"In A Wolf in the City, Arruzza argues that Plato's critique of tyranny intervenes in an ancient debate concerning the sources of the crisis of Athenian democracy and the relation between political leaders and demos in the last decades of the fifth century BCE. Arruzza shows tha…
"In an elegant and graceful account of the transformation of European attitudes toward the Ottoman empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Lucette Valensi follows the genealogy of the concept of Oriental despotism. The Birth of the Despot examines a crucial moment…
"Building on important issues highlighted by the late Philip Jones, this volume explores key aspects of the city state in late-medieval and Renaissance Italy, particularly the nature and quality of different types of government. It focuses on the apparently antithetical but ofte…
Introduction: history after libertas -- Libertas and the political thought of Tacitus -- The principate and the corruption and restoration of military libertas -- The corruption and restoration of libertas senatoria -- The corruption and restoration of libertas as freedom of spe…
Roman historian Tacitus wrote a damning critique of the first centry CE Roman empire, presenting emperors almost universally as tyrants surrounded by flatterers and informants and depicting a society that has lost the liberty enjoyed under the Roman Republic. Yet Tacitus also po…
The forces of freedom are challenged everywhere by a newly energized spirit of tyranny, whether it is Jihadist terrorism, Putin's imperialism, or the ambitions of China's dictatorship, writes Waller R. Newell in this engaging exposé of a thousand dangers. We will see why tyranny…