Roman manliness
virtus and the Roman Republic
- ISBN: 9780521827881
- Editorial: Cambridge University Press
- Fecha de la edición: 2007
- Lugar de la edición: Cambridge. Reino Unido
- Encuadernación: Cartoné
- Medidas: 24 cm
- Nº Pág.: 471
- Idiomas: Inglés
Recent studies of ancient Roman masculinities have concentrated on the private aspects of the subject, particularly sexuality, and have drawn conclusions from a narrow field of reference, usually rhetorical practice. In contrast, this book examines the public and the most important aspect of Roman masculinity: manliness as represented by the concept of virtus. Using traditional historical, philological, and archaeological analyses, together with the methods of socio-linguistics and gender studies, it presents a comprehensive picture of how Roman manliness developed from the middle to the late Republic. Arguing that virtus was not, in essence, a moral concept, Myles McDonnell shows how the semantic range of the word, together with the manly ideal that it embodied, were altered by Greek cultural ideas; and how Roman manliness was contested in the religion, culture, and politics of the late Republic.