Augustus and the Destruction of History explores the intense controversies over the meaning and profile of the past that accompanied the violent transformation of the Roman Republic into the Augustan principate. The ten case studies collected here analyse how different authors and agents (individual and collective) developed specific conceptions of history and articulated them in a wide variety of textual and visual media to position themselves within the emergent (and evolving) new Augustan normal. The chapters consider both hegemonic and subaltern endeavours to reconfigure Roman memoria and pay special attention to power and polemics, chaos, crisis and contingency – not least to challenge some long-standing habits of thought about Augustus and his principate and its representation in historiographical discourse, ancient and modern. Some of the most iconic texts and monuments from ancient Rome receive fresh discussion here, including the Forum Romanum and the Forum of Augustus, Virgil’s Aeneid and the Fasti Capitolini.

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
  • Attending to the Past: On the Politics of Time in Ancient Rome : Ingo Gildenhard, Ulrich Gotter, Wolfgang Havener and Louise Hodgson
• A. (One Possible) Order out of Chaos
  • 1. Libera Res Publica: The Road Not Taken : Louise Hodgson
  • 2. History Wars: Who Avenged Caesar and Why Does It Matter? : Kathryn Welch
• B. Augustan Plots
  • 3. Rupture and Repair: Patterning Time in Discourse and Practice (from Sallust to Augustus and Beyond) : Benjamin Biesinger
  • 4. The Succession of Empires and the Augustan Res Publica : Ulrich Gotter
  • 5. Augustus and the End of ‘Triumphalist History’ : Wolfgang Havener
• C. The Histories of Empowered Subalterns
  • 6. Family History in Augustan Rome : Josiah Osgood
  • 7. The Augustan Senate and the Reconfiguration of Time on the Fasti Capitolini : Amy Russell
• D. Historical Palimpsests
  • 8. Flooding the Roman Forum : Hannah Price
  • 9. Dust in the Wind: Late Republican History in the Aeneid : Dunstan Lowe
• E. Epilogue
  • 10. Trojan Plots: Conceptions of History in Catullus, Virgil and Tacitus : Johannes Geisthardt and Ingo Gildenhard
• Bibliography