important part of the history of Carthaginian expansion in the western Mediterranean, it is most probable that Trogus included an account of the battle and, in the discussion of its aftermath, included a digression on the foundation of Velia. The Phocaeans had, of course, founded Marseille, and their early history will have been well known to Trogus, who discussed the Greeks in Gaul in Book xliii 3ff. The Phocaeans at Velia, however, belonged, historically and geographically, in the context of Carthaginian expansion and in Book xviii. The text of Trogus, Prologue xviii, is thus correct as it stands and requires no emendation.Waldemar HeckelUniversity of CalgaryFootnotes1. Or, less likely, Tyrorum.2. RE viii A2 (1958) col. 2403.Copyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

The author argues that polity and policies of Getúlio Vargas’s Estado Novo cannot be fully understood without exploring the legacy of Rio Grande do Sul. The southern state’s first republican governor, Júlio de Castilhos, had taken inspiration in Auguste Comte’s multifaceted political philosophy and inculcated its authoritarian traits into political institutions. Yet, he and his followers substantially adapted Comte’s positivism to the specific economic and political circumstances in their republiqueta sui generis. In contrast to Comte, the State merged temporal and (...) spiritual powers to pursue evolutionary political changes, a balanced socioeconomic modernisation, and the incorporation of the populus qua paternalistic public policies, and all this with a strong focus on education. Changing contexts resulted in further adjustments, when Vargas became governor in 1928: an ‘orderly’ inclusion of the opposition into the polity, a stronger state interventionism in the economy and labor market, and an experimentation with state corporatism. These experiences paved the way for this comtismo-turned-castilhismo-turning-varguismo to enter the national stage two years later. Despite all the compromises with other contenders for power that Vargas had to make thereafter, he and his gaúcho and other co-opted protégés remained united in the strong belief in technical solutions to social problems and a quest for rational institutions to carry out transformative policies. For them, the State was to be agent of development, tutor of corporate interest groups, and now also guarantor of national security. While highlighting the significant, and still underestimated, impact of French positivism on Vargas’s first 15 years in government, the article places emphasis on the pragmatic dimensions of its appropriation, propagation, and reinterpretation by two generations of state-builders. (shrink)

The A. compares the psalmus contra partem Donati, written by Augustin about 394, with the anonymous psalmus responsorius from a papyrus preserved in the Benedictine abbey in Montserrat, near Barcelona, under the shelf mark P.Monts.Roca inv. 128-178, dating maybe to the mid-IV century AD, from which only the strophes from A to L are complete. Particularly, he focuses on four lines before the acrostic strophes, whose reading is very controversial, and whose prosody he presents as different from the common one, (...) restoring it fully to its function of hypopsalma: Páter qui ómnia régis péto / Chrísti nós sciás herédes / Chrístus uérbo nátus pér quem pópulús est líberátus. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Speeches of Cicero: Context, Law, RhetoricJohn NicholsonPaul MacKendrick. The Speeches of Cicero: Context, Law, Rhetoric, with the technical assistance of Emmett L. Bennett, Jr. London: Duckworth, 1995. viii + 627 pp. Cloth, £55.Readers familiar with MacKendrick’s 1989 study of The Philosophical Books of Cicero will have an idea what to expect from his new companion work on Cicero’s speeches. It is essentially a factual handbook providing a (...) full and careful summary of the contents of Cicero’s major orations, along with some basic background information and a rhetorical analysis. The treatment is quite detailed so that, despite a length of well over 600 pages, the book covers only half of the fifty-eight extant Ciceronian speeches. Regrettably omitted on account