Restraint, Conflict, and the Fall of the Roman Republic

Strongly-held values can stabilize a society. They can also splinter it. In Restraint, Conflict, and the Fall of the Roman Republic, Paul Belonick explores the moral paradoxes of Republican Rome. He describes how aristocrats engaged in "performative politics," aggressively seeking self-advancement with a competitiveness that fueled the expansion of an empire. But, paradoxically, Roman orators and ...