Dr Eleanor Cowan
Department of Classics and Ancient History
- Roman history, especially the Late Republic and Early Principate
- History of ideas and concepts
- Writers of the Augustan and Tiberian periods
- Democracy and the Roman Plebs
- Historiography
- Roman law in its political, social and cultural contexts, esp. the rule of law http://www.romanlawnetwork.org/index.html
- Conflict and post-conflict communities
- Constructions of imperial power
She is part of five research clusters which represent core research strengths for the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney:
Conflict and Post-conflict communities
Communities experiencing violent conflict and transitioning from states of conflict to post-conflict best describe many of the richest periods of Roman history and offer a different lens for engaging with evidence and questions relating to constitutional and cultural change. In these communities, violence – including civil war and domestic violence – and the abuse of law accompany significant political, social, cultural, ideological, economic, military, constitutional and religious disruption. Post-conflict communities re-shape their history and memory at the same time as they engage inpolitical experimentation, which itself is regularly represented as reform. The need to invest old concepts with new meaning, to find a new language (including both a political and visual/ iconographic language), a new consensus and new ways of remembering the past accompany constitutional, political and legal change but need also to be balanced with judicious choices (often made at individual as well as collective levels) about what may be preserved from a shared but conflicted history.
The Department of Classics and Ancient History brings together an outstanding group of scholars examining these themes across a chronological period spanning from the Republic to the Late Empire: Bob Cowan (Imperial Roman); Eleanor Cowan (Triumviral and Imperial Rome), Richard Miles (Later Roman Empire), Andrew Pettinger (Imperial Rome), Paul Roche (Imperial Rome), James Tan (Roman Republic and historical sociology) and Kathryn Welch (Republican and Triumviral Rome). The Department regularly holds workshops and conferences examining these themes including workshops and conferences on Mark Antony; Augustus from a Distance and Silius Italicus.
Contact: Eleanor Cowan
Law at Rome
This theme reflects a long and proud tradition of work on law and its contexts in the discipline of Ancient History at the University of Sydney. The Richard Bauman Reading Group and the Australasian Roman Law Network facilitate national and international and interdisciplinary research in this field and have been generously supported by an SSSHARC grant (2017) which enabled us to run a symposium on The Rule of Law in Ancient Rome and by the facilities of CCANESA which house the library of the late Martin Stone. Core investigations linked to this theme are (1) the Rule of Law case-study; (2) the perceptions of law project and (3) the study of citizens and the law (4) law and literature; (5) law in an age of Civil War; (6) law and political institutions. These investigations have significant ramifications not only for the study of Roman political-legal history but also for trans-historical thinking about the role of law within communities. The involvement of historians, legal theorists and public intellectuals in these project means that our findings have the potential to produce outcomes which are translatable into real world contexts. The Australasian Roman Law Network was founded by Eleanor Cowan, Kit Morell (UQ), Andrew Pettinger (Department of Immigration and Border Protection) and Michael Sevel (University of Sydney Law school). A number of HDR students are currently being supervised in this area on topics such declamation and law (Kirsten Parkin and Kim Harris).
Contact: Eleanor Cowan
The Roman Republic and the History of Republicanism
The study of the Roman Republic has a distinguished history at the University of Sydney and the Department of Classics and Ancient History continues to be a world leader in the fields of republican Roman politics, political ideas and their reception.
The topic holds a special place in the history of government. While different in form and intent from Greek democratic systems, the Roman Republic recognized the institutional sovereignty of the popular assemblies and linked social and political status to success in popular elections as well as military victory. This system was underpinned (and was eventually undermined) by the acquisition first of territory in Italy and then of a Mediterranean-wide empire. Our evidence allows an insight into the individuals whose stories have survived, their economic and social setting, and the literary and material culture that long outlasted the context that produced it. In subsequent centuries, the Roman Republic lived on as an ideal that inspired many revolutions – and thus its forms have been constantly adapted for new settings.Thus the Roman Republic offers the chance and to observe the rise and fall of an imperial republic, one of the grand narratives of the ancient past which is still relevant today.