of limitation of space are all the Verrines and all the Philippics, as well as any representatives of the early orations. But otherwise, we get a judicious, well-balanced selection from all rhetorical types, lengths, and audiences.MacKendrick begins in medias res. What he calls chapter 1 is actually only a two-page chronological outline of Cicero’s life, and this is the only preface we get before plunging into the presentation of the first speech (On Pompey’s Command) which comprises chapter 2. It would have been helpful if MacKendrick had begun with some kind of statement about his aims and methods, and perhaps some introduction to the ways and means of classical rhetoric in general, and of Ciceronian oratory in particular. Such preliminaries will be especially missed by neophyte readers who select this book as an introduction to Cicero’s speeches. Otherwise the work is well suited to this audience since MacKendrick takes little for granted, translates into English virtually all the Latin he quotes, and repeatedly defines technical terms.The format of each chapter is strictly uniform, divided into four sections. First comes an outline summarizing in full detail the content of the speech under consideration, with the standard divisions marked off and labeled. (Here alone MacKendrick fails to define rhetorical terminology; structural labels like narratio, partitio, peroratio, etc. are left unexplained.) Second, there comes a section called “Context” succinctly describing the historical background. Third, MacKendrick gives a summary of the legal points raised by each speech, which is kept quite brief, depending largely on the conclusions of standard modern authorities, especially A. H. C. Greenidge’s time-honored Legal Procedure of Cicero’s Time (which is unfortunately missing from the intended key reference on 460). The fourth and final section, called “Rhetoric,” is the fullest, and is divided into the subcategories of Word Frequency, Metaphor, and Other Rhetorical Devices.While the first three sections of each chapter merely rehearse basic information in a useful handbook format, it is in the fourth section on rhetoric that we get MacKendrick’s main original contribution, essentially a quantified word study of the speeches. Though he nowhere explicitly declares his analytical strategy, an early note decrying “the shapeless gobbledegook” (460 n. 2) of much [End Page 654] modern criticism reveals his contempt for sloppy subjective evaluation. Accordingly, his own approach here is largely statistical in nature, presumably based on computer-generated tabulations. The preoccupation is with quantitative analysis via word frequency lists and the counting and cataloging of metaphors and various rhetorical figures used by Cicero over the course of his career.MacKendrick first examines the semantic range and varying significance of the most commonly repeated words in each oration, and shows how Cicero manipulates them in different contexts. Personal pronouns usually head the lists, followed by terms such as res publica, urbs, civi[ta]s, consul, senatus, salus, omnis, lex, dignitas, bellum, and populus Romanus.Next he counts and classifies metaphors, a category which he defines very broadly—at times to the point of robbing the term of practical descriptive value inasmuch as extremely common words are analyzed as though poetic figures. For example, the verb fero and its many compounds are considered “metaphors of touch” even in standard idioms such as legem fero, while aequus is called a “metaphor of earth” (a subcategory of “metaphors of nature”), and intellego is called a “metaphor of agriculture” (since it literally means “to glean... (shrink)

Do we need to be a "people," populus, in order to embrace democracy and live together in peace? What exactly do we mean by nationality or nationhood? In this book, moral philosopher Davide Tarizzo takes up the problem of modern democratic "peoples," proposing that Jacques Lacan's theory of subjectivity enables us to clearly distinguish between the notion of (personal) identity and the notion of subjectivity, and that this very distinction is critical to understanding the nature of "peoples" or "nations.".

