Themes In Roman Society And Culture

Themes in Roman Society and Culture is a contributed volume that provides a thematic introduction to fundamental aspects of Roman society-its composition, institutions, structures, and cultural products-with major focus on the period 200 BCE to 200 CE.

Focused on the period 200 BCE to 300 CE, this contributed volume provides a thematic introduction to the social aspects of ancient Rome - its composition, institutions, structures, and cultural products - and challenges students to consider Roman society as more than a series of chronologicalevents.

Publisher Description

The most engaging, accessible, and rich overview of the ancient Greeks' institutions, structures, activities, and cultural outputs from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period.Covering the Bronze Age, as well as the Archaic, Classical, and early Hellenistic periods, Themes in Greek Society and Culture introduces students to central aspects of ancient Greek society. The updated second edition brings together 20 expert contributors who explore the institutions, structures,activities, and cultural output that formed the experience of living in ancient Greece.

Fergus Millar is one of the most influential contemporary historians of the ancient world. His essays and books, including The Emperor in the Roman World and The Roman Near East, have enriched our understanding of the Greco-Roman world in fundamental ways. In his writings Millar has made the inhabitants of the Roman Empire central to our conception of how the empire functioned. He also has shown how and why Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam evolved from within the wider cultural context of the Greco-Roman world. Opening this collection of sixteen essays is a new contribution by Millar in which he defends the continuing significance of the study of Classics and argues for expanding the definition of what constitutes that field. In this volume he also questions the dominant scholarly interpretation of politics in the Roman Republic, arguing that the Roman people, not the Senate, were the sovereign power in Republican Rome. In so doing he sheds new light on the establishment of a new regime by the first Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus.

"One really must admire Harvey’s achievement in this sourcebook. With just 350 passages (more than half of them consisting of Latin inscriptions, from all over Rome’s empire), Harvey manages to give his readers a real sense of Roman private values and behaviors. His translations of the original texts are superb—both accurate and elegant. And he contextualizes his chosen passages with a series of remarkably economical but solidly reliable introductions. In a word, Harvey’s sourcebook strikes me as the best now available for a single-semester undergraduate course." —T. Corey Brennan, Rutgers University–New Brunswick

This article seeks to define ‘water culture’ in Roman society by examining literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence, while understanding modern trends in scholarship related to the study of Roman water.

In the first comprehensive study of Roman ancestor masks in English, Harriet Flower explains the reasons behind the use of wax masks in the commemoration of politically prominent family members by the elite society of Rome. Flower traces the functional evolution of ancestor masks, from theirfirst attested appearance in the third century BC to their last mention in the sixth century AD, through the examination of literary sources in both prose and verse, legal texts, epigraphy, archaeology, numismatics, and art. It is by putting these masks, which were worn by actors at the funerals ofthe deceased, into their legal, social, and political context that Flower is able to elucidate their central position in the media of the time and their special meaning as symbols of power and prestige.