Colleagues in the department researching in this area include Kathryn Welch (the Roman Republic and its history under the Principate), Eleanor Cowan (Republican Law and Ideas and the Princeps within a Republican Tradition) and James Tan(Middle and Late Republican politics; economic, financial and fiscal systems). Currently, two PhD students, Tonya Rushmer and Jocelin Chan, are researching Roman Grain Laws and Roads and Roman Space respectively. James Winestock (MPhil) is researching the economics of booty in the Roman Republic and Caitlin McMenamin female poisoners in Roman History. We work collaboratively with colleagues researching in this field across Australasia and several former graduates are still active members of our research community. Our published research has contributed several volumes to the Classical Press of Wales’ outstanding list Roman Culture in an Age of Civil War.
Contact: Kathryn Welch
Constructions of autocracy
The Department of Classics and Ancient History has a large cluster of scholars whose research examines the construction and representation of autocracy. Ben Brown (Archaic tyranny); Bob Cowan (Julio-Claudian and Flavian Rome); Eleanor Cowan (Augustan and Julio-Claudian Rome); Richard Miles (Later Roman Empire); Paul Roche (Imperial Rome) and Peter Wilson (theatre and autocracy) examine the multiple ways in which the autocrat could be both represented to and understood by his community. Their scholarship combines close textual analysis with work on rhetoric, iconography and the history of ideas, including political philosophy and kingship theory.
Within this cluster the Department boasts four scholars whose work on imperial Rome, panegyric and the representation of the Roman emperor contributes significantly to understanding the dynamics of how autocracy is established, legitimated, perpetuated and challenged as well as how it has been (both at the time and afterwards) received and understood.
The Theatreand Autocracy in Ancient Greeceproject(Wilson, Csapo, Paillard, Stoop, Le Guen, Green;ARC DP) represents a distinctive contribution to the study of autocracy. Many studies trace ancient Greek theatre’s links to democracy. None explores its links even to specific tyrants, monarchs and emperors. Yet theatre, from the very beginning, appealed just as much to autocrats as to democrats and it continued to thrive in autocratic states for half a millennium after the extinction of the Classical democracies. Theatre and Autocracy for the first time assembles a team of leading and emergent theatre historians to offer a new way of understanding antiquity’s most important cultural institution. This project examines both how autocrats moulded the world’s first mass medium of communication to consolidate their power, and how competing interests used the theatre to share, limit or challenge that power.
This group is further strengthened by the contributions of honorary associate Andrew Pettinger (imperial Rome); Geraldine Herbert-Brown (Augustan Rome) and Peter Brennan (Later Roman Empire), and by our graduate students. Members of the cluster have hosted several conferences, including Velleius Paterculus;Augustus from a Distance, Silius Italicus and Flavian Culture, Interiority in Roman LiteratureandTheatre and Autocracy. We have recently hosted Professor Greg Woolf (Institute of Classical Studies, University of London) and Karl Galinsky (University of Texas, Austin) as Todd Lecturers and Professor Simon Goldhill (Cambridge University) as a Visiting Ritchie Lecturer.
Contact: Paul Roche
Greek and Roman Historiography
The Department of Classics and Ancient History houses a sizeable cluster of scholars researching ancient Greek and Roman authors who practiced the writing of the past (historiography): Ben Brown (Thucydides), Peter Wilson (Pindar), Bob Cowan (Sallust, Suetonius), Eleanor Cowan (Velleius Paterculus, Tacitus), Julia Kindt (Herodotus), Paul Roche (Tacitus) and Kathryn Welch (Cicero, Caesar, Appian and Cassius Dio) offer critical examinations of historiographic texts in their intellectual and historical contexts. They explore these authors from a variety of perspectives: their use of sources, their methods, their strategies of authority and authorization; their relationships to each other and to other influential ancient thinkers and forms of literature. They explore them as both history and literature; as trailblazers and followers of a tradition that started in classical antiquity and (in many ways) continues on into the present.
Members of the group have numerous existing international research collaborations in this area. Kathryn Welch is a member of theCassius Dio Network housed at the University of Southern Denmark and on the board for the Brill ‘Historiography of Rome and ItsEmpire’ series (https://brill.com/view/serial/HRE). The group extends into a sizeable group of Honours and Graduate students working directly in this area (with projects on Herodotus, Thucydides, Cornelius Nepos, Suetonius and Livy). Members of the group have organized several conferences, includingon Appian andVelleius Paterculus. The strength of our interest in this field has also meant that we were able to host John Marincola as a Visiting Ritchie Lecturer in the Department.