There is a textbook definition of democratic citizenship and collective action in which politics is a kind of game played by elites (e.g., Wasserman 2010). On this model, which is detailed by thinkers like Schumpeter (1942) and Lippmann ([1922] 1997) and often assumed by political scientists (Fung 2007), citizens must be informed voters, and this exhausts their role in acting collectively. Governments deal with social problems and are only informed by the democratic will of the populus. Asking more from (...) citizens is either unrealistic, due to limitations of ability or time of the average citizen; coercive, since requiring a great deal from citizens may infringe upon their right to privacy; or dangerous, because an .. (shrink)

Cet article comprend deux parties nettement distinctes. La première retrace l’histoire, de 1925 à 1955, de ce que Henri-Xavier Arquillière a cru bon d’appeler l’« augustinisme politique ». Cette théorie ne prolonge nullement les travaux de Pierre Mandonnet et d’Étienne Gilson ; elle est tissée de nombreuses contradictions ; elle procède d’une erreur sur les idées augustiniennes de nature et de justice. Comme l’avait déjà montré Henri de Lubac en 1984, le prétendu « augustinisme politique » n’est qu’un mythe. La (...) seconde partie relit la façon dont Augustin a critiqué la définition cicéronienne du populus et la définition qu’il en a proposée à son tour : une définition neutre, libérée des connotations religieuses, en pleine cohérence avec son idée de la concorde possible entre les deux cités. Augustin n’est donc pas seulement libre de toute tendance théocratique ; il se situe même aux antipodes de ce que l’on n’aurait jamais dû appeler « augustinisme politique ». (shrink)

Approaches to the “Indian Issue” which fail to go beyond the mere charting of evolutions in legal norms or the articulation between neoliberalism and multiculturalism do not allow us to take the full measure of indigenous policies, in terms of the goal set for the enlargement of the spaces for public interpellation and the reconfiguration of ideas and practices pertaining to citizenship. Starting from the Argentine experience, the aim of this article is to examine the question of the sedimentation of (...) neoliberal procedures, in a context marked by the will to re-appropriate national and popular sovereignty over territories and resources. The Indian question thus poses both the problem of the model of development that has been adopted and the question of the characterizing of the pleb (the category of the popular, or of those most underprivileged) as a part of the populus, that is, as part of the people of the nation, and therefore of the demos, understood as the space open to those who can legitimately give form and content to populus and who can put words on the world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Popular Autonomy and Imperial Power in Bartolus of Saxoferrato:An Intrinsic ConnectionFloriano Jonas CesarI. IntroductionBartolus of Saxoferrato is well known because of his ideas on the autonomy of the populus or civitas.1 He asserts that the populus can claim autonomous jurisdiction as a result not only of imperial concession but also of prescription, custom, or even eventual use on the ground of a de facto situation. Thus, the (...) populus needs no authorization from a superior, not even the emperor, to make its own laws. The idea of an autonomous populus did not originate with Bartolus, however. Marsilius of Padua had already worked out a quite developed theory about the authority of the whole body of the citizens to legislate.2 As opposed to the Aristotelian Marsilius, however, Bartolus bases his opinion about the populus essentially on the Corpus Iuris,3 though he knew at least the Politics and the Ethics too.4 What is important is not whether his knowledge of Aristotle [End Page 369] was immediate or through Giles of Rome's De Regimine Principum but that he proves his ideas basically by showing that they agree with certain authoritative texts and that he considers the Corpus Iuris, not Aristotle, as the proper authority to support his opinion on the populus.Such an emphasis on the autonomy of the civitas must not conceal the fact that, unlike Marsilius, Bartolus introduces the pope and the emperor alongside the populus as having jurisdiction of their own. Nor must the omnipresence of the Corpus Iuris hide the significance of the Bible in relation to the issue of the empire. Indeed he turns to the Scriptures not to substantiate the autonomy of the populus but to establish the divine origin of the royal (and papal) jurisdiction in general. Moreover, he uses them along with a particular interpretation of the popular origin of the empire to present the imperial jurisdiction as not subordinate to the populus.The concept of an autonomous civitas based in human premises, therefore, coexists in Bartolus with a notion of