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86 results

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  • 15 - Violence and Security at Court
  • Edited by Benjamin Kelly, York University, Toronto, Angela Hug, York University, Toronto
  • Book: The Roman Emperor and his Court c. 30 BC–c. AD 300
  • Published online: 29 September 2022
  • Print publication: 20 October 2022, pp 371-394
  • View extract

    Summary

    It is clear from the sources that under some emperors, the Roman imperial court could be a social space characterized by violence. This chapter offers a general framework for understanding the key dimensions of court violence – its aetiology, its impact on the court’s image, and the institutions and ideologies restraining it. Drawing on insights into human violence offered by evolutionary psychology, the chapter argues that the latent human capacity for violence was triggered by a court environment with high levels of physical danger, status consciousness, and competition for resources. But in almost all societies, culture and institutions serve to restrain interpersonal violence, to a greater or lesser degree. The second part of the chapter therefore examines the limits placed on court violence by the emperor’s guard forces (the praetorians, the Germani corporis custodes, and the equites singulares), by Roman legal culture, and by Graeco-Roman political theory and ideology.

  • 6 - Narratives of Court Crises
  • Edited by Benjamin Kelly, York University, Toronto, Angela Hug, York University, Toronto
  • Book: The Roman Emperor and his Court c. 30 BC–c. AD 300
  • Published online: 29 September 2022
  • Print publication: 20 October 2022, pp 228-248
  • View extract

    Summary

    Most of the textual sources concerning the imperial court are relatively short; many recount anecdotes illuminating a single moment, a memorable saying, or a specific practice. The surviving works of history and biography do, however, contain a few longer narratives of connected sequences of events at court. Such narratives most commonly occur when historians and biographers describe crises, when events at court had wider implications for the political history of the Principate. Prompted by this observation, this chapter presents a selection of the richest crisis narratives. The narratives presented relate to: the fall of Claudius’ wife, Messalina; the loss of position at court suffered by Nero’s mother, Agrippina the Younger, and her ensuing murder by her son; and the assassinations of the emperors Domitian and Commodus.

  • 1 - Introduction
  • Edited by Benjamin Kelly, York University, Toronto, Angela Hug, York University, Toronto
  • Book: The Roman Emperor and his Court c. 30 BC–c. AD 300
  • Published online: 29 September 2022
  • Print publication: 20 October 2022, pp 1-15
  • View extract

    Summary

    This introduction begins by surveying earlier scholarship on the Roman imperial court, arguing that the landmark works have been unduly confined to the court in the city of Rome, to particular time periods, and to certain narrowly defined themes. It then discusses the definition of ‘court’, presenting the social definition used in the book, namely a circle of people in reasonably regular personal contact with the emperor. The introduction also considers what kinds of historical knowledge in relation to the Roman court are possible. The sources lack the focus and detail needed for a narrative history of the court; nor can we convincingly posit a model that encapsulates the impact and operation of the court over c. 300 years. Instead, one should identify features of court life and culture that recur, even if they did not exist (or are not evidenced) under every emperor.

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