Clemency & cruelty in the Roman world
"When the Roman democratic republic fell and the monarchical empire rose, a new vocabulary of power was needed to help balance the awesome abilities of the state to inflict harm and the need of its people for individual protection. In Clemency and Cruelty in the Roman World, Melissa Barden Dowling explores the formation of clemency as a human and social value in the Roman Empire, a topic that has been curiously neglected despite its obvious importance to our understanding of Roman society and the workings of the penal system."
Print Book, English, ©2006
University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, ©2006
366 pages, 22 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780472115150, 0472115154
60741959
1. Kings, dictators, and orators : Hellenistic mercy and the use of clemency during the Roman republic
2. From the Crudelitas of Octavian to the Clementia of Augustus : politics and propaganda in the founding of the principate
3. Augustan authors and the Clementia Augusti
4. Augustan visual propaganda and Roman response
5. The Clemens tyrannus : clemency and cruelty under the Julio-Claudians
6. The clemency of the times : Clementia in private and public life during the high empire