Public-domain ebook
Roman Public Life
Language: en8,795 downloads on Project Gutenberg
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Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #65392.
About this book
Roman Public Life is a scholarly handbook that sets out to chart the evolution of Rome’s constitutional framework from its earliest monarchical roots through the Republic and into the Principate. The author opens with a frank preface explaining his ambition to cover “all the important aspects of public life, central, municipal, and provincial,” while also noting the inevitable narrowing of scope to fit a single volume. He outlines his original intention to extend the study into the later Empire, then justifies its exclusion by arguing that the post‑Diocletian system diverges sharply from “true Roman” public life. The table of contents that follows maps a meticulous, chapter‑by‑chapter treatment of institutions, offices, citizen classes, and the interplay of Senate, magistrates, and the people, promising a comprehensive yet concise reference.
Written in the formal, lecture‑style prose of early‑20th‑century scholarship, the work reflects the academic conventions of its 1901 publication date. Its dense, systematic approach, replete with detailed indexes and extensive bibliographic citations, will appeal to readers who relish rigorous institutional analysis, students of classical law, historians of Roman politics, and anyone seeking a structured overview of how Rome’s public institutions functioned and transformed over centuries.
Opening lines
H. J. (Abel Hendy Jones) Greenidge PREFACE The object of this work is to trace the growth of the Roman constitution, and to explain its working during the two phases of its maturity, the developed Republic and the Principate. The title selected perhaps expresses more succinctly than any other could do the nature of the plan which I wished to undertake. My desire was to touch, however briefly, on all the important aspects of public life, central, municipal, and provincial; and, thus, to exhibit the political genius of the Roman in connexion with all the chief problems of administration which it attempted to solve. …
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