Description
Book SynopsisAncient Models in the Early Modern Republican Imagination, edited by Wyger Velema and Arthur Weststeijn, approaches the early modern republican political imagination from a fresh perspective. While most scholars agree on the importance of the classical world to early modern republican theorists, its role is all too often described in rather abstract and general terms such as “classical republicanism” or the “neo-roman theory of free states”. The contributions to this volume propose a different approach and all focus on the specific ways in which ancient republics such as Rome, Athens, Sparta, and the Hebrew Republic served as models for early modern republican thought. The result is a novel interpretation of the impact of antiquity on early modern republicanism.
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Contributors Introduction: Classical Republicanism and Ancient Republican Models Wyger Velema and Arthur Weststeijn 1 Renaissance Historicism and the Model of Rome in Florentine Historiography Jacques Bos 2 The Roman Republic as a Constitutional Order in the Italian Renaissance Benjamin Straumann 3 Commonwealths for Preservation and Increase: Ancient Rome in Venice and the Dutch Republic Arthur Weststeijn 4 Early Modern Greek Histories and Republican Political Thought William Stenhouse 5 A Classical Confederacy: The Example of the Achaean League in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic Jaap Nieuwstraten 6 From Failed Republic to Polite Polis: Ancient Athens in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England Christine Zabel 7 Painting Plutarch. Images of Sparta in the Dutch Republic and Enlightenment France Wessel Krul 8 Against Democracy: Dutch Eighteenth-Century Critics of Ancient and Modern Popular Government Wyger Velema 9 The Hebrew Republic in Sixteenth-Century Political Debate: The Struggle for Jurisdiction Guido Bartolucci 10 The Hebrew Republic in Dutch Political Thought, c. 1650–1675 René Koekkoek 11 The Helvetians as Ancestors and Brutus as a Model: The Classical Past in the Early Modern Swiss Confederation Thomas Maissen 12 Classical Models in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania Tomasz Gromelski 13 America’s Antiquities: The Ancient Past in the Creation of the American Republic Eran Shalev Index
