6 options
Invisible Romans / Robert Knapp.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Knapp, Robert C.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Rome--History.
- Rome.
- Rome--Civilization.
- Rome--Social life and customs.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (394 p.)
- Edition:
- 1st ed.
- Place of Publication:
- Cambridge [Mass.] : Harvard University Press, 2011.
- Language Note:
- English
- Summary:
- What survives from the Roman Empire is largely the words and lives of the rich and powerful: emperors, philosophers, senators. Yet the privilege and decadence often associated with the Roman elite was underpinned by the toils and tribulations of the common citizens. Here, the eminent historian Robert Knapp brings those invisible inhabitants of Rome and its vast empire to light.He seeks out the ordinary folk—laboring men, housewives, prostitutes, freedmen, slaves, soldiers, and gladiators—who formed the backbone of the ancient Roman world, and the outlaws and pirates who lay beyond it. He finds their traces in the nooks and crannies of the histories, treatises, plays, and poetry created by the elite. Everyday people come alive through original sources as varied as graffiti, incantations, magical texts, proverbs, fables, astrological writings, and even the New Testament.Knapp offers a glimpse into a world far removed from our own, but one that resonates through history. Invisible Romans allows us to see how Romans sought on a daily basis to survive and thrive under the afflictions of disease, war, and violence, and to control their fates before powers that variously oppressed and ignored them.
- Contents:
- Introduction : seeing the invisible
- In the middle : ordinary men
- Lives of their own : ordinary women
- Subjection and survival : the poor
- Coping in bondage : slaves
- After slavery : freedmen
- A living at arms : soldiers
- Sex for sale : prostitutes
- Fame and death : gladiators
- Beyond the law : bandits and pirates.
- Notes:
- Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
- Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jun 2020)
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN:
- 0-674-06328-7
- OCLC:
- 767736175
The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.