Politics and Society in Imperial Rome

Aloys Winterling is Professor for Ancient History at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He was previously Professor of Ancient History at the University of Basel.

• 1. Introduction: Toward a New Interpretation of Imperial Rome. Part I: Paradoxical Structures:2. "State," "Society," and Political Integration.3. Friendship and Patron–Client Relations.4. "Public" and "Private".Part II: Two Cases in Point:5. A Court without "State." The aula Caesaris.6. Meaningful Madness. The Emperor Caligula.Part III: Academic Approaches:7. Theodor Mommsen’s Theory of "Dyarchia".8. Christian Meier’s "Crisis without Alternative" in Ancient Rome.Editorial Note.Index.

"This is, in a nutshell, the argument of Aloys Winterling in this stimulating collection of essays. Winterling's work is well known to German readers and this volume will hopefully bring the attention of a non-German audience to it. The articles collected in this volume span the last ten years, and although written on different occasions they show remarkable coherence. The thesis presented above is constantly restated from different points of view. Repetition is inevitable, but this is a minor fault: the author's arguments and methodology are new and sophisticated, and deserve to be well understood."—Bryn Mawr Classical Review, May 2010