imperial power established by God, the former being inseparable from the latter, by virtue of his use of authorities. In fact Bartolus turns to the Corpus Iuris and the Scriptures not simply to illustrate but to substantiate his point of view. The authority of the Corpus Iuris, however, which supports his views on the populus, comes from the fact that emperor Justinian was its autor. But the Corpus Iuris is by the same token less authoritative than the Scriptures, whose author is God and which support the divine origin of the imperial power. Thus, working out a theory grounded on the authority of the Corpus Iuris, Bartolus also favors the base on which the imperial power was founded.The texts of interest here are the De Regimine Civitatis, De Guelphis et Gebellinis, and De Tyranno, where Bartolus more systematically presents his political ideas. In the De Regimine Civitatis he is concerned about "how many ways there are of governing a city,""which is the better way" and "which is the worst."5 The De Guelphis et Gebellinis treats both old and "recent" meanings of these nouns, whether these factions are licit, and the criteria to prove to which one belongs. At last the De Tyranno explains the origin of the word and the characteristics of the tyrant. Having discussed if there can be tyrant in a neighbourhood, household, and city, Bartolus divides the tyrants in the civitas into manifest, concealed, and tacit, and discusses whether their acts are valid. In tackling all of these issues, he turns to different sorts of proof—several authorities, including the Corpus Iuris, Scriptures, Aristotle, Giles of Rome, Gregory I, and Aquinas, as well as the jurisdictions of the populus, pope, and emperor. [End Page 370] This essay shall refer mainly to these treatises, while picking up, from other works, any additional instructive elements.Although Bartolus is particularly concerned about the de facto autonomous Italian cities in his time, his defense of their autonomy lies in arguments, and he has clear rules which define a valid form of argumentation. He generally considers that to prove a point means to show that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Maternal Megalomania: Julia Domna and the Imperial Politics of Motherhood by Julie LangfordLien FoubertJulie Langford. Maternal Megalomania: Julia Domna and the Imperial Politics of Motherhood. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. xiv + 203 pp. 20 black-and-white figs. Cloth, $55.It is now well-established that, through various media, imperial propaganda was aimed at different groups in Roman society. Ever since Jaś Elsner’s influential publication (Art and the Roman (...) Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity [Cambridge 1995]), scholars have also widely acknowledged that one should always reckon with the role of “the viewer” when studying processes of communication. Yet it remains difficult to find ways of measuring viewers’ responses to imperial messages, in particular when it concerns imperial [End Page 678] women, for whom we have far less evidence than for the male protagonists of Roman imperial history. Julie Langford’s study of the representation of Julia Domna and the way in which her image as a mother was perceived by the military, the Populus Romanus, and the Senate is, therefore, a much needed scholarly enterprise. By choosing this approach, the author builds on the model of the Principate as an “acceptance system,” first introduced by Egon Flaig in 1992 (Den Kaiser herausfordern: die Usurpation im römischen Reich [Frankfurt]), although this influence remains implicit as Flaig’s text is not mentioned in the introduction nor is it included in the bibliography. In this monograph, which is explicitly not intended as a biography in search of the “real” Julia Domna, Langford aims at examining the ideological negotiations that took place between image-makers.In chapter 1 (“Not Your Momma. Problematizing Julia Domna as the Mater Castrorum”), the author sets out to examine the relationship between the military and Julia Domna by means of a study of ideological discourses on the presence of women in a military context up to the time of Septimius Severus, the conferral of the title Mater Castrorum on Faustina Minor and Julia Domna, and the reactions to the latter by different groups within the army (one should also consult M.A. Speidel’s “Faustina—mater castrorum. Ein Beitrag zur Religionsgeschichte,” Tyche 27 [2012]: 127–52, which probably appeared too late for the author to take into account). She concludes that, contrary to what is often assumed, the title of “Mother of the Camps” was not granted to tighten or emphasize the connection between empresses and the army, but was instead aimed at the people of Rome and the provinces. For by creating the image of a familial connection between the soldiers and the imperial house, and thus implying that the military