Roman concepts and institutions have been formative for Western political forms and the Romans’ thinking about power has had a deeper influence on Western traditions of political thought than is recognized in political theory. Recent developments have sparked the interest of political theorists in genres and artefacts that convey thinking about politics through means besides distinct argumentation. At the same time, the political turn in the study of Latin literature has opened the field to theoretical questions beyond the range of usual literary training. This chapter surveys issues, such as freedom, institutions, and foundation, which are central to Roman political thought, and maps a variety of methods for approaching how the Romans thought about politics. These include: close reading, rhetorical analysis, conceptual history, comparison with other media and cultural artefacts, and metaphorology. Illustrative interpretations span art and inscriptions, poetry and prose, with excurses on the reception and transformation of Roman political thinking in Augustine and Machiavelli. A sample reading of the death of Turnus in the Aeneid argues for a broad intellectual toolkit.

Scholars have often characterized John Gower as a moralizing and even severe poet, one for whom obedience to normative law is the sole ethical standard. I suggest that this is only half of the picture. On the one hand, Gower certainly relies on prescriptive forms, such as the exemplum, distinctio, and the microcosm, to make the ethical lessons of his poetry legible to the reader. But on the other, he also draws the reader’s attention to moments in his poetry when a strict obedience to normative forms of ethics leads his characters into moral error. Gower does this by staging for his reader moments in which these characters cry out to various figures of power, begging those figures to suspend ethical norms in the name of mercy and pity. I argue that, in his three long poems—the Mirour de l’omme, the Vox Clamantis, and especially the Confessio Amantis—this “crying voice” casts light upon Gowers views of ethics and poetics alike, by stressing at once the flexibility of Gowers moral views and his commitment to listening, if only in conceit, for the voices that are latent in the matter he reworks.

This concluding chapter turns from inquisitional procedure to the inquisition as an institution. The first part of the chapter examines the tale of the good man and the inquisitor (1.6). The second part argues that when Boccaccio responds to his nameless critics, he puts himself in the role of the good man and treats his critics as inquisitors. In mounting his defense, Boccaccio compares his situation to that of Dante’s; both must contend with the talk of the crowd. Yet instead of transcending common talk, Boccaccio answers it: he parries his critics’ talk, their novelle, with another novella (recounting a tale about a hermit’s son’s sexual awakening). Dante responds to an inquisition against him by ensnaring his judges within a more encompassing inquisitorial trial. Boccaccio turns their monologue into a dialogue, their whispered criticisms into an open rhetorical contest, their secret denunciation into an accusatorial trial.

his chapter will discuss some of the ways that recent scholarship on cultural memory has contributed to thinking about the role of exempla in Roman culture, and particularly to the development of the idea of the ‘site of exemplarity’.1 It will also suggest how insights found in this scholarship might sharpen our appreciation of some of the challenges that face modern scholars who are studying cultural memory in antiquity, especially when it comes to the Roman republic from which so little written testimony survives. These themes will be focused through the discussion of the somewhat obscure case of Vibellius Taurea, a bold native of the city of Capua who clashed with the Romans during the Second Punic War.

This is a tale of two Catos, the real-life man and the legend. The difference can be helpfully illuminated through two stories. Our first opens on 5 December 63 BC in Rome at the Temple of Concord where an important meeting of the Senate has been debating the fate of the Catilinarian conspirators.1 Should they face exile or death? Decimus Junius Silanus, the consul-elect for the following year, proposes execution and many others in the Senate agree. But Gaius Julius Caesar, the praetor-elect and new pontifex maximus, steps forth and makes a stirring speech against the death penalty, arguing instead for exile. The Senate is momentarily persuaded, but then something remarkable happens: Marcus Porcius Cato, only thirty-two years old and the tribune-elect, stands up and delivers a passionate, uncompromising speech against Caesar’s motion, articulating the need for decisive action to deter future treason. His speech sways his fellow senators back to a vote for execution of the conspirators. Everyone present takes note, for a new senatorial star is on the rise.

Alternative cities structure Augustine’s City of God. The divide between the earthly and the heavenly city returns in his two Romes, a violent city of civil war and a violent city of virtue, in his two Jerusalems, a violent city of civil war and a city prefiguring God’s city, and even among Christians, divided between love of self and love of God. Although the heavenly city’s full realization is deferred to after the end of history, in this life, the heavenly city exists, mixed with the earthly city, on a pilgrimage toward realization. Rome, a dark shadow (umbra) that sets the light of the divine city in relief, instantiates the earthly city’s violence in both its horrific and virtuous manifestations. In its better form, Jerusalem advances toward the heavenly city’s realization as the prefiguration (figura) of what the divine city will realize (implementum).

Often overshadowed by the other works of the “Marriage Group,” the tales told by the Friar and the Summoner powerfully engage with several of the social issues that Chaucer interrogates within the Canterbury Tales, including medieval anti-clericalism and anti-fraternalism, institutional corruption, the fourteenth-century gift economy, and even demonology. Most important, however, The Friar’s Tale and The Summoner’s Tale indulge in a ribald exploration of the tangled relationships among entente, utterance, and performance - a web of social and linguistic concerns that Chaucer invokes as early as the General Prologue and regularly reasserts throughout the Tales. While it pays heed to the vocational rivalry that motivates the Friar and Summoner, this chapter also considers their tales in relation to the broader linguistic problematic of Chaucer’s project. The Friar’s caustic exploration of the performative efficacy of the spoken word and the Summoner’s cynical implication that speech is, quite literally, a lot of hot air offer a gloss of one of the Canterbury Tales’ most enduring puzzles, the ongoing struggle to reconcile the word with the deed and the ethical stakes of doing so.