Roman Social Imaginaries: Language and Thought in the Context of Empire (Robson Classical Lectures)

"In an expansion of his 2012 Robson Classical Lectures, Clifford Ando examines the connection between the nature of the Latin language and Roman thinking about law, society, and empire. Drawing on innovative work in cognitive linguistics and anthropology, Roman Social Imaginaries considers how metaphor, metonymy, analogy, and ideation helped create the structures of thought that shaped the Roman Empire as a political construct. Beginning in early Roman history, Ando shows how the expansion of the empire into new territories led the Romans to develop and exploit Latin's extraordinary capacity for abstraction. In this way, laws and institutions invented for use in a single Mediterranean city-state could be deployed across a remarkably heterogeneous empire. Lucid, insightful, and innovative, the essays in Roman Social Imaginaries constitute some of today's most original thinking about the power of language in the ancient world."-- From publisher's website This Book Seeks To Initiate Two Conversations About Roman Antiquity, One Of Which Might Be Described As Substantive, The Other As Concerning Method. The Two Are Complexly Intertwined. At A Substantive Level, The Chapters Focus On A Set Of Topics - Belonging, Cognition, And The Ontology Of The Social - As Well As A Series Of Subsidiary Issues - Political And Ethnic Identity, Territoriality, Geographic Contiguity And Conceptual Affinity, Consent And Normativity, Materiality And Metaphysics - That Stand In Oblique Relation To The Explicit Concerns Of Roman Political And Legal Thought, But Which Have Been, And Are Today, Central To Social An Political Theory. Belonging -- Cognition -- The Ontology Of The Social. Clifford Ando. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Cover 1 Copyright 4 Contents 5 Acknowledgments 8 Abbreviations and a Note on Translations 10 Introduction: Roman Social Imaginaries 14 1 Belonging 18 2 Cognition 40 3 The Ontology of the Social 64 Conclusion: Making Romans 98 Notes 110 Works Cited 126 Index 134