Understanding the Roman Republic: Catherine Steel
Issued: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 10:58:00 BST
In a five-year ERC-funded project led by Professor Catherine Steel, Glasgow researchers are examining textual records of fragments of Republican oratory that remain from public speakers other than Cicero – the most well documented orator. The aim is to achieve a better comprehension of how the Roman Republic might have worked in practice.
Many fragments of oratory were originally brought together in a volume edited by Malcovati, first published before World War Two. ‘Whilst it’s an exceptionally useful book, it’s very austere,’ says Professor Steel. ‘There’s no commentary and it’s written in Latin. These practical issues mean it would be great to have a new edition.
’ The aim is not just to redo Malcovati in a more user friendly way, Professor Steel explains. ‘It’s nice to have a fragment of what somebody might have said, but it’s just as important in understanding how the Republic functioned to know the occasions on which people spoke, even if you don’t have any record of what was said. We’re going to be consistent in including this kind of evidence – that, I think, is the key intellectual contribution of this project. For the first time we will have a comprehensive conspectus of public speech in the Republican period.
’ The team plan to publish a print edition and create a searchable database that could potentially be used to map the locations of speech across the city of Rome as well as to classify materials in terms of time and type of speech, transforming the approach to Roman history.
‘Now is a very good time to come to Glasgow,’ says Professor Steel. ‘We have some exciting researchers working in the fields of drama, politics and political history, and we’re well placed to make these links about why Latin still matters.’
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