The Classical Roman Reader

A collection of the finest and most important writing of the Roman period, this title gives the reader access to a diversity of texts that shaped Roman thinking and provided the foundations of Western culture. 49 halftones.

The wonders of the Greek world are presented in a modern, accessible manner, perfect for those looking to refresh their acquaintance with the classics and for those who have yet to explore the exciting intellectual energy of ancient Greece. Atchity focuses not only on the big names but also on the less-familiar voices--the women, doctors, storytellers, herbalists, and romance writers of the time. 43 photos.

In Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire, William Johnson examines the system and culture of reading among the elite in second-century Rome. The investigation proceeds in case-study fashion using the principal surviving witnesses, beginning with the communities of Pliny and Tacitus (with a look at Pliny's teacher, Quintilian) from the time of the emperor Trajan. Johnson then moves on to explore elite reading during the era of the Antonines, including the medical community around Galen, the philological community around Gellius and Fronto (with a look at the curious reading habits of Fronto's pupil Marcus Aurelius), and the intellectual communities lampooned by the satirist Lucian. Along the way, evidence from the papyri is deployed to help to understand better and more concretely both the mechanics of reading, and the social interactions that surrounded the ancient book. The result is a rich cultural history of individual reading communities that differentiate themselves in interesting ways even while in aggregate showing a coherent reading culture with fascinating similarities and contrasts to the reading culture of today.

Who were the ancient Romans? Views of Rome addresses this question by offering a collection of thirty-five annotated excerpts from Greek prose authors. As Adam Serfass explains in his introduction, these authors’ characterizations of the Romans run the gamut from fellow Hellenes, civilizers, and peacemakers to barbarians, boors, and warmongers. Although many of the authors featured in this volume—including Augustus, Cassius Dio, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Eusebius, Josephus, Julian, Libanius, Plutarch, Polybius, Strabo, and the writers of the New Testament—are important sources for Roman civilization, their written works are rarely presented in accessible Greek-language editions. These authors wrote in a variety of styles and dialects, and this collection enables readers to experience the range of expression the Greek language makes possible. Views of Rome is divided into five parts spanning early Rome through late antiquity. Within these parts, each prose selection is prefaced with a description of the featured author and the larger work from which the excerpt is drawn, as well as suggestions for further reading in English. The Greek passages themselves are accompanied by notes that provide crucial assistance for understanding grammar and vocabulary, thus enabling students to read the language with greater speed, accuracy, and nuance. Designed for advanced undergraduate- and graduate-level readers of Greek, this student-friendly book bridges the worlds of Greece and Rome and inspires discussion of identity, empire, religion, and politics—matters much debated in classical antiquity and in the present day.

Although the relationship of Greco-Roman historians with their readerships has attracted much scholarly attention, classicists principally focus on individual historians, while there has been no collective work on the matter. The editors of this volume aspire to fill this gap and gather papers which offer an overall view of the Greco-Roman readership and of its interaction with ancient historians. The authors of this book endeavor to define the physiognomy of the audience of history in the Roman Era both by exploring the narrative arrangement of ancient historical prose and by using sources in which Greco-Roman intellectuals address the issue of the readership of history. Ancient historians shaped their accounts taking into consideration their readers’ tastes, and this is evident on many different levels, such as the way a historian fashions his authorial image, addresses his readers, or uses certain compositional strategies to elicit the readers’ affective and cognitive responses to his messages. The papers of this volume analyze these narrative aspects and contextualize them within their socio-political environment in order to reveal the ways ancient readerships interacted with and affected Greco-Roman historical prose.

Classicists have been slow to take advantage of the important advances in the way that literacy is viewed in other disciplines (including in particular cognitive psychology, socio-linguistics, and socio-anthropology). On the other hand, historians of literacy continue to rely on outdated work by classicists (mostly from the 1960's and 1970's) and have little access to the current reexamination of the ancient evidence. This timely volume attempts to formulate new interesting ways of talking about the entire concept of literacy in the ancient world--literacy not in the sense of whether 10% or 30% of people in the ancient world could read or write, but in the sense of text-oriented events embedded in a particular socio-cultural context. The volume is intended as a forum in which selected leading scholars rethink from the ground up how students of classical antiquity might best approach the question of literacy in the past, and how that investigation might materially intersect with changes in the way that literacy is now viewed in other disciplines. The result will give readers new ways of thinking about specific elements of "literacy" in antiquity, such as the nature of personal libraries, or what it means to be a bookseller in antiquity; new constructionist questions, such as what constitutes reading communities and how they fashion themselves; new takes on the public sphere, such as how literacy intersects with commercialism, or with the use of public spaces, or with the construction of civic identity; new essentialist questions, such as what "book" and "reading" signify in antiquity, why literate cultures develop, or why literate cultures matter. The book derives from a conference (a Semple Symposium held in Cincinnati in April 2006) and includes new work from the most outstanding scholars of literacy in antiquity (e.g., Simon Goldhill, Joseph Farrell, Peter White, and Rosalind Thomas).

One of the Greatest Military and Political Geniuses in western history, Julius Caesar stirs almost as much controversy today as he did in his own time. Neutrality toward Caesar may well be impossible--and according to James S. Ruebel, it is undesirable. In Caesar and the Crisis of the Roman Aristocracy, Ruebel introduces students of Latin to Caesar and the civil war that Pompey led against him from 49 to 48 B.C. By presenting the Roman leader in his own words and those of his contemporaries, the book forces readers to confront the same choices that Cicero and others faced in this tumultuous period. Ruebel places the readings in historical context in his introduction, and then presents substantial portions of Caesar's De Bello Civili in Latin. Extracts from the writings of Caesar's contemporaries (most in English translation), along with Ruebel's commentary and notes, further illuminate Caesar's account for students and invite them to grapple with such issues as personal honor, morality, leadership, patriotism, and the justifications for civil war.

In 'Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire', William Johnson examines the system and culture of reading among the elite in 2nd century Rome, with a focus on specific communities witnessed in surviving literary sources and in the papyri. The result is a rich cultural history of individual reading communities.