Rousseau’s Social Contract is known for its very distinctive doctrine of the separation of powers in which the legislative power (located in the community as a whole) is sovereign over the executive power (or government). According to Rousseau, the seeds of the downfall of every community, no matter how good it may be, is contained in the tendency of the government to usurp the powers of sovereignty. The sovereign can maintain its authority only if it is regularly assembled and passes judgment on the government, dissolving it and forming a new one if necessary. Critics from a variety of perspectives have argued that the practical and theoretical flaw in Rousseau’s account is that the sovereign can pronounce only when it is assembled and a usurping government can easily prevent it from assembling. I investigate this question by examining the Second Part of the Letters Written from the Mountain, where Rousseau describes the corruption of the Genevan government and discusses the resources available to citizens who wish to call it to account before an unassembled sovereign.

How do we experience ritual? What role does this experience play in the perception and codification memory? This chapter begins by considering the relationship between senses, cognition, and memory in ritual experiences, in particular, the complex interplay between ritual performance, emotions, and material objects, together with the limitations of script-based approaches to surviving accounts. Situating the volume within current debates on religious ritual in the ancient world from the perspectives of cognitive science of religion and sensory studies, this chapter explores how variability in ritual experiences can be assessed through cognitive approaches to rituals as lived experiences. Having outlined why this volume is timely, necessary, and how it contributes to challenging established views and furthering debate surrounding ritual experiences in the Roman world, the introduction also addresses the challenges of cognitive assessments and how these challenges are met across the volume, through a variety of different contexts and approaches. Lastly, the introduction briefly presents each of the five case studies, drawing on common themes and issues explored in each case study, and considering the global relevance and transdisciplinary applications of scholarship in this volume.

By the second quarter of the fourteenth century, England had developed many attributes of a ‘constitutional monarchy’: one that would later expand and contract, in cycles, across the British Isles. This constitutional monarchy has been subject to many minor recalibrations; more major recalibrations have occurred between 1640 and 1690, and also between 1820 and 1870. To focus on the function and form of this hereditary institution of governance, it can be seen operating in accordance to rules and conventions within three separate if overlapping spheres: that is, the parliamentary, the personal and conciliar, and the judicial.

Along with the masses of information that Alphabet is collecting on specific individuals, it is currently digitizing existing, and creating entirely new, data sets of broad social relevance. As a result, and as the first section of this chapter outlines, Alphabet is contributing to a world in which the problem is not too little information, but too much. The chapter then proposes that those that want to use this information to make sense of, or construct, our social pasts, can employ one of two approaches – termed the massive and mélange approach to historical analysis respectively – to ensure that they are not overwhelmed by our ever-growing archives. Having done so, the chapter concludes by emphasizing that, by creating and maintaining this ‘great library’, Alphabet is already in a strong position from which to decide – like the ongoing winner of some never-ending war – who can, and cannot, write history.