Unit 3 The Legacy of Rome Flashcards
3.1 Receptions of Rome
The Reception of Classical Antiquity (aka Reception Study or Classical Reception Studies)
In simple terems - any act of engagement with antiquity from a model (or rather, post classical) perspective, I’m which ancient text, an object, or something like an historical event, or even set of ideas is ‘received’
That engagement can take many forms: - translation, adaption, reconstruction - a potentially endless list
e.g. Hollywood blockbusters, novels set in ancient Rome (I Claudius) modern adaptions of Greek tragedy (Orfeo ballet)
3.1 Receptions of Rome
Theories of reception state that each time we engage with the ancient past our interpretation of it its fundamentally shaped by our own thoughts, beliefs and experiences - our cultural baggage
Your reading of The Aeneid will be different from a 1st C Roman’s
The scholars and artists of The Renaissance held very direct opinions about classical art from those of the Modernists of the early 20th C
How did your ‘reception’ of Rome change since completing this course - diversity, citizenship, high dependance on trade and transport, globalisation, failed leadership/capricious
3.1.1 Wat have the Romans ever done for us?
The same sorts pf reception crop up time and again (a common shared perception), This shared worldview is called ‘the cultural or collective imagination’ (films) and can be a helpful way of thinking about how modern views were shaped (we look for similarities to be able to understand)
Christianity in Rome played a bigger part in 1950’s audiences lives than today as religion was more mainstream? How emperors reputations were looked at post Hitler, Mussolini, Napoleon?
In Gladiator Commodus is seen as depraved and Marcus Aurelius as a lover of thought and liberty (paradigm - typical example of)
‘The Life of Brian!’
3.1.1 Wat have the Romans ever done for us? II
Rome was not just a city and an empire, it was an identity, idea and means different things to different people up to the present time
It is hard to reflect on Rome without also reflecting on its all, why? How? An analogy to today’s Britain?
De Ballay (1550’s) thought that nature, time, fate led to the empire’s ruin
Comte de Volney (1791) thought it was the impact of man and his vices (man should be more moralistic to avoid repetition) , Volley saw it as a lesson for his contemporaries in revolutionary France
3.1.1 Wat have the Romans ever done for us? III
American Thomas Cole’s ‘epiphanic’ (moment of sudden revelation) vision of the cyclical nature of empires, a moral lesson in Rome’s collapse. Could the same be said for Britain, or was that the result of two debilitating world wars rather than moral decline?
Cole’s five paintings 1833-36: - The five stages of empire, 1) The Savage State, 2) The Arcadian or Pastoral State, 3) The Consummation of Empire, 4) Destruction and finally 5) Desolation - Modern nations had a lot to learn..and didn;t
Image of Rome can prompt different reactions depending on your viewpoint resulting in it having such an enduring symbolic importance in the modern world
3.2 The Roman Empire and British Imperialism
Britain look back at Rome a a comparison and historical reference point and reinterpreted and recreated it
It can be impossible to reach a consensus or achieve a wholly objective interpretation of the Roman empire such as in the analogy with the British empire
Neville Morley (2010) Roman Empire: roots of Imperialism . Suggests ‘a wish to create a ‘special relationship’ with the Roman empire’ (as did Napoleon, Charlemagne, Louis, Hitler and now the USA?). Use of Rome as a template or an analogy. A warning to modern empires of ‘what not to do’. People have a habit of comparing a a modern conception of Rome for comparison, rather than what it actually was. The idea that Rome is ‘a stable, known object’ that can be fashioned to our subjective needs is an illusory one, a product of the time in which they are formed, not the Rome that actually existed.
3.2.1 The British empire; some background
Britannia on the coins (Goddess Roma depicted similarly, Minerva) Sulis Minerva at Bath ‘syncretism’ - conceptualisation by more (19th C) Britons and personify the (British) emcee in classical terms
Scramble for Africa, Germany’s ‘Place in the Sun’, Leopold’s Congo the premise that western white Europe was brining civilisation to savages/barbarians, the Pax Britannica as was the Pax Romana or Pax Augustus
Analogy between India - Greece (the iIndian Civil Service - where officers needed a thorough grounding in ‘the classics’ , Africa - Germania
As in Rome everything and everyone (almost) began to come from everywhere else (though perhaps not in such a cultural diversified way e.g. Septimius Severus - African became emperor)
3.2.2 London: imperial city
Roman architectural style permeates London projecting an imperial (Roman emulating) style, the same wish to project gander and power, monarchs heads on coins, analogous t emperors’ though not as autocratic as Napoleon III. Napoleon III completely redesigns Paris in on demand, not possible in Britain as there would have been uproar in a constitutional monarchy.
A certain vision of the Roman empire constructed to suit the needs of the 19th C Admiralty Arch, The British Museum, Trafalgar Square. Marble Arch, Wellington Arch, King James II’s statue in Roman dress, South Africa House, Australia House, Canada House imperium Siene Fine!
Exemplified in US Capitol Hill, the senate The White House
3.2.3 Stories of empire
Edward Gibbons The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - a warning
Vance (2011) The British were never quite sure whether they liked the Romans and their empire or not’ Ambivalence?
19th C - early 20th C Was Rome and its power something to emulate?, surpass? avoid? be doomed to follow? - no one seemed quite sure
The Don Pacifico Affair- burning of the house of a British Jewish subject by a mob in Athens and his request for compensation (I am a British citizen! Civil Romans Sum) Palmerston projecting British power and positive view of Rome snd s in the navy, Greeks humiliated. By contrast Gladstone sees it as an inequality enjoyed by a privileged caste by a brutal, unequal military state - if Britain acts like Rome and the dangers of following too closely in Roman footsteps.
Pointer’s painting of ‘faithful unto death’ the Roman sentry at Pompeii - a virtuous example of Roman imperialism, or, a damning indictment of how the Roman empire crushed its subjects’ (Alaric the Goth sacks Rome, the soldiers run so not so
3.2.3 Stories of empire Thomas Harrison’s (2008) ‘Ancient and Modern Imperialism’
The British empire’s relationship to antiquity
Considerations in Harrison’s article 1) Race and why Lord Cromer in 1910 who believed Britain was facd by a harder task of trying to assimilate many different races that he believes Rome did not have to do, a civilising mission then in teaching inferior races educated ways. However, Rome existed in an era where much of the technology and social controlling classes, save for the furthest areas away, were similar, e.g. Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, established cultures in the west.
Cromer saw Britain as founded on Christianity, which Rome was not though it became so. Yet Gibbons sites this as a reason from Rome’s fall?
Britain wanted to ally itself in the 19th C with Rome’s civilising influences and distance itself from the brutal aspects of empire and its eventual collapse. It used ancient figures (Boudicca) and models (administration, civilised rule of law, culture and infrastructure) to promote its similarities with the glory and power that was Rome
3.2.3 Stories of empire Thomas Harrison’s (2008) ‘Ancient and Modern Imperialism’ II
The British empire’s relationship to antiquity
We can assess the positives and negatives only on the basis of our own feelings about empire and our susceptibility to ideological ideas, the ‘balance sheet’ notion.
Rome has to be looked at objectively (I believe) and in the context of its time, what it did right, what it did wrong and what the progress of cultural evolution would have been without it. Do those who deride Rome, deride Greece, Egypt or Persia in the same way and using the same them-British analogies?
Reception studies give a useful framework for understanding how our present situation influences our interpretation of the past. How the analogy between ancient and modern empires informed and continues to inform our understanding of ancient history and of our own contemporary experience (of life?) and the need to remain alert to this fact - its a possible mirror on to the present