Contact: Eleanor Cowan
- LATN 1600 Introduction to Latin
- ANHS 1600 Foundations for Greek History
- ANHS 1601 Foundations for Roman History
- ANHS 2601 Ancient Imperialisms
- ANHS 2602 Law, Disorder and Ideology
- ANHS 3611 Research Issues in Roman History
- ANHS 2614 The Emperor in the Roman World
- ANHS 2635 Augustus and the Roman Revolution
- ANHS 2634 Julius Caesar and the Fall of the Roman Republic
- ANHS 3602 Law and Disorder at Rome
- ANHS 4101 Roman History Honours – Praise and Blame
- OLET 2140 Presentation Skills: Speaking in Class
- OLET 2138 Presentation Skills: Public Speaking
- SOPHI 4101 Project Unit ‘Modern Slavery’
Domestic Violence and Vulnerability in the Roman World.
The Roman "domus" (from which, "domestic") contained some of the most vulnerable people in the ancient world: slaves, children, the elderly, the mentally or physically disabled and wives, daughters, sisters and mothers. The Roman Paterfamilias was famously powerful (including having the power of life and death over those in his power and sole control of their property). This project contributes to a transhistorical examination of domestic violence by (a) documenting examples of domestic violence from ancient Rome and (b) looking at legal and non-legal responses to domestic violence including evidence for a Roman discussion of "good fatherhood" and women's collective expressions of outrage against violence. A discussion piece has been published in The Conversation.
- Optimus Status. The Roman Republic from Cicero to Tiberius
- Writing the Roman Revolution: Velleius Paterculus
- Rule of Law
- Succession – the invention of Augustus
- Domestic violence in ancient Rome
- Crime and Punishment in Antiquity (forthcoming)
The Rule of Law in Ancient Rome.Cowan, E., Morrell, K. and Pettinger, A. (edd.)
This book applies insights and approaches drawn from modern legal theory in order to understand the ways in which ancient Romans thought about law and the place of law in their community—what we might call the ‘rule of law’. The product of international and interdisciplinary collaboration, it brings together contributions from scholars of Roman history, Roman law, and modern legal philosophy in order to answer such questions as: To what extent did ancient Rome exist under the ‘rule of law’ as defined in modern theory? Did the Romans believe they lived under the rule of law? And how might we modify modern definitions of the rule of law in view of the Roman experience? The conclusions drawn, and the new approach offered to the study of law at Rome, will be of interest to scholars and students of classics and law alike, and the volume promises to attract a large readership across both disciplines.
The Roman law Network
http://www.romanlawnetwork.org/index.html
The Roman Law Network began in 2014. Current membership includes academics, teachers and legal practitioners. The Network has a broad interest Roman Law. Current areas of research interest include the 'Rule of Law' Project (EleanorCowan, Michael Sevel, Andrew Pettinger, Kit Morrell). For further information on the Roman Law Network, its meetings and other activities, please contact Eleanor Cowan.
| Project title | Research student |
|---|---|
| Trading Tyranny for... Contested Models of Leadership and Ending Civil War in Rome during the Shift from Participatory Democracy to Autocracy | Nicole DUNCAN |
| A body in crisis: Metaphors of violence and the early imperial Roman body politic | Kimberly HARRIS |
Selected publications
(The Classical Press of Wales, 2011)
Publications
Edited Books
- Cowan, E. (2011). Velleius Paterculus: Making History. Swansea, UK: The Classical Press of Wales.
