New Perspectives on the Roman Civil Wars of 49–30 BCE

The result of a conference held at the British School at Rome (2019), this collective volume offers new approaches to the study of a crucial moment in the forging of Roman identity and presents new evidence as well as a reappraisal of the sources and the methods that we use in studying them. From ground-breaking discussions of the coinage of Julius Caesar and the physical remains of the central Italian city of Corfinium to the identity politics of the warlords seeking to succeed to the power created by Caesar and the contentious issue of the construction of memory in the following decades, the pieces presented here make innovative contributions to our understanding of a period that is just as fundamental for our view of the Romans as it was to the Romans themselves in Antiquity. Divided into four parts, this volume covers models of legitimacy, socio-political institutions and models, economic models, and literary models and civil war memory. Comprehensive coverage is complemented by specific case-studies dealing with specific instances and problems. Incisive and critical, these contributions by a diverse team of international scholars offer a new window onto the world of the late Republic and early Principate. The volume will be useful for courses at universities and in the upper forms as well as having especial interest for those who specialise in the history and literature of this transitional period.