This ambitious and engaging book offers a salutary reminder of how English culture, at least as absorbed by boys with grammar-school educations, was steeped in classical history. It argues for the potentially subversive character of the dramatic stories about the origins, character, and demise of the Roman republic, in the writings of authors such as Cicero, Seneca, and Livy. Gianoutsos maintains that modern scholars have missed a crucial element of these stories that is hiding in plain sight: They involve contests about the meaning of true manhood, as men succeed or fail as law givers, warriors, and fathers. Such a gendered reading suggests that such contests were a particularly potent means of representing contrasts between corruption and virtue and tyranny and good government.
A commendably broad chronological range crosses the too-frequent 1640 border. Part I, “Emasculated Kingship,” offers perceptive close readings of contemporary uses of Roman history showing James I...