Bücher von Henning Börm

The civil wars of the first century BCE disrupted Roman society, which in turn was a major cause of the destabilisation of the political system. While this has of course long been recognised, the cultural dimension of the disintegration of the res publica demands equal attention. The present volume aims for an analysis of the more implicit, yet fundamental effects which the increasingly militarised conflict had on Roman society, starting with the assumption that the radical dynamics and intrinsic brutality constituted a completely new experience for contemporaries. To solve this problem, Romans of the late Republican period devised multiple strategies for coping with the phenomenon of civil war. While some turned to narrative patterns deployed by the Greeks who had been accustomed to civil conflict for centuries, the bella civilia also influenced many other aspects of cultural life. The latent fear of permanent civil strife thus became a source of innovation on multiple levels which (re-)shaped Roman collective imaginary. The resulting structures and developments constituted a highly elaborate and comprehensive "culture of civil war".

The West of the Roman Empire experienced a chain of dramatic events and development from 396 AD onwards. The last Western emperor was deposed in 476 AD and Justinian abolished the Western Roman court in 554 AD. These events, which mark the transition from antiquity tothe Middle Ages in Europe, are often explained by a "civic migration". However, this book, by contrast, highlights internal Roman conflicts: Western Rome was not conquered. Its successive empires only superseded the authority of the imperial government, when endlesscivil wars had led to the collapse of Roman rule. A systematicoverview of Empire, administration, army, economy and religion completes the presentation.