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May 28, 2015|Barry Strauss, Caesar Augustus, Julius Caesar, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Roman Empire, Roman Republic

Fragility of the Republic

by Joseph Bottum|

La Mort de César (ca. 1859–1867) by Jean-Léon Gérôme.

In a curious way, Julius Caesar isn’t the most important figure in The Death of Caesar: The Story of History’s Most Famous Assassination. The moral of Barry Strauss’s story, the point of it all, belongs instead to a thin, sickly young man in Caesar’s entourage—a grandnephew named Octavian—who would wend his way through the political crisis of Julius Caesar’s murder in 44 B.C. to become Caesar Augustus, ruler of the known world. The irony is almost unbearable: In the name of ridding the republic of a dictator, the incompetent assassins managed only to give Rome an emperor. “The Ides of March changed the world,” as Strauss notes, “but not as the men who held the daggers that day planned.”

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December 1, 2014|Augustus, John Williams, Roman Empire

The Peace of Despotism

by James Seaton|

John Williams warns readers of Augustus in his introduction that “if there are truths in this work, they are the truths of fiction rather than of history.” He will be “grateful to those readers who will take it as it is intended—a work of the imagination.” But how do “the truths of fiction” differ from those of history? Aristotle famously considered poetry to be more philosophical than history because it reveals “the sort of thing that a certain type of man will do or say either probably or necessarily,” rather than simply recording what particular individuals once said or did. If Aristotle…

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October 20, 2014|Cato, Cicero, Civic Virtue, Quentin Skinner, Roman Empire, Roman Republic

Roman Liberties Lost

by Patrick Callahan|

G.K. Chesterton once said “the act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has to-day all the exhilaration of a vice.” Finding our own time still more ill-disposed towards vindicating almost any virtue, I was puzzled at first to find so little exhilaration in Valentina Arena’s Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the Late Republic. This is the more unfortunate because Arena is dealing with what, to me, is the issue for the Romans: the corruption and confusion of their civic virtues between 70 and 52 B.C. Arena’s contextualist methodology, witnessed by a heavy reliance on Quentin Skinner throughout and…

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Book Reviews

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

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The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

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Liberty Classics

Rereading Politica in the Post-Liberal Moment

by Glenn A. Moots

Althusius offers a rich constitutionalism that empowers persons to thrive alongside one another in deliberate communities.

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James Fenimore Cooper and the American Experiment

by Melissa Matthes

In The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper defended democracy against both mob rule and majority tyranny.

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Podcasts

Stuck With Decadence

A discussion with Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat discusses with Richard Reinsch his new book The Decadent Society.

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Can the Postmodern Natural Law Remedy Our Failing Humanism?

A discussion with Graham McAleer

Graham McAleer discusses how postmodern natural law can help us think more coherently about human beings and our actions.

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Did the Civil Rights Constitution Distort American Politics?

A discussion with Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell discusses his new book, The Age of Entitlement.

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America, Land of Deformed Institutions

A discussion with Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin pinpoints that American alienation and anger emerges from our weak political, social, and religious institutions.

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About

Law & Liberty’s focus is on the classical liberal tradition of law and political thought and how it shapes a society of free and responsible persons. This site brings together serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law & Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal philosophy, and pedagogy.

The opinions expressed on Law & Liberty are solely those of the contributors to the site and do not reflect the opinions of Liberty Fund.
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