New Perspectives on the Roman Civil Wars of 49-30 BCE

Offering new and original approaches to the Roman civil wars of 49-30 BCE, the eleven papers presented here for the first time shed light on this crucial moment in the forging of Roman identity. They engage with a variety of problems and topics in political discourse (diplomacy, the concept of libertas, divine paternity); socio-economic structures (allied rulers, military officials, civil war finances, Agrippa’s family); material culture (the coinage of Julius Caesar, the physical remains of Corfinium); and literary commemoration (Sallust on trauma, the lost Histories of Asinius Pollio). The case studies presented here contribute to our understanding of a period that is just as fundamental for our view of the Romans as it was to the Romans themselves.Arguing for the unity of the period in question, the volume deploys a multiplicity of methodologies to analyse how the trauma of armed conflict and the breakdown of accepted socio-cultural models not only mediated the contemporary experien