Roman Manliness : Virtus and the Roman Republic

Myles McDonnell
Cambridge University Press
 9780521827881
0-521-82788-4

Recent studies of ancient Roman masculinities have concentrated on the private aspects of the subject, particularly sexuality, and have drawn conclusions from a narrow field of reference, usually rhetorical.

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practice. In contrast, this book examines the public and the most important aspect of Roman masculinity: Manliness as represented by the concept of "virtus". Using traditional historical, philological, and archaeological analysis, combined with socio-linguistics and gender studies, it presents a comprehensive picture of how Roman manliness developed from the middle to the late Republic period.