would support and protect their imperial “mother,” her husband, and her sons, the inhabitants of the Roman Empire would be discouraged from starting an uprising. The arguments that are put forward by the author are twofold. On the one hand, inscriptions, coins, and literary sources indicate that the military did not constitute a well-defined target of imperial propaganda with regard to Julia Domna’s military representations. For instance, less than 6 percent of the dedications to the empress studied by the author were set up by soldiers. In addition, although the Roman mint produced coins that advertised the empress’ title of Mater Castrorum from 196 onwards, this practice was not extended to the eastern traveling mints, which are often assumed to have been fundamental for the distribution of salaries or donations and, consequently, would have been a logical starting point for spreading ideological messages. On the other hand, the author pays attention to the poor reputation of Julia Domna within the army, focusing above all on the figures of Plautianus and Julius Crispus (38–44), and sees this as an indication of the initial reluctance of the soldiers to associate the empress with anything connected to the military sphere, including the acknowledgment of Julia Domna as “their mother.” The first argument in particular is convincing, since—even though the author admits that much remains unproven with regard to the role of eastern mints—the combination of epigraphic and numismatic source material shows that messages sent out by the imperial administration... (shrink)

One of the most important pieces of evidence which we possess concerning the judicial rights of Roman provincials, particularly their status in relation to the governor's tribunal, is provided by Cicero's brief outline of those provisions of the lex Rupilia, the Sicilian provincial charter, which dealt with judicial administration. The passage reads as follows: Siculi hoc iure sunt ut, quod civis cum cive agat, domi certet suis legibus, quod Siculus cum Siculo non eiusdem civitatis, ut de eo praetor iudices ex (...) P. Rupili decreto, quod is de decem legatorum sententia statuit, quam legem Rupiliam vocant, sortiatur. Quod privatus a populo petit ant populus a privato, senatus ex aliqua civitate qui iudicet datur, cum alternae civitates reiectae sunt; quod civis Romanus a Siculo petit, Siculus index, quod Siculus a civi Romano, civis Romanus datur; ceterarum rerum selecti iudices ex conventu civium Romanorum nr000ni solent. (shrink)

O uso diferenciado dos termos multitudo e populus em Espinosa nos remete a problemáticas mais recentes que se referem aos “movimentos de massas", seu controle, sua utilização e sua repressão preventiva. Tomando as 'massas' como objeto de estudo específico, Espinosa recusa tanto a redução da individualidade pelas massas quanto a redução das massas pelo poder, fornecendo-nos assim subsidios para pensar as instituições democráticas.

The "Commentariolum Petitionis" has long served to demonstrate the validity of the theory that Republican electoral politics were founded on relationships of patronage that permeated the entire society, and that appeals to the voting citizenry were relatively unimportant for election. Yet the attention the author pays to the necessity of cultivating the popularis voluntas strongly implies that a successful canvasser cannot rely on the direct or indirect ties of patronage and amicitia but must win the electoral support of the anonymous (...) mass of voters. A consular campaign emerges as to a great extent a public performance before the populus in which the candidate seeks to demonstrate to those who do not know him personally that he is dignus consulatu. While the exploitation of personal connections is undeniably important, certain features of the treatment of the studia amicorum in the Commentariolum suggest that the traditional, Gelzerian emphasis on noble patronage is misplaced. Noble allies are particularly prized not for networks of clients but for the luster they shed on a candidate; on the other hand, the homines gratiosi whose electioneering activities are most suggestive of patronage tend to be of middle and lower rank. Nor can all the personal political relationships discussed in the Commentariolum be plausibly subsumed under the concept of patronage, which entails asymmetry between the parties and a connection of some duration; rather, the picture presented here is one of a relatively "free market" of political deal-making between candidates and vote-brokers. The "Commentariolum Petitionis" offers no obstacle to a new model of Republican politics that assigns a much greater role to symbolic appeals to a voting citizenry, and a less dominant role to personal patronage, than have until recently been accepted. