Magistracy and the Historiography of the Roman Republic

The study of Roman republican magistracy has traditionally been the preserve of historians posing constitutional and prosopographical questions. As a result one fundamental aspect of our most detailed contemporary and near-contemporary sources about magistracy has remained largely neglected: their literariness. This book takes a new approach to the representation of magistrates and shows how the rhetorical and formal features of prose texts - principally Livy''s history but also works by Cicero and Sallust - shape our understanding of magistracy. Applying to the texts an expanded concept of exemplarity Haimson Lushkov shows how a rich body of anecdotes concerning the behaviour and speech of magistrates reflects on the values and tensions that defined the republic. A variety of contexts - familial military and electoral among others - flesh out the experience of being becoming and encountering a Roman magistrate and the political and ethical problems highlighted and negotiated in such circumstances.