Laignoux, Raphaëlle <br/><br/>
Protecting Oneself from Violence and Injury: The Preservation of the Roman Aristocrats’ Body and Its Political Effects from Sulla to Augustus 

 -  2024.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> From the dictatorship of Sulla to the civil wars of the 40s and 30s, the growing importance of military victories and violence in political life led to an unprecedented level of bodily risk for Roman aristocrats. It is probably this context of increased risks which led the aristocrats, particularly the most powerful among them, to develop important bodily protection strategies, intended to avoid injuries and the various possible attacks on the integrity of their bodies in war as in civilian life. On the one hand, they increased the number of escorts and guards able to protect them, during military campaigns but also within the city of Rome. On the other hand, they reduced risk-taking, limiting both their participation in combat and direct interactions with the governed. This growing protection of the “aristocratic body” nevertheless comes into contradiction with traditional Roman political culture which particularly values courage in combat and proximity between rulers and ruled. Caesar’s refusal to be accompanied by bodyguards during the senatorial session on 15 March 44 is a striking example of the difficult co-existence between traditional representations and increasingly diffuse protection practices. The study of the body protection mechanisms mobilized by Roman aristocrats from Sulla to Augustus therefore allows us to rethink certain transformations in political conceptions and practices at the end of the Republic and the beginnings of the Principate. The tendency to secure the body, clear but uneven according to the aristocrats, particularly invites us to re-examine the modalities of evolution of hierarchies and models of aristocratic behavior but also the distinctions between the civil and military spheres.