Omschrijving
The Challenge to the Auspices presents an investigation into the interaction of Roman magistrates during the Middle Republic with the practice of auspices, with a focus on attempts to avoid, ignore, or resist this requirement.
Konrad (classics, Texas A&M) presents readers with a very interesting analysis of a period when some parts of Roman religion were changing as the Romans ventured farther and farther into the wider world, first on the peninsula and then farther afield over the decades...This study of the auspices illuminates the evolution of power amid a society in flux.
The volume offers important insights to various aspects of the Roman auspices and therefore will enrich the studies on this key theme of Roman religious practice as well as on politics in the middle Roman republic... By closely examining several case studies as important keys to the understanding of the importance of augural practices to Roman politics the book under review fruitfully connects the fields of politics and religion and thereby will find his place within the series of publications on Roman religion as well as on Roman government.
C. F. Konrad studied at the Universities of Oregon and North Carolina. He has worked at the University of California, Santa Barbara, University of Colorado, and the Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, D.C. He currently works as an Associate Professor of Classics at Texas A&M University, and is the editor of Augusto augurio: Rerum humanarum et divinarum commentationes in honorem Jerzy Linderski (2004) and the author of Plutarch's Sertorius: A Historical Commentary (1994).