Crisis of Masculinity in the Age of Augustus
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A01=Melanie Racette-Campbell
Aeneid
Ancient Rome
Asinius Pollio
Augustus
Author_Melanie Racette-Campbell
Caesar Augustus
Category=DSBB
Category=JBSF
Category=NHDA
Catullus
Cicero
classical Rome
cursus honorum
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
gender
gender performance
Hercules
Horace
Livy
masculinity
Messalla
Octavian
Ovid
Priapus
Propertius
Roman elite
Roman gods
Roman Odes
Roman politics
Roman religion
Roman society
Vergil
Vertumnus
virtus
Product details
- ISBN 9780299343545
- Weight: 399g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 27 May 2025
- Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The political rupture caused by the ascension of Augustus Caesar in ancient Rome, which ended the centuries-old Republic, had drastic consequences for the performance and understanding of masculinity in a markedly androcentric society. Previously, masculinity was established and maintained through the frame of competition, in both public and private spheres—but the total accumulation of power by one man foreclosed most avenues of, and even appreciation for, competition. Melanie Racette-Campbell examines how Rome’s elite men navigated this liminal moment between Republic and Empire, and shows that the process was neither linear nor uniform.
Already in the late Republic, prior to Augustus’s rise to power, cracks in the hegemonic concept of masculinity were starting to show. Careful reading of contemporary texts reveals a decades-long process as tumultuous and unsteady as the political events they echoed, one in which multiple and competing strategies for reconceiving the nature of masculinity were tested, employed, discarded, and adopted in a complex public-private discourse. The eventual reconstitution of a definition of Roman manhood was not easily agreed upon. Masculinity in both the Republic and the Empire are well studied subjects, but by shining a light on the precise moment of transition Racette-Campbell unveils the precise complexity, contours, and nuances of the Augustan crisis of masculinity.
Already in the late Republic, prior to Augustus’s rise to power, cracks in the hegemonic concept of masculinity were starting to show. Careful reading of contemporary texts reveals a decades-long process as tumultuous and unsteady as the political events they echoed, one in which multiple and competing strategies for reconceiving the nature of masculinity were tested, employed, discarded, and adopted in a complex public-private discourse. The eventual reconstitution of a definition of Roman manhood was not easily agreed upon. Masculinity in both the Republic and the Empire are well studied subjects, but by shining a light on the precise moment of transition Racette-Campbell unveils the precise complexity, contours, and nuances of the Augustan crisis of masculinity.
Melanie Racette-Campbell is an assistant professor of classics at the University of Winnipeg. She is coeditor of the forthcoming volume Toxic Masculinity in the Ancient World.
