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Dynastic Marriages in the Roman Aristocracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Ronald Syme
Ronald Syme*
Affiliation:
Wolfson College, Oxford
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Extract

Alliances in the aristocracy of the Republic, that theme has engaged eager and assiduous study in the recent time. Not without the danger of exaggerations and schematism. In consequence, abundant controversy. Moreover, tedium ensues when the method is applied to periods devoid of testimony about persons who can be grasped as persons.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 34 , Issue 135 , September 1986 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 For family politics in that epoch see F. Münzer, Römische Adelspolitik und Adelsfomilien, 1920; H. H. Scullard, Roman Politics 220-150 B.C, 1951, ed. 2. 1978; A.E. Astin, Scipio Aemilianus, 1967.

2 Namely a Vestal Virgin and the elderly bride annexed by a young fortune hunter (P. Cornelius Dolabella).

3 Next and the last in the line Metellus Scipio, the consul of 52—whose daughter Cornelia was the fifth wife of Pompeius.

4 Such as the patrician Manlii: no consul between 164 and 65.

5 On which theme, T. P. Wiseman, New Men in the Roman Senate 139 B.C.-14 A.D., 1971.

6 Information on these topics (the author cannot dissemble) will be found in The Augustan Aristocracy, Oxford, 1986.

7 Some modern scholars are impelled to deny the term "Revolution" to that phenomenon.

8 For those attracted by negative phenomena, high aristocrats who kept dear of the dynasty are a useful subject of study.

9 On which, cf. R. Syme, Tacitus, 1958, ch. XLIV, "The Antecedents of Emperors"; Colonial Elites, 1958, ch. I, "The Spanish Romans."

10 Cleveland Amory, The Proper Bostonians, 1947 (Dutton Paperback, 1957).