The Roman censors in the renaissance political imagination

• Autores: J. Parsons
• Localización: History of political thought, ISSN 0143-781X, Vol. 22, Nº 4, 2001, págs. 565-586
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Between about 1500 and 1620, the Roman censors were repeatedly invoked as a useful political model. Besides being discussed by antiquarians and political theorists, they were actually imitated in early sixteenth-century Venice, and figured in polemics over office-holding in early seventeenth-century France. This episode throws an interesting light on civic humanism. The censors were generally seen not as a means of creating the virtuous citizen body of classical republicanism, but as a supplement to the modern legal system, capable of creating a capable and honest class of magistrates. A few theorists even suggested that they might be adapted to promote purely economic efficiency.