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The Wars of the Romans

A Critical Edition and Translation of De Armis Romanis

Alberico Gentili author David Lupher translator Benedict Kingsbury editor Benjamin Straumann editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:24th Feb '11

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Wars of the Romans cover

Was the Roman Empire just? Did Rome acquire her territories through just wars, and did Rome's rule exert a civilizing effect, ultimately beneficial for its subjects? Or was Roman imperialism a massive injustice - the bellicose conquest and absorption of countless peoples and large swaths of territory under false pretences, driven by greed and a lust for domination and glory? In The Wars of the Romans (1599), the important Italian jurist and Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford University Alberico Gentili (1552-1608) argues both sides of the debate. In the first book he lays out the case against the justice of the Roman Empire, and in the second book the case for. Gentili's polemic and highly engaging work helped pioneer the use of Roman law and just war theory in what became a leading international law approach to the enduring questions of the justice of empire. Writing in the wake of the first wave of European colonial expansion in the Americas, and relying on models of the controversy about Roman imperialism from Cicero to Lactantius and Augustine, Gentili developed the arguments which were to become pivotal in normative debates concerning imperialism. In this work Gentili, a consummate Roman law scholar, frames the moral and practical issues in a combination of Roman legal terminology and the language of natural law, a combination which was to prove highly influential in the literature from Grotius onward on natural law, the law of nations and what eventually became international law.

The three contributors have given us a modern edition of a Renaissance text well worth reading and studying. It is well executed in every respect, and I heartily congratulate them on a job well done. * Professor Dana Sutton, University of California, Irvine, Bryn Mawr Classical Review *
The editors are to be congratulated without reservation for their cardinal - and beautiful - accomplishment. * Andreas Wagner, European Journal of International Law, vol. 23 no. 3 *
The Wars of the Romans is a wonderful book, fills a long-standing lacuna in the study of Gentili, and should be a foundation text in all studies of this very influential thinker. After all, Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes supported Gentili's humanist doctrines, which now have a text that will make his work more accessible to all. * Edmund P. Cueva, The Sixteenth Century Journal *

ISBN: 9780199600519

Dimensions: 238mm x 156mm x 31mm

Weight: 787g

424 pages