Dean Hammer's book begins by arguing for the relatively uncontroversial thesis that contemporary political thinkers have neglected Roman political thought. Indeed, the reputation of Roman political thought in our time has allegedly sunk so low that Hammer at one point feels compelled to consider “whether there is anything worth retrieving from this Roman past” (5). As can be surmised from the title of the book, he obviously answers his question in the affirmative. He himself, however, does not attempt to show us just what the Romans have to contribute. Instead, he pursues his question by examining what a handful of rare modern authors who have thought the Romans worth studying have attempted to retrieve from the Roman past. Hammer chooses to consider four of these modern political thinkers: Arendt, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and Foucault. Each of these four authors is paired with a particular Roman author in order to yield the four chapters that comprise the heart of the book: Arendt with Cicero; Machiavelli with Livy; Montesquieu with Tacitus; and Foucault with Seneca. All eight, Hammer says, share “a sense that the political markers by which communities form identities, establish boundaries, foster attachments, and organize purpose have been lost” (223). Indeed, Hammer's Romans and their modern counterparts turn out to be a rather gloomy lot.

The chapter on Cicero and Arendt relies especially on the Tusculan Disputations, which are said to articulate Cicero's ubiquitous “sense of loss” as well as his “invocation of the cultural world” (54). Arendt recovers Cicero's sense of loss, according to Hammer, through her notion of “worldlessness” and his interest in culture through her notion of “fabrication.” Cicero emerges from this analysis as a Roman longing for a restoration of ancient political institutions that have been shattered by imperial forces; this disorienting collapse of political life is said to be echoed in Arendt's thought. In the chapter on Livy's History and Machiavelli's Discourses, Hammer argues that what has been transmitted from the Roman to the modern author is the phenomenon of “felt meanings,” a notion that seems hard to define, but which Hammer says has to do with the psychological associations that experiences lived in common instill within a political community (82–83). Livy and Machiavelli even share a common medical psychology that grounds this interest in felt meanings, one of which is the felt meaning of liberty (104). Both Livy and Machiavelli recognize the profound loss of these felt meanings within their respective political horizons. The subsequent chapter, on the Annals of Tacitus and the various writings of Montesquieu, is devoted to showing how the latter reflects the former's analysis of the effects of despotism on politics. Neither author is so interested in the despot per se, but rather in the way in which despotism debilitates the souls of those who are subjected to it. Again, the focus is on exposing the loss of a robust political life in the imperial Roman and modern periods.

The book's final chapter takes up the question of Foucault's understanding of Seneca in particular and, to a lesser extent, Stoicism in general. Hammer is aware of the unenthusiastic reception with which Foucault's interpretation of Seneca has been greeted by many classicists (11, 183, 206–7), but he still thinks that Foucault has a point in viewing the Epistles as “a turn toward a care of the self as a work of art in which the individual engages in a series of practices that transform the self” (205). In any case, Hammer seems to align himself more with Foucault than with any other author discussed in the book, especially because Foucault's turn to Seneca reveals that he recognizes the affinity of modern and Roman times. Like Seneca, “we find ourselves in an imperial society that is both expansive and isolating,” marked, as it is, by the rules of capital markets and a public discourse “constrained increasingly by secrecy and fear” (218, cf. 12).

Turning from summary to evaluation, this reviewer believes that the chapter on “Tacitus, Montesquieu, and the Malady of Despotism” is clearly superior to the others, and by a wide distance. Hammer's analysis of the Annals and its connection not only to The Spirit of the Laws but also to Montesquieu's less frequently read Considerations on the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline and “An Essay on the Causes That May Affect Men's Minds and Characters” is especially illuminating of despotism's effects on the populace. Hammer notes, too, that the treatment of despotism or tyranny (he does not seem to distinguish between the two) by Tacitus and Montesquieu is for this reason decidedly different from the treatments of Plato and Aristotle, which are more concerned with the character of the tyrant himself. The chapter does not discuss Montesquieu's strategies for keeping despotic tendencies in check in the modern world.

Roman Political Thought and the Modern Theoretical Imagination appears in the Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture, and it would seem that the book understands thought more in terms of culture than in terms of philosophy, for Hammer says that his study is “an attempt to articulate a political vision that is organized around affective associations” (12). He himself correctly recognizes that such an approach implies that “these Roman writers depart most fundamentally from both a Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical tradition that emphasizes the role of reason in defining a vision of collective action” (11–12). Interpreting these Roman authors as departing from the philosophical tradition, however, conflicts forthrightly with the self-understandings of the authors in question. Setting aside for the moment the two historians Livy and Tacitus, the philosopher who authored the Tusculan Disputations most assuredly understood himself first and foremost as a recently minted member of the ancient Academy of Plato, and the philosopher who authored the Epistles similarly understood himself as a member of the ancient Stoa of Zeno. Indeed, the very distinction between Roman culture and Greek culture seems not to apply to Cicero and Seneca, for not only do they bridge the alleged gulf between Greek and Roman cultures, they also embrace the fundamental claim of philosophy to transcend culture in the quest for truth. Perhaps, then, there would be some reason to study Roman culture by means of the opinions held by the many who peopled the empire. It seems less promising to study Roman culture by means of the affective associations of the philosophers who happened to live in its midst.