CCIV 272: Reading Roman Decadence

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schedule

assignments

on-line resources

further reading

Roman Decadence
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Further Reading:

I will continue adding to this list as the course progresses.

General:

Edwards, Catherine. The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. [In addition to the two chapters assigned for class, Edwards has chapters on adultery legislation; effeminacy; actors and the theatre; and rhetoric, building and social hierarchy. She's very good on taking charges of immorality as rhetorically structured, not necessarily as statements of fact.]

Gilman, Richard. Decadence: The Strange Life of an Epithet. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1979. [Good beyond the two chapters read in class, though less frequently specifically linked to things Roman.]

Modern Decadence and Rome:

Sissela Bok, "The Paradox of Entertainment Violence," pp. 13-45 from Mayhem: Violence as Public Entertainment. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1998.

Robert D. Kaplan, "And Now for the News", Atlantic Monthly, digital edition, March 1997.

Ken Layne, blog entry for 10/11/2000, responding to 9/11.

Robert Harris, "Decline and Fall of the American Empire", Sunday Times, 1/10/1999. [Op-ed piece on Clinton impeachment hearings. A full copy of article will be on the reserve shelf as soon as I can get my hands on it, but the most relevant bit is quoted on the Federation of American Scientists' news summary site, here.]

Tony Bouza, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire: Corruption, Decadence, and the American Dream. New York: Plenum Press, 1996. [A book-length jeremiad on late-20th century U.S. culture. On reserve primarily because of the title-- how does the reference to Gibbon frame your reading of this book?]

Decadence in Roman history and historiography:

Gibbon, etc.:

Peter Bondanella. "The Myth of Rome in an Age of Reason and Revolution," 115-150 in The Eternal City: Roman Images in the Modern World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987.

Peter Burke. "Tradition and Experience: The Idea of Decline from Bruni to Gibbon," 87-102 in Edward Gibbon and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edd. G. W. Bowersock, John Clive, and Stephen R. Graubard. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976.

Roy Porter. Gibbon: Making History. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988.

Sallust:

C. S. Kraus and A. J. Woodman. "Sallust," 10-50 in Latin Historians (= Greece & Rome: New Surveys in the Classics 27). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Livy:

C. S. Kraus and A. J. Woodman. "Livy," 51-81 in Latin Historians (= Greece & Rome: New Surveys in the Classics 27). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Suetonius:

Tamsyn Barton. "The inventio of Nero: Suetonius," 48-63 in Reflections of Nero: Culture, History, and Representation, edd. J. Elsner and J. Masters (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Suetonius. London: Bristol Classical Press, 1983.

Tacitus:

Judith Ginsburg. "In maiores certamina: Past and Present inthe Annals," 86-103 in Tacitus and the Tacitean Tradition, edd. T. J. Luce and A. J. Woodman. Princton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

C. S. Kraus and A. J. Woodman. "Tacitus," 88-118 in Latin Historians (= Greece & Rome: New Surveys in the Classics 27). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Ronald Mellor. Tacitus. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Imagining Roman decadence:

Roman images:

Andrew Dalby. Empire of Pleasure: Luxury and Indulgence in the Roman World. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. [This is very good on luxury items-- where they came from, what they were used for, etc.-- and especially on food and drink. It's also good for finding further primary sources, although Dalby is not very sophisticated in his treatment of the literature he mines for details.]

Susan Fischler, “Social Stereotypes and Historical Analysis: The Case of the Imperial Women at Rome,” 115-133 in Women in Ancient Societies: 'An illusion of night', edd. L. J. Archer, S. Fischler and M. Wyke. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.

Karl Galinsky, "Some aspects of Ovid's Golden Age, Grazer Beiträge 10 (1983): 193-205. [This provides some literary context for the "golden age" theme in Ovid, with particular focus on Vergil. Unfortunately, Galinsky quotes Latin without translating it, but it still may be possible to get the general gist of his argument.]

Emily Gowers . The Loaded Table: Representations of Food in Roman Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. [This is not specifically about decadent food or luxury, but about food in literature. Gowers' very literary approach to Roman food is a good balance to Dalby's.]

K. Sara Myers, "'Miranda fides': Poet and Patrons in Paradoxograpical Landscapes in Statius' Silvae," Materiali e discussioni per l'analsis dei testi classici 44 (2000): 103-138.

Romantic (etc.) images:

Norman Vance, "Decadence and the Subversion of Empire," 110-124 in Roman Presences: Receptions of Rome in European Culture, 1789-1945, ed. Catherine Edwards, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Richard Wendorf, "Piranesi's Double Ruin", Eighteenth-Century Studies, 34.2 (2001): 161-180.

Literary decadence? Neronian Rome:

French and English Literary decadence:

Matei Calinescu. Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1987.

Liz Constable, Dennis Denisoff and Matthew Potolsky, edd. Perennial Decay: On the Aesthetics and Politics of Decadence. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.

Nero and Neronian decadence:

Jàs Elsner and Jamie Masters, edd. Reflections of Nero: Culture, History, and Representation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. [A number of the articles in this volumes are assigned as required reading, and others are cited elswhere in this list. You may, nonetheless , want to have a look through the whole volume for yourself.]

J. P. Sullivan, Literature and Politics in the Age of Nero. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.