Cornelius Nepos: A Study in the Evidence and Influence

ISBN: 0472132741

Author: Lobur, John

Condition: New

Product DescriptionRoman author Cornelius Nepos wrote at a very dynamic time in Roman history, but oddly enough little has been said about what his surviving work as a whole can tell us about that period. In the scholarship of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the author was much maligned as inaccurate, simple-minded, and derivative, and thus it has been hard to make the case that the evidence he provides is important or even useful. John Loburs work rehabilitates Nepos to show that in fact he should be understood as an emblematic member of the Italian intelligentsia, one well-positioned to write narratives of great potency with respect to the ideological tenor of emerging Roman imperial culture.Cornelius Nepos: A Study in the Evidence and Influence begins by exploring the writer's ancient reception, which suggests he was in no way seen as beneath consideration by the Romans themselves. The volume then deconstructs the critical framework that cast him as an "inferior" author in the classical canon. What emerges is an author who reworked Greek historical narratives in a learned, sophisticated way, yet one still limited by the compositional logistics and limitations inherent in ancient scholarship. The study then explores his contemporary relationships and embeds his work among the crucial ideological activity at play in the late Republic and Triumviral periods. Cornelius Nepos spends considerable time on the fragmentary evidence (which highlights Nepos' interest in changes in fashion and consumption) to suggest that he was a valued cultural elder who informed a public eager to recover a sense of tradition during a period of bewilderingly fast social and cultural change. The book finishes with a thematic examination of the entire Lives of the Foreign Commanders (a set of biographies on ancient non-Roman generals) to show that despite the expression of very Republican sentiments, he was in fact fashioning an ideological framework for something imperial and quasi-monarchic which, though autocratic, was still antityrannical and imagined as resting on a broad and democratic foundation of social consent. Nepos saw that Rome would soon be ruled by one person, and his biographies show how the elites of the day both processed that reality and attempted to circumscribe it for good ends through the creation of new models of legitimacy.Review"Lobur's Nepos is an innovative and sophisticated political thinker. ...this book is a thorough, well-written history of Nepos's reception and a careful investigation of Nepos as a political thinker."-CHOICE"Engaging and densely argued."-The Classical ReviewFrom the Back CoverFrom the back cover:"I am confident that this book will supersede most previous work on Nepos. It will be read by scholars and graduate students interested not only in Nepos, but in late Republican history and the history of the Principate, in Suetonius and in ancient biography more generally."-Timothy Duff, University of Reading"Nepos' reputation in both the ancient and modern worlds has been subjected to a critical reevaluation. The author has made a good job of identifying flaws in the modern approach, particularly in the potentially circular arguments about Nepos, which proceed not only from unfounded preconceptions of his inferiority but also from assumptions of other writers' superiority."-Mary Beagon, The University of ManchesterAbout the AuthorJohn Alexander Lobur is Professor of Classics at the University of Mississippi.