Description du projet
Les institutions locales et les élites politiques dans les villes romaines
Financé par le Conseil européen de la recherche, le projet PECUNIA étudiera les ressources matérielles et financières fournies à différents groupes sociaux et individus en raison de leur participation à la vie politique de leur ville sous l’Empire romain (70 av. J.-C. - 284 apr. J.-C.). Les travaux de PECUNIA ne se concentreront plus sur les dons des élites à leurs communautés, qui ont fait l’objet de nombreuses études, mais sur les avantages liés à leur position publique. La méthodologie du projet comprend une enquête à l’échelle de l’Empire, l’extraction de données négligées à partir d’un large éventail de sources écrites, et leur analyse à l’aide de concepts dérivés des sciences politiques et de la sociologie des élites. L’étude examine la manière dont les positions dans les institutions locales étaient structurellement liées aux opportunités privées et comment ce phénomène était réglementé et perçu dans le centre romain et dans les villes.
Objectif
Examining the hundreds of cities which formed the basis of the Roman Empire (70 BC-AD 284), PECUNIA interrogates the material and pecuniary interests made available to local elites by their political activity. It investigates how positions in local institutions were structurally associated with private opportunities and how this phenomenon was conceived and regulated at both levels of the imperial system, i.e. the Roman centre and the cities. In the civic milieu, the flow of gifts and mandatory contributions of the well-off to their communities has been extensively explored by scholarship, while the fields of re-sources made available to them by the government of the cities have remained unaddressed. This mainly results from the focus on contributions of members of the political elites which is found in the inscriptions, engraved under the direction of the governing bodies of the cities, in praise of their actions. Based on the observation that sources also account for legal and illegal gains, PECUNIA instead aims at producing a comprehensive analysis of private interest in public affairs, by (1) using an empire-wide inquiry, whereas in institutional and social studies the civic world has so far only been approached regionally, (2) harnessing heterogeneous data from classical sources and also from less sought corpora, (3) using investigative concepts and data modelling stemming from political science and sociological studies of the elites, to elaborate new interpretative paths about the production of stability in local governance in the Roman Empire. By gaining substantial and systematic evidence and devising new questions capable of navigating it, PECUNIA thus illuminates the expectations regarding participation in public life by the various sub-groups in the elites and it frames a new paradigm of local power, considering all stakeholders and their attitudes to the realities of private interests in local functions, from the local people to the Roman administration.
Champ scientifique
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Régime de financement
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsInstitution d’accueil
75006 Paris
France