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Rome : a history in seven sackings
In no other city is the past preserved as it is in Rome. Visitors can cross bridges that Cicero and Julius Caesar crossed, explore temples visited by Roman emperors, and walk into churches that have hardly changed since the early days of Christianity. These architectural survivals are all the more remarkable considering the many disasters that have struck the city. Rome has been afflicted by earthquakes, floods, fires, and plagues, but above all it has been repeatedly ravaged by roving armies. From the Gauls to the Nazis, Matthew Kneale tells the stories behind seven of the most important of these attacks. He reveals with fascinating insight how they transformed the city, and not always for the worse. Meticulously researchd and superbly written, Rome; a History in Seven Sackings, is a brilliant blend of travelogue with social and cultural history, a celebration of the vitality of the Roman people, and a passionate love letter to the Eternal City.
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The Aurelian Wall and the Refashioning of Imperial Rome, AD 271–855
This book explores the relationship between the city of Rome and the Aurelian Wall during the six centuries following its construction in the 270s AD, a period when the city changed and contracted almost beyond recognition, as it evolved from imperial capital into the spiritual center of Western Christendom. The Wall became the single most prominent feature in the urban landscape, a dominating presence which came bodily to incarnate the political, legal, administrative, and religious boundaries of urbs Roma, even as it reshaped both the physical contours of the city as a whole and the mental geographies of 'Rome' that prevailed at home and throughout the known world. With the passage of time, the circuit took on a life of its own as the embodiment of Rome's past greatness, a cultural and architectural legacy that dwarfed the quotidian realities of the post-imperial city as much as it shaped them.
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Peoples of the Roman world
\"In this highly-illustrated book, Mary T. Boatwright examines five of the peoples incorporated into the Roman world from the Republican through the Imperial periods: northerners, Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, and Christians. She explores over time the tension between assimilation and distinctiveness in the Roman world, as well as the changes effected in Rome by its multicultural nature. Underlining the fundamental importance of diversity in Rome's self-identity, the book explores Roman tolerance of difference and community as the Romans expanded and consolidated their power and incorporated other peoples into their empire. The peoples of the Roman world provides an accessible account of Rome's social, cultural, religious, and political history, exploring the rich literary, documentary, and visual evidence for these peoples and Rome's reactions to them\"--Provided by publisher.
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People under Power
This volume presents a batch of incisive new essays on the relationship between Roman imperial power and ideology and Christian and Jewish life and thought within the empire. Employing diverse methodologies that include historical criticism, rhetorical criticism, postcolonial criticism, and social historical studies, the contributors offer fresh perspectives on a question that is crucial for our understanding not only of the late Roman Empire, but also of the growth and change of Christianity and Judaism in the imperial period.
eBook
Gladiators : deadly arena sports of ancient Rome
A history of gladiators--with an added bite! The Gladiators is a comprehensive survey of arena sports in ancient Rome, focusing upon gladiatorial combat and the beast-hunts (venationes). While numerous books have been written on arena spectacles in ancient Rome, they generally neglect the venationes, despite the fact that the beast-hunts, in which men were pitted in mortal combat against various dangerous wild animals (including lions, tigers, elephants, and rhinos), were almost as popular as gladiatorial spectacles and were staged over a longer period of time. Dr Christopher Epplett, gives a full and detailed treatment of both types of spectacle. The author starts by explaining the origins of these bloody combat sports in the late Roman Republic, before surveying the growth of these events during the first two centuries of the Empire, when emperors possessed the resources to stage arena spectacles on an unmatched scale. The details of the training, equipment, and fighting styles used by different types of combatants are covered, as are the infrastructure of the arenas and behind-the-scenes organization that was essential to the successful staging of arena events. Particular attention is paid to the means by which Roman spectacle organizers were able to procure the countless wild animals necessary for the staging of venationes throughout the Empire. A gladiator book with added bite, The Gladiators is sure to be welcomed by scholars and general readers alike.
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Constantine and the Cities
Over the course of the fourth century, Christianity rose from a religion actively persecuted by the authority of the Roman empire to become the religion of state-a feat largely credited to Constantine the Great. Constantine succeeded in propelling this minority religion to imperial status using the traditional tools of governance, yet his proclamation of his new religious orientation was by no means unambiguous. His coins and inscriptions, public monuments, and pronouncements sent unmistakable signals to his non-Christian subjects that he was willing not only to accept their beliefs about the nature of the divine but also to incorporate traditional forms of religious expression into his own self-presentation. InConstantine and the Cities, Noel Lenski attempts to reconcile these apparent contradictions by examining the dialogic nature of Constantine's power and how his rule was built in the space between his ambitions for the empire and his subjects' efforts to further their own understandings of religious truth.
Focusing on cities and the texts and images produced by their citizens for and about the emperor,Constantine and the Citiesuncovers the interplay of signals between ruler and subject, mapping out the terrain within which Constantine nudged his subjects in the direction of conversion. Reading inscriptions, coins, legal texts, letters, orations, and histories, Lenski demonstrates how Constantine and his subjects used the instruments of government in a struggle for authority over the religion of the empire.
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Roman historiography : an introduction to its basic aspects and development
Surverying Roman historical writing, from its origins through to Christian late antiquity, this work discusses historical writers of significance, outlining their biographical details, considering their work in terms of essential themes, and situating it in the context of Roman literature and society more broadly.
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Urban Developments in Late Antique and Medieval Rome
A narrative of decline punctuated by periods of renewal has long structured perceptions of Rome's late antique and medieval history. In their probing contributions to this volume, a multi-disciplinary group of scholars provides alternative approaches to understanding the period. Addressing developments in governance, ceremony, literature, art, music, clerical education and the construction of the city's identity, the essays examine how a variety of actors, from poets to popes, productively addressed the intermittent crises and shifting dynamics of these centuries in ways that bolstered the city's resilience. Without denying that the past (both pre-Christian and Christian) consistently remained a powerful touchstone, the studies in this volume offer rich new insights into the myriad ways that Romans, between the fifth and the eleventh centuries, creatively assimilated the past as they shaped their future.
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Ancient Rome in fifty monuments
\"A sweeping new history of the city of Rome, told through its emperors and the monuments they built to make their mark on one of the great capitals of the classical world. 'What is worse than Nero? What is better than Nero's Baths?' - so wrote the poet Martial in the first century AD, demonstrating the power that buildings have on public consciousness. In ancient Rome, who built a monument and why mattered as much as its physical structure. Over centuries and under many different emperors, a small village in Italy was transformed into the crowning glory of an empire. Seeking out the personalities behind the great building projects is key to understanding them. With this firmly in mind, Paul Roberts takes the reader on a tour of ancient Rome, vividly evoking the sights and sounds of the city: from the roar of the crowds at the Circus Maximus and the Colosseum, to the dazzling gleam of the marble- and mosaic-covered baths of Caracalla and Diocletian. He tells this story emperor by emperor, drawing out the political, social and cultural backdrop to the monuments and ultimately the very human motivations that gave rise to their construction - and destruction. These fascinating buildings are further brought to life with reconstructions that show how the ancients themselves would have experienced them. When and why were these monuments built? What did they add to the lives of the people who used them? What impact did they have on the shape of the city? Roberts expertly weaves together the latest archaeological research with social and cultural history, to tell the story of the Eternal City, always in some way rising, falling and being rebuilt\"--Publisher's description.
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Migration and Mobility in the Early Roman Empire
In Migration and Mobility in the Early Roman Empire seventeen specialists in the fields of Roman social history, Roman demography and Roman economic history offer fresh perspectives on voluntary, state-organised and forced mobility during the first to early third centuries CE.
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