Nation, Empire, Decline: Studies in Rhetorical Continuity from the Romans to the Modern Era

8vo, br. ed. The often overlapping discourses of nationalism and imperialism, along with related ideas of social decline, have been central in nineteenth- and twentiethcentury Anglo-European views of the world. This book offers four readings of Latin literary texts to show that the templates for these modern discourses were forged in their essentials by the early Roman imperial period. Each chapter follows the relevant rhetorical thread in works of Horace, Tacitus or Juvenal, comparing their strategies with the defining structures of modern nationalist or colonialist discourses. General rhetorical principles can be discerned, remarkably persistent across time and circumstances. Classicists will find something new in an approach that systematically analyses the rhetorical strategies that underlie Roman prototypes of these discourses while demonstrating how closely later incarnations follow them. / CONTENTS Acknowledgements Introduction 1 . Them and Us: Constructing Romanness in the Satires of Juvenal 2. Augustan Nation-Building and Horace s Roman Odes (3.2, 3.5, 3.6) 3. Tacitus and the Rhetoric of Empire 4. 'Crazy Egypt' and Colonial Discourse in Juvenal s Fifteenth Satire Notes Works Cited Index. ISBN 9780715635513