A companion to the Neronian age
Introduction: The Neronian (Literary) "Renaissance" / Martin T. Dinter -- Part I. Nero -- The Performing Prince / Elaine Fantham -- Biographies of Nero / Donna W. Hurley -- Nero the Imperial Misfit : Philhellenism in a Rich Man's World / Sigrid Mratschek -- Part II. The Empire -- The empire in the age of Nero / Myles Lavan -- Apollo in arms : Nero at the frontier / David Braund -- Domus Neroniana : The Imperial Household in the Age of Nero / Michael J. Mordine -- Religion / Darja Eterbenc Erker -- Neronian Philosophy / Jenny Bryan -- Part III. Literature, Art and Architecture -- Seneca, Apocolocyntosis / Christopher L. Whitton -- The Carmina Einsidlensia and Calpurnius Siculus' Eclogues / John Henderson -- Seneca's Philosophical Writings : Naturales Quaestiones, Dialogi, Epistulae Morales / Jonathan Mannering -- Senecan Tragedy / Emma Buckley -- Lucan's Bellum Ciuile / Philip Hardie -- Petronius' Satyrica / Tom Murgatroyd -- Persius / Marden Fitzpatrick Nichols -- Columella, De Re Rustica / Christiane Reitz -- Literature of the World : Seneca's Natural Questions and Pliny's Natural History / Aude Doody -- Greek Literature Under Nero / Dirk Uwe Hansen -- Buildings of an Emperor : how Nero transformed Rome / Heinz-Jurgen Beste and Henner von Hesberg -- Portraits of an Emperor : Nero and the Sun / Marianne Bergmann -- Neronian Wall-Painting : A Matter of Perspective / Katharina Lorenz -- Part IV. Reception -- Nero in Jewish and Christian Tradition from the First Century to the Reformation / Harry O. Maier -- Haec monstra edidit : Translating Lucan in the early seventeenth century / Yanick Maes -- Haunted by Horror : The Ghost of Seneca in Renaissance Drama / Susanna Braund -- "Fantasies so varied and bizarre" : The Domus Aurea, the Renaissance, and the "grotesque" / Michael Squire -- Epilogue -- Nachwort: Nero from Zero to Hero / Miriam Griffin.
Shocks to military support and subsequent assassinations in Ancient Rome
A dictator relies on his military’s support; shocks to this support can threaten his rule. Motivated by this, we find that lower rainfall, along the north-eastern Roman Empire, predicts more assassinations of Roman emperors. Our proposed mechanism is as follows: lower precipitation increases the probability that Roman troops, who relied on local food supplies, starve. This pushes soldiers to mutiny, hence weakening the emperor’s support, and increasing the probability he is assassinated.
The Birth of Literary Fiction in Ancient Greece
The purpose of this study is to find out how and why the 'poetics of fiction' arose, its sources, and the materials from which it was created. A series of cultural choices made in archaic and classical Greece produced a clash between the traditional 'poetics of truth', which derived poetry from divine inspiration and in the last analysis did not construe the poem as a work of art at all, and the new 'poetics of fiction', which derived poetry from art. The eventual succession of the latter, culminating with the Poetics of Aristotle, amounted to an aesthetic revolution because, as a result of it, literary fiction, which since then has become a necessary framework for both the theory and practice of literature in Western tradition, was for the first time separated from non-fiction and given a status of its own.