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2025, Cursus Honorum
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25 pages
1 file
In a society in which the importance of military experience was beyond doubt for the Roman elite, military service was of utmost importance – an obligatory prerequisite, according to Polybius – for anyone wanting to pursue a political career.
The Politics of Honour in the Greek Cities of the Roman Empire, 2017
2008
In this book Sara Phang explores the ideals and realities of Roman military discipline, which affected the behavior of soliders in combat, their punishment for infractions, and their economic activities, such as compensation and other benefits, work, and consumption. Her thematically organized study analyzes these aspects of discipline using both literary and documentary sources. Phang emphasizes social and cultural conflicts in the Roman army. Contrary to the impression that Roman emperors "bought" their soldiers and indulged them, discipline restrained such behavior and legitimized and stabilized the imperial power. Phang argues that emperors and aristocratic commanders gained prestige from imposing discipline, while displaying leadership in person and a willingness to compromise with a restive soldiery.
EOS, 2021
During the 42 years of the rule of the Severan dynasty (193-235), several thousand people with the title of military tribune probably served in the army of the Roman Empire. Some of them then entered the Roman Senate, starting a public career (which was often a long-term career) and forming the core of the State government. The aim of this paper is to answer the following questions: how many military tribunes took up higher military functions in their careers: legatus legionis, praepositus, dux; what were the rules for assuming these functions and the competences required to perform them; whether any of the senators who held the military tribunate in the Severan period can be defined as vir militaris and whether the Roman army was commanded by dilettantes.
This article deals with the notion of honor and its role in today’s military as an incentive in combat, but also as a check on the behavior on both the battlefield and in modern “operations other than war.” First, an outline will be given of what honor is and how it relates to traditional views on military courage. After that, the Roman honor-ethic, stating that honor is a necessary incentive for courageous behavior and that it is something worth dying for, is contrasted with today’s prevailing view which sees honor as something obsolete and archaic and not as a legitimate motive. The article then addresses the way honor continues to have a role in today’s military, despite its diminishing role in society at large. Subsequently, the drawbacks of the military’s use of the honor ethic are addressed, focusing also on the current operation in Iraq. The final section tries to find a solution to these problems.
Eurasian Empires in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages , 2017
Whereas economic interests and the geopolitical competition for resources mostly tend to determine public policy and political behaviour in contemporary advanced societies, competing incentives of a very different nature often prevailed in the Roman Republic (509-27 BCE). With the intent to provide a platform for comparison with the Chinese Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), this paper endeavours to highlight how honour, pride and shame were strong and pervasive forces in republican Rome: veritable cultural drivers of behaviour that significantly impacted on the functioning of its political and military machinery and often even determined the very course of history. Given the wide scope of this volume and the diversity of fields represented, the chosen method will be one of thematically and diachronically organized case-studies of well-documented and illuminating historical situations. As such, the focus will be mainly on the evidence as preserved in the ancient sources, rather than producing just another state of the question. In terms of scope and presentation, this paper is very much intended for an audience consisting of historians, students and informed or interested laypersons alike.
In the "thick of politics": the role of drafting committees and consilia in the cursus honorum of young senators (2 nd -1 st centuries BCE) Cristina Rosillo-López .
Eos, 2020
In this article, the second in a series devoted to the office of the military tribune in the senatorial cursus honorum in the Severan period, the following findings are presented: (1) in the group of 123 military tribunes from the Severan period who subsequently became senators, special distinctions (dona militaria, adlectio, commendatio) were awarded to 49 people (approx. 40%); (2) dona militaria were granted to 8 of them; most people from this group are attested as homines novi and came from the provinces; (3) the gradual disappearance of references to dona in the source material may be the result of the intentional damage of inscriptions relating to emperors as award givers (e.g., due to the damnatio memoriae) or a change in the character of these distinctions (financial rewards replacing the traditional dona); (4) dona did not have any greater impact on the subsequent adlectio or commendatio; they did not become a part of the senatorial mode of promotion; (5) we know of 23 former tribunes who were adlected among the former magistrates; homines novi and provincials were the most numerous among them; (6) we know of 28 former tribunes who became candidati Augusti for magistracies; representatives of gentes senatoriae and residents of Italy were the most numerous among them; (7) candidati were people from the senatorial order, whereas adlecti were people from various orders; (8) in the group of 49 senators with special distinctions that was analysed, those distinguished once and twice dominate.
Klio. Czasopismo poświęcone dziejom Polski i powszechnym, 2021
The main aim of the article is to draw attention to the distortion of Republican Roman soldiers' image. Some modern scholars treat the 'ideal type' as a reflection of reality and attribute to legionaries the features desired by representatives of the social elite. Meanwhile, it seems that less wealthy citizens created their own vision of the qualities that a Roman soldier should have. This leads to the question of whether the officers and their subordinates had the same understanding of obedience and discipline.
The Civilian Legacy of the Roman Army, 2024
Summary and presentation
Are the personal identities of elite decision makers a domestic source of state identity? This article explores this question and reveals how state identity was produced in the Roman world system during the early Principate. 1 The argument advanced proposes the Roman world was ensconced by a metavalue of honor that significantly shaped the personal identities of Rome's aristocratic decision-making classes. Competition for honor subsumed aristocratic life and shaped not only the personal identities of the elite, but also the persona of the Roman state. The Romans extrapolated their psychological framework, in which the stratification of domestic society rested on personal identities of honor, to their outlook on foreign policy. Akin to their domestic lives, those executing foreign policy conceptualized Rome as engaged in a status competition for honor with the polities existing its world system. Preserving and enhancing one's honor relative to others was fundamental in domestic life, and this was also the state's primary objective in relation to all others. The identity of the Roman state, therefore, was an aggressive status seeker.
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