Book Chapters
- Cowan, E. (2025). Velleius Paterculus, Transitioning to Justice in Post-Conflict Rome 29 BCE - 29 CE. In C. Kuhn (Eds.), The Julio-Claudian Principate: Tradition and Transition, (pp. 39-58). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. [More Information]
- Cowan, E. (2024). Julio-Claudian Emperors as Fathers and Sons. In Caillan Davenport and Shushma Malik (Eds.), Representing Rome's Emperors: Historical and Cultural Perspectives Through Time, (pp. 63-88). Oxford: Oxford University Press. [More Information]
- Cowan, E. (2024). The Individual in International Law in Antiquity. In Anne Peters and Tom Sparks (Eds.), The Individual in International Law, (pp. 31-46). Oxford: Oxford University Press. [More Information]
Journals
- Cowan, E. (2023). 'Start with the cage': coercive control and the Roman husband. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 66(2), 16-28. [More Information]
- Cowan, E., Parkin, T. (2023). Domestic Violence and Vulnerability in the Roman World: Setting the Scene. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 66(2), 1-15. [More Information]
- Cowan, E. (2016). Contesting Clementia: the Rhetoric of Severitas in Tiberian Rome before and after the Trial of Clutorius Priscus. Journal of Roman Studies, 106, 77-101. [More Information]
Edited Journals
- Cowan, E., Parkin, T. (2023). Domestic Violence and Vulnerability in the Roman World. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 66(2). [More Information]
Magazine / Newspaper Articles
- Cowan, E., Finn, A., Harris, K., Parkin, K., Parkin, T. (2022). Ancient Rome didn't have specific domestic violence legislation - but the laws they had give us a window into a world of abuse. The Conversations.
Reference Works
- Cowan, E. (2023). Augustus in V. Pagan ed. The Tacitus Encyclopedia. Wiley-Blackwell.
- Cowan, E. (2023). Clutorius Priscus in V. Pagan ed. The Tacitus Encyclopedia. Wiley-Blackwell.
- Cowan, E. (2023). Publius Petronius in V. Pagan ed. The Tacitus Encyclopedia. Wiley-Blackwell.
Other
- Cowan, E. (2019), L. Grig (Ed.), Popular Culture in the Ancient World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
- Cowan, E. (2014), Review of V. Arena, Libertas Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the Late Roman Republic, Phoenix 67 (2013) n.3-4: 415-417.
- Cowan, E. (2009), Church and Brodribb's Tacitus. Annals, Histories, Agricola and Germany..
2025
- Cowan, E. (2025). Velleius Paterculus, Transitioning to Justice in Post-Conflict Rome 29 BCE - 29 CE. In C. Kuhn (Eds.), The Julio-Claudian Principate: Tradition and Transition, (pp. 39-58). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. [More Information]
2024
- Cowan, E. (2024). Julio-Claudian Emperors as Fathers and Sons. In Caillan Davenport and Shushma Malik (Eds.), Representing Rome's Emperors: Historical and Cultural Perspectives Through Time, (pp. 63-88). Oxford: Oxford University Press. [More Information]
- Cowan, E. (2024). The Individual in International Law in Antiquity. In Anne Peters and Tom Sparks (Eds.), The Individual in International Law, (pp. 31-46). Oxford: Oxford University Press. [More Information]
2023
- Cowan, E. (2023). 'Start with the cage': coercive control and the Roman husband. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 66(2), 16-28. [More Information]
- Cowan, E. (2023). AUGUSTUS. In Victoria Emma Pagán (Eds.), The Tacitus Encyclopedia: Volume I, (pp. 133-140). Brisbane: Wiley Blackwell. [More Information]
- Cowan, E. (2023). Augustus in V. Pagan ed. The Tacitus Encyclopedia. Wiley-Blackwell.
2022
- Cowan, E., Finn, A., Harris, K., Parkin, K., Parkin, T. (2022). Ancient Rome didn't have specific domestic violence legislation - but the laws they had give us a window into a world of abuse. The Conversations.
2019
- Cowan, E. (2019). Hopes and Aspirations: Res Publica, Leges et Iura, and Alternatives at Rome. In K. Morrell, J. Osgood, K. Welch (Eds.), The Alternative Augustan Age, (pp. 27-45). New York: Oxford University Press. [More Information]
- Cowan, E. (2019), L. Grig (Ed.), Popular Culture in the Ancient World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
- Cowan, E. (2019). Velleius Paterculus: How to Write (Civil War) History. In Carsten Hjort Lange, Frederik Juliaan Vervaet (Eds.), The Historiography of Late Republican Civil War, (pp. 239-262). Leiden: Brill. [More Information]
2018
- Cowan, E. (2018). Velleius Paterculus and the Senate. In Andrea Balbo, Pierangelo Buongiorno, Ermanno Malaspina (Eds.), Rappresentazione e uso dei "senatus consulta" nelle fonti letterarie della repubblica e del primo principato, (pp. 407-428). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
2016
- Cowan, E. (2016). Contesting Clementia: the Rhetoric of Severitas in Tiberian Rome before and after the Trial of Clutorius Priscus. Journal of Roman Studies, 106, 77-101. [More Information]
2015
- Cowan, E. (2015). Caesar's One Fatal Wound: Suetonius Divus Iulius 82.3. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 108, 361-376.
