Roman Political Thought From Cicero to Augustine

Roman Political Thought is the first comprehensive treatment of the political thought of the Romans. Dean Hammer argues that the Romans were engaged in a wide-ranging and penetrating reflection on politics. The Romans did not create utopias. Instead, their thinking was relentlessly shaped by their own experiences of violence, the enormity and frailty of power, and an overwhelming sense of loss of the traditions that oriented them to their responsibilities as social, political, and moral beings. However much the Romans are known for their often complex legal and institutional arrangements, the power of their political thought lies in their exploration of the extra-institutional, affective foundations of political life. The book includes chapters on Cicero, Lucretius, Sallust, Virgil, Livy, Seneca, Tacitus, Marcus Aurelius, and Augustine, and discussions of Polybius, the Stoics, Epicurus, and Epictetus.

1. Cicero: to save the res publica; 2. Lucretius: the poetics of power: 3. Sallust: giving endurance to memory; 4. Virgil: politics, violence, and memory; 5. Livy: political thought as remedium; 6. Seneca and jurisdiction; 7. Tacitus: the political psychology of despotism; 8. Marcus Aurelius and the cosmopolis; 9. Augustine: political thought as confession.

Dean Hammer is John W. Wetzel Professor of Classics and Professor of Government at Franklin and Marshall College, Pennsylvania. He is author of The Puritan Tradition in Revolutionary, Federalist, and Whig Political Theory (1998); The Iliad as Politics: The Performance of Political Thought (2002); and Roman Political Thought and the Modern Theoretical Imagination (2008), and editor of A Companion to Greek Democracy and the Roman Republic (2014). From 1999 to 2000, he was a Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies and is currently on the editorial board of Polity. His articles on ancient and modern political thought have been published in a variety of edited volumes and journals, including Political Theory; the American Journal of Philology; Historia; Phoenix; Arethusa; the Review of Politics; Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies; the Classical Journal; Classical World; Contemporary Politics; Theory, Culture, and Society; and the American Journal of Semiotics.