Undergraduate essays by Olivia Thompson
This essay attempts to look beyond the prominent individuals in Rome in the 50s BC to provide a c... more This essay attempts to look beyond the prominent individuals in Rome in the 50s BC to provide a cohesive picture of the city's major recurring problems - land allocation, use and abuse of power, access to resources, and organised violence - and argues that they were all facets of an overarching question: to whom Rome's expanding empire belonged.
Written for Final Honour Schools 'Republic in Crisis'. October 2014 (fourth year undergraduate).
Undergraduate ancient history essay written in November 2012 (the first term of my second year) i... more Undergraduate ancient history essay written in November 2012 (the first term of my second year) in preparation for the 'Tacitus & Tiberius' paper in Honour Moderations 2013. Discusses the function of Sejanus in Tacitus' Annals, employing parallels with other events in the Annals in view of the loss of Tacitus' treatment of his fall, which is to be ascribed to mutual strains exerted by his friendship with Tiberius and the social structure of the early empire. Not a very close reading, but the essay that prompted my switch from literature to ancient history.
Conference Presentations by Olivia Thompson
This paper investigates how Roman generals in the first and second Macedonian Wars (215-196 B.C.)... more This paper investigates how Roman generals in the first and second Macedonian Wars (215-196 B.C.) used the nominal sovereignty of the 'populus Romanus' to avoid contracting formal alliances with states in the Greek East, and thereby assumed control of the terms of interstate relations and arbitration. I have presented versions of this at the OIKOS PhD Exchange at Radboud University in Nijmegen and the Ancient History Work in Progress Seminar organised among postgraduates at the University of Oxford.
This paper examines the concept of an intellectual commonwealth of shared values in Ancient Rome,... more This paper examines the concept of an intellectual commonwealth of shared values in Ancient Rome, through a study of the use of the term 'res publica' (common estate) in the correspondence of Cicero, Petrarch (1304-1374), and Grotius (1583-1645). It was part of a panel on 'Imagining the Future Through the Classical Past: Classical and Early Modern Political Thought' organised by the Society for Early Modern Classical Reception at the 2017 meeting of the Society for Classical Studies in Toronto.
Talks by Olivia Thompson
Recently there has been a proliferation of articles comparing Donald Trump to various characters ... more Recently there has been a proliferation of articles comparing Donald Trump to various characters from Roman history in an attempt to draw 'lessons' for our time. This talk (for 17-year-olds considering applying to Oxford) examines the ancient rhetoric surrounding three such characters, who were associated with each other in Roman literature, to show that such comparisons cannot teach us much unless we use a wide range of sources (including the traditional narrative histories) to take account of wider political systems and the various stakeholders across society.
Book Reviews by Olivia Thompson
Report on a conference, 'Digital Editing Now', held at the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sc... more Report on a conference, 'Digital Editing Now', held at the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities at Cambridge, in January 2016. The conference prompted discussion about how digital formats illuminate the role of the 'editor', requiring us to pose questions about the contributions of different types of specialists in the production of a resource, and how the current structure of research projects allows their work to be recognised.
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Undergraduate essays by Olivia Thompson
Written for Final Honour Schools 'Republic in Crisis'. October 2014 (fourth year undergraduate).
Conference Presentations by Olivia Thompson
Talks by Olivia Thompson
Book Reviews by Olivia Thompson
Written for Final Honour Schools 'Republic in Crisis'. October 2014 (fourth year undergraduate).