Roman Republics by Harriet I. Flower (review)
- Roman Republics by Harriet I. Flower
In calculus, the smaller we subdivide the area under a curve, the better we approximate its dimensions. Flower suggests that subdivision will yield a better view of Roman republican history. In place of the traditional “early,” “middle,” and “late” republic, Flower presents six republics and five transitional periods, interspersed with intervals when strongmen or cliques controlled the levers of power. The focus is on how the machinery of politics and the machinations of the governing class precipitated shifts from each phase to the next. When political obstruction in a republican system leads to violence, who is to blame—those who cast the first stone, or those who block traditional paths to compromise? Flower tends to blame obstructionists, which makes her study a riveting read for Americans dismayed by Bush v. Gore or the rise of the filibuster in their Senate. How long, and how well, can a republic govern an empire? This question, equally urgent, is too broad for Flower’s focus on elite politics.
Maud Gleason is a lecturer in classics at Stanford University and the author of Making Men: Sophists and Self-presentation in Ancient Rome. She delivered the 2005 J. H. Gray Lectures at Cambridge University, on identity theft in antiquity, and the 2008 Jerome Lectures at the University of Michigan, on ancient Roman medicine and pharmacology.
