Maschek, Dominik The Roman Civil Wars

The Archaeology and History of a Crisis

The late Roman Republic was characterised by severe crises, ranging from the time of the Gracchi to the Battle of Actium and finally ending with the Principate of Augustus. Individual military leaders such as Marius, Sulla and Pompey gained so much power that the internal cohesion of the Republic collapsed. The Roman state sank into civil war. Using a series of case studies, from monumental buildings to public panels, Dominik Maschek shows that the harsh realities and disruptions of civil war were closely linked to growing wealth and prosperity: On the one hand, they were fuelled by the increasing complexity of urban life and conspicuous consumption, which led to greed and violent appropriation; on the other, they also played a crucial role in shaping the worldviews and socio-cultural norms that governed the use of material culture through the forced and premature promotion of new generations of control. On the basis of the latest findings in Roman archaeology and history, Dominik Maschek analyses these structural foundations and the effects of the late Republican civil wars on the basis of buildings and images as well as rituals and state acts, and for the first time offers an overall interpretation of their cultural history.