Fighting Hydra-like Luxury

Fighting Hydra-like Luxury

Emanuela Zanda

226,45 €
IVA incluido
Consulta disponibilidad
Editorial:
Bloomsbury Publishing plc
Año de edición:
2011
Materia
Antropología
ISBN:
9780715637074

Selecciona una librería:

  • Librería Samer Atenea
  • Librería Aciertas (Toledo)
  • Kálamo Books
  • Librería Perelló (Valencia)
  • Librería Elías (Asturias)
  • Donde los libros
  • Librería Kolima (Madrid)
  • Librería Proteo (Málaga)

From the Old Testament to Elizabethan England, luxury has been morally condemned. In Rome, sumptuary laws (laws controlling consumption) seemed the only weapon to defeat ’hydra-like luxury’, the terrible monster that was weakening even the strongest citizens.The first Roman sumptuary law, the Lex Appia, declared that no woman could possess more than a half ounce of gold, wear a dress of different colours, or ride in a carriage in any city unless for a public ceremony. Laws listed how many different colours could be worn by members of different social classes: peasants could wear one colour, soldiers in the army could wear two, army officers could wear three, and members of the royal family could wear seven. A law passed by Emperor Aurelian stated that men couldn’t wear shoes that were red, yellow, green, or white, and that only the emperor and his sons could wear red or purple shoes. A variety of other laws limited how much people could spend on parties and how many people they could invite.In this book, Emanuela Zanda explores the purposes behind the enactment of such legislation in Rome during the Republic. She engages with the historical-literary polemic against luxury and focuses on government intervention in matters of extravagance by taking into consideration not only sumptuary laws but also other measures that dealt with self-indulgence. She addresses and answers a number of questions about what exactly the ruling class was trying to achieve, about its real motivations, and about the significance of the ideological discourse surrounding the enactment of these laws.

Artículos relacionados

  • The jewish community in new england
    Keith Warwick
    The purpose of The Jewish Community in New England is to inform readers about the Jewish community in each of the six New England States: Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Factual, inspirational, and poetic, it serves as a scholarly guide to institutions of Jewish life in this dynamic American region. Stocked with valuable information ...
  • Warfare in the Russian arctic
    Alexander K Nefedkin / Richard L Bland
    Alexander Nefedkin’s highly original new book, translated by the noted American scholar Richard L. Bland, is devoted to the understudied topic of the military and military-political history of Chukotka, the far northeastern region of the Russian Federation, separated from Alaska by Bering Strait. This study is based on primary sources, including archaeological, folkloric, and d...
  • Primitive Man as Philosopher
    Paul Radin
    First published in 1927, Primitive Man as Philosopher represents a landmark in early anthropological studies. In this work, Paul Radin demonstrates the problematic nature of distinguishing between 'primitive' and 'civilized' cultures. He traces such ideas as the nature of Goodness and Truth, the meaning of life, and the reality of death across various cultures, highlighting how...
    Disponible

    24,38 €

  • The Economics of Population Growth
    Julian Lincoln Simon
    Comparison with stationary and very fast rates of population growth shows modern population grwoth to have long-run positive effects on the standards of living. This is Julian Simon’s contention, and he provides support for its validity in both more and less-developed countries. He notes that since each person constitutes a burden in the short run, whether population growth is ...
    Disponible

    153,61 €

  • Running Out
    Lucas Bessire
    Finalist for the National Book AwardAn intimate reckoning with aquifer depletion in America’s heartlandThe Ogallala aquifer has nourished life on the American Great Plains for millennia. But less than a century of unsustainable irrigation farming has taxed much of the aquifer beyond repair. The imminent depletion of the Ogallala and other aquifers around the world is a defining...
    Disponible

    25,19 €

  • The Nation and Its Fragments
    Partha Chatterjee
    In this book, the prominent theorist Partha Chatterjee looks at the creative and powerful results of the nationalist imagination in Asia and Africa that are posited not on identity but on difference with the nationalism propagated by the West. Arguing that scholars have been mistaken in equating political nationalism with nationalism as such, he shows how anticolonialist nation...
    Disponible

    72,17 €