- Cowan, E. (2015). Deceit in Appian. In Kathryn Welch (Eds.), Appian's Roman History: Empire and Civil War, (pp. 185-203). Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales.
2014
- Cowan, E. (2014), Review of V. Arena, Libertas Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the Late Roman Republic, Phoenix 67 (2013) n.3-4: 415-417.
- Cowan, E. (2014). Velleius Paterculus. In Dee Clayman (Eds.), 10.1093/OBO/9780195389661-0164. Oxford University Press.
2011
- Cowan, E. (2011). Introduction. In Eleanor Cowan (Eds.), Velleius Paterculus: Making History, (pp. ix-xiii). Swansea, UK: The Classical Press of Wales.
- Cowan, E. (2011). Velleius and the princeps Romani nominis. In Eleanor Cowan (Eds.), Velleius Paterculus: Making History, (pp. 335-346). Swansea, UK: The Classical Press of Wales. [More Information]
- Cowan, E. (2011). Velleius Paterculus: Making History. Swansea, UK: The Classical Press of Wales.
2009
- Cowan, E. (2009). 'Marius' in Nicolaus of Damascus. Some Implications from Chronology. Athenaeum: studi periodici di letteratura e storia dell'antichita, 97(1), 159-168.
- Cowan, E. (2009), Church and Brodribb's Tacitus. Annals, Histories, Agricola and Germany..
- Cowan, E. (2009), Shorter and extended notes on Church and Brodribb's Tacitus. Annals, Histories, Agricola and Germany.
2008
- Cowan, E. (2008). Libertas in the Philippics. Prudentia, 37-38, 140-152.
2002
- Chambers, E. (2002). Having Hirtius to Dinner: optimates and populares in the Late Republic. Eras, 3.
Selected Grants
2013
- History in crisis: writing the Roman revolution 44b.c.-a.d. 30: case study, Velleius Paterculus, Cowan E, DVC Research/Brown Fellowships
Other Grants
2022 Domestic Violence and Vulnerability in Ancient Rome (SOPHI Research Grant)
2022 SSSHARC Gilbert Fellowship Professor Tim Parkin, Domestic Violence and Vulnerability in the Roman World
Papers and Conference submissions
- ASCS 43 (2022) Panel– 'Coercive Control and the Romanpaterfamilias'
- 2022 UWA "Tiberius and Julius Caesar"
- Feb 2019 “Tiberius as Bad Father: an ideological crisis in the Principate” ASCS Armidale
- December 2018 “Cassius Dio and the Julio-Claudians” (University of Southern Denmark)
- April 2018 “Augustus and the Rule of Law” Classical Association Meeting Leicester, UK
- July 2017 “Emperors as fathers and sons” The Once and Future Kings: Roman Emperors and Western Political Culture from Antiquity to the Present (Brisbane, Australia), July 5-7, 2017
- Feb 2017 The Rule of Law in Ancient Rome (Symposium organizer)
- April 2016 ‘Contesting Clementia’ SPQR Macquarie University Research Seminar
- Jan 2015 ‘optimus status, felicissimus status, tranquillus status or Velleius Paterculus and Valerius Maximus read Tiberian rhetoric’ ASCS Conference, University of Adelaide.
- September 2014 ‘Velleius and Augustus’ at ‘Augustus from a Distance’ University of Sydney.
- 7 June, 2014. ‘Writing the Roman Revolution. Velleius Paterculus’. The Roman Society, UK
- May 2014. Models of Authority and Loyalty in Velleius Paterculus: Fathers and Sons. SPQR Macquarie University Research Seminar
- 2013. ‘Abiding by the law in Cicero's forensic rhetoric’. Australasian Society for Classical Studies. January 19th.
- 2010. ‘Appian and Deceit’. Appian Conference (University of Sydney). April 5th.