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:How to Inherit a Kingdom:Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought*Russell Hittinger and Scott RonigerPrudenceIn 1890, in his Sapientiae Christianae, Pope Leo XIII wrote: "The political prudence of the Pontiff embraces diverse and multiform things, for it is his charge not only to rule the Church, but generally so to regulate the actions of Christian citizens that these may be in apt conformity to their hope of gaining (...) eternal salvation" (§37). The title of the encyclical means on principles of Christian practical wisdom, the truths concerning the pursuit in this life of our supernatural end. Leo was also referring to the regnative prudence of the pontifical office, directing citizens qua baptized. Even if the direction is about political morality, the prudential directives presuppose sanctifying grace and a supernatural end. In other words, such prudence is here proffered under the formality of the New Law.1In the concrete, directing those who have sanctifying grace to right [End Page 971] judgment and action regarding what belongs or does not belong to Caesar is not easily given or received. The lines and entanglements are contingent and fluid. At a consistory immediately after World War II, Pope Pius XII remarked that the triumph of democratic forms of government has at least one advantage: "The distinction between the Church and even the democratic State becomes increasingly clear."2 Divine providence includes two comprehensive communities, polity and ecclesia, which differ in their respective origin and end. In the thick of events, they are not always so clear. For the better part of two millennia, ecclesial and civil governments look very much alike from an institutional and sociological point of view. They share families, languages, costumes, arts and sciences, banks, moral principles, the same contemporary media—indeed, even sharing the same laws and international protocols. More than half of the European Union countries are under at least one concordat with the Holy See. Yet when we casually speak of "Church and state," it is easy to imagine two teams in the same order of things. Even so, Pius XII acknowledged that democratic government makes clear(er) that the first subject of the polity is the populus, the people, whereas the first subject of the ecclesia is the Holy Spirit.Beginning with Leo (1878–1903), pontifical prudence had to reckon with the benefits and challenges of representative governments. Whenever public responsibility is vested in the citizens, the baptized citizens bear a greater burden of distinguishing what properly belongs to the Church and to civil government. For in representative governments the citizens are not vassals or retainers of the king and his court. Therefore it falls more directly upon the people to understand the difference between Church and civil government.3Leo understood the world he inhabited. In Rerum Novarum (1891), he mused, "Nothing is more useful than to look upon the world as it really is" (§18). This marks an important change in papal letters after 1789. Christian wisdom has to be communicated not merely to Catholics who are subjects but also to Catholics who are citizens: in France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, [End Page 972] and so on. Thus, Leo observed in an allocution two years after Sapientiae Christianae: "Faith embodied in the conscience of peoples rather than restoration of medieval institutions is the way to final victory."4As it turned out, Leo's greatest problem was the French Church and the Third Republic, which became more aggressively laicist with every passing decade, even though it was still under the 1801 concordat signed by Napoleon and Pius VII. For Leo, much was at stake, chiefly the law of divorce, which had been excised from the Napoleonic Code. Born in 1810, Leo had seen the historical events: the captivity of Pope Pius VII and then his release by the French, the demise of Napoleon, the loss of the papal states (the longest continuous temporal government in western Europe, until the summer of 1870), and Otto von Bismarck's Kulturkampf. He possessed those chief parts of prudence: memory, foresight, circumspection, and above all caution!Writing to the French Church in 1892, he observed that:Founded by Him who was, who is, and who... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Volcanus: Recherches comparatistes sur les origines du culte de VulcainJ. LinderskiGérard Capdeville. Volcanus: Recherches comparatistes sur les origines du culte de Vulcain. Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, Palais Farnèse, 1995. viii 1 521 pp. Cloth, no price stated. (Bibliothèque des Ecoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, fasc. 288)In the last twenty years the French School has published every two years one book on Roman religion: monographs dealing with (...) Fortuna, Mercurius, Ops, Penates, Providentia Deorum, Fratres Arvales, l’Association Dionysiaque (cf. JRS 78 [1988] 207–8), the Bacchanalia, religious architecture (Aurea templa), La vie religieuse des matrones, Le délit religieux (cf. CP 79 [1984] 174–77). Now we have a book about Volcanus. First let us remark on what this book is not: it is not a study of the cult of Volcanus, an encyclopedia that would systematically list and discuss all the literary, iconographic, and epigraphical evidence in Rome, Italy, and the provinces. It would be very pleasing to have such a book; perhaps pedestrian, but useful. For information we still have to turn to Georg Wissowa, to his ageless Religion und Kultus der Römer (2d ed. Munich 1912, 229–32); also informative is W. Eisenhut, “Volcanus,” RE Suppl. 14 (1974) 948–62. A rather balanced account of the origines appears in G. Camassa, “Sull’origine [End Page 644] e le funzioni del culto di Volcanus a Roma,” RSI 96 (1984) 811–54. Capdeville’s book we have for speculations, a paradise for those eager to delve into murky origins, and those who are transposed by the dazzling and uncertain art of comparativistic pleading. If bibliography (fifty-one pages, 425–75) stands for learning, it is a learned monograph; it ranges from Rome through Etruria to Crete and Cyprus. Surprisingly we find no Hittites or Turks (the relevance of the latter the reader will see revealed at the end of this piece).The book opens with an evocation of Georges Dumézil. Where do his manes lead the author? They lead to the fish. The monograph “est né... d’une interrogation sur les pisciculi des Volcanalia” (1), a subject which intrigued Dumézil himself (REL 36 [1959] 121–30). At the feast of Volcanalia on 23 August (see the references in A. Degrassi, Fasti anni Numani et Iuliani (5 Inscr. It. XIII.2 [Rome 1963] 500–502), populus pro se in ignem animalia mittit (Varr. LL 6.20). On 7 June (cf. Degrassi 466) the Ludi Piscatorii were celebrated a praetore urbano pro piscatoribus Tiberinis, quorum quaestus non in macellum pervenit, sed fere in aream Volkani, quod id genus pisciculorum vivorum datur ei deo pro animis humanis (Festus 274–76 L); but at the Ludi Piscatorii the offering was not pro animis but rather pro quaestu piscantium (Festus 232 L); cf. J. Le Gall, Recherches sur le culte du Tibre (Paris 1953) 48–50; J. Linderski, Ktema 17 ([1992] 1996) 58. Agni, the Indian god of fire, hated water and fish; this explains the Roman ritual (so Dumézil). Most scholars tacitly assume that pisciculi vivi were offered also on the Volcanalia, but Varro speaks generally of animalia: if he wanted to say pisces he would have said so. Volcanus was a god of destructive fire (so Wissowa, Dumézil, and many other scholars); it makes sense that to propitiate him not only fish, a symbol of water, were burnt, but also other animals (perhaps as a substitute offering; cf., on that sort of sacrifices, G. Capdeville, MEFRA 83 [1971] 283–323). In the context of incendia arcenda an inscription of the Domitianic time (ILS 4914) records an offering on the Volcanalia of vitulus robeus and verres r(obeus). This calls to mind the sacrifice of the rutilae canes to protect the crops from the burning sun (Festus 358 L).Of all of this Capdeville, surprisingly, does not write at all: after their debut on page 1 the pisciculi and the Volcanalia feebly reappear at the very end of the book (420–23), only to be disregarded. Capdeville claims that Volcanus was not at all, and never, a god of “feu destructeur.” But Dumézil too... (shrink)

Despite Jon Elster’s caveat that the market potentially endangers the forum, Goodin insists that commercial innovations, such as the focus group and the market test, would actually strengthen democracy and citizen engagement. His thesis in this book is that governments should task members of smallscale deliberative bodies — or what he calls, in the singular, a ‘micro-public’, and what Robert Dahl before him termed a ‘mini-populus’ — to experiment with alternative solutions to public problems. While the book is a (...) collection of previously published essays, many are extensively altered and rewritten to support this thesis and to round out a literature that has recently become increasingly oriented toward deliberative practice. Indeed, Goodin is more circumspect than some of the less praxis-focused deliberative theorists — for instance, Jürgen Habermas — concerning the capacity of deliberative forums to displace traditional democratic institutions: ‘Inevitably . . . deliberative democracy can only supplement rather than supplant the institutional apparatus of representative democracy as we know it’ (7-8). The book is organized into two sections, one concerning the design and function of small-scale deliberative bodies or micro-publics, and the other devoted to deliberative activities in macro-political institutions, including the translation of micro-public recommendations into sound public policy (what is often called ‘uptake’). (shrink)