Cultural HistoryPub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.3366/cult.2024.0296
Filippo Carlà-Uhink
{"title":"‘He had thoughtlessly accepted certain gifts’: Corruption and Normative Behaviour for Roman Magistrates","authors":"Filippo Carlà-Uhink","doi":"10.3366/cult.2024.0296","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/cult.2024.0296","url":null,"abstract":"It has been highlighted many times how difficult it is to draw a boundary between gift and bribe, and how the same transfer can be interpreted in different ways according to the position of the observer and the narrative frame into which it is inserted. This also applied of course to Ancient Rome; in both the Republic and Principate lawgivers tried to define the limits of acceptable transfers and thus also to identify what we might call ‘corruption’. Yet, such definitions remained to a large extent blurred, and what was constructed was mostly a ‘code of conduct’, allowing Roman politicians to perform their own ‘honesty’ in public duty – while being aware at all times that their involvement in different kinds of transfer might be used by their opponents against them and presented as a case of ‘corrupt’ behaviour.","PeriodicalId":41779,"journal":{"name":"Cultural History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140352819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cultural HistoryPub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.3366/cult.2024.0295
Sema Karataș
{"title":"Competition and Corruption: Sodalicia in Late Republican Rome","authors":"Sema Karataș","doi":"10.3366/cult.2024.0295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/cult.2024.0295","url":null,"abstract":"Roman Republican elections especially during the Late Republic were a ubiquitous phenomenon. The small number of higher magistracies in comparison to the growing number of eligible candidates often led to a fierce competition within the political elite. To secure a win, competitors running for office made use of a whole spectrum of methods which often overstepped the legal and moral boundaries and eventually resulted in legal measures. The lex Licinia de sodaliciis enacted in 55 BCE is one of these measures. This article studies the lex by raising questions about its historic background, its target – electoral misconduct by organising sodalicia that is political associations within the voting districts – the trials conducted under the law, the effect associations had on Roman politics, and the Senate’s effort to regulate them thorough legislation.","PeriodicalId":41779,"journal":{"name":"Cultural History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140354491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cultural HistoryPub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.3366/cult.2024.0302
Riccardo Bavaj, Konrad Lawson, Bernhard Struck
{"title":"Editors’ Response","authors":"Riccardo Bavaj, Konrad Lawson, Bernhard Struck","doi":"10.3366/cult.2024.0302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/cult.2024.0302","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41779,"journal":{"name":"Cultural History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140356010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cultural HistoryPub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.3366/cult.2024.0299
Nikolaos Papadogiannis, Riccardo Bavaj, Konrad Lawson, Bernhard Struck
{"title":"Why a Focus on Spatial History?","authors":"Nikolaos Papadogiannis, Riccardo Bavaj, Konrad Lawson, Bernhard Struck","doi":"10.3366/cult.2024.0299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/cult.2024.0299","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41779,"journal":{"name":"Cultural History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140353471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cultural HistoryPub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.3366/cult.2024.0294
Niklas Engel
{"title":"Corruption and the Public Sphere in Late Republican Rome","authors":"Niklas Engel","doi":"10.3366/cult.2024.0294","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/cult.2024.0294","url":null,"abstract":"This article deals with the of whether contemporary concepts of corruption can be usefully applied to the study of Roman society in the late republican period. First , it shows that specific problems arise if we equate modern semantics of ‘private’ and ‘public’ with the dichotomy between ‘privatus’ and ‘publicus’ in the sources. These areas were interconnected and, thus, the Romans did not identify overlaps between the two spheres as deviant in itself. Nevertheless, the article next argues that the Romans did identify illegitimate interferences between the spheres; the identifier was the question of whose interest actors represented. The article concludes by showing that the evaluation of corruption phenomena was subject to the dominant paradigm of social stratification. It explains why these individual evaluations sometimes appear as contradictory to the modern observer, even though they follow the internal logic of Roman society.","PeriodicalId":41779,"journal":{"name":"Cultural History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140356282","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cultural HistoryPub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.3366/cult.2024.0293
Filippo Carlà-Uhink, M. G. Morcillo
{"title":"Discursive Constructions of Corruption in Ancient Rome: Introduction","authors":"Filippo Carlà-Uhink, M. G. Morcillo","doi":"10.3366/cult.2024.0293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/cult.2024.0293","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41779,"journal":{"name":"Cultural History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140352971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cultural HistoryPub Date : 2024-04-01DOI: 10.3366/cult.2024.0297
M. G. Morcillo
{"title":"Financial Wealth, Value and Moral Corruption in Seneca's Economic Thinking","authors":"M. G. Morcillo","doi":"10.3366/cult.2024.0297","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/cult.2024.0297","url":null,"abstract":"This article scrutinises Seneca’s moral engagement with complex financial accounting as a speculative form of wealth and moneymaking that challenged social norms and subverted systems of value. The contribution discusses Seneca’s construction of a form of greed and corruption that is often anticipated by psychological biases, such as loss aversion and self-deception. This degenerating process is exemplified by the misuse of financial ledgers, and specifically of the kalendarium, an account book associated with moneylending that Seneca describes as a suspect instrument of avarice that provoked the ruin of fortunes.","PeriodicalId":41779,"journal":{"name":"Cultural History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140356694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cultural HistoryPub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.3366/cult.2023.0287
Elize S. van Eeden, Sulevi Riukulehto
{"title":"Recognizing Traces of Colonialism and Coloniality in a South African Mining Region: Surfacing the Past in Regional, Ethnographic and Well-Being Research","authors":"Elize S. van Eeden, Sulevi Riukulehto","doi":"10.3366/cult.2023.0287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/cult.2023.0287","url":null,"abstract":"Recent discussions on colonialism and coloniality in academic and community contexts have not been fully informed, only understanding the past from a present-day context. This article provides a deeper, more experiential understanding of this culturally complex phenomenon by combining three research methodologies: structured regional research, ethnography informed research and multidisciplinary wellbeing research. The article examines traces of colonialism in the Far West Rand area of South Africa, at a time of expanding mining operations when it was rare for people to think of themselves as ‘colonists’ with a colonial vision. Yet, structured regional research points to a history of immense urbanisation, linked to immigration and strong, almost dominant, features of colonialism. Two other, totally different, research methods have also observed the same phenomenon, adopting a more experiential angle to communities in the Far West Rand. These community experiences relate more closely to a coloniality imagery manifested primarily in ideas and opinions about contemporary service delivery, poverty and land use issues.","PeriodicalId":41779,"journal":{"name":"Cultural History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135965211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}