"John Henderson’s Pliny’s Statue is a wonderful account of the complex interrelationship between art, text and self-portraiture in the letters of the Younger Pliny.  Written with Henderson’s characteristic richness of ideas, each page sparkling with original observations, this book denies us any easy pigeon-holing of word and image in Roman imperial culture.  Instead we are shown a confidant of emperors obsessed with his own monumentalization—both in his writings and in the art works he handles—whose concerns stand for an elite equally obsessed.  For the student of Roman art, this book explicates the purchase, display and inscriptional commentary on statues in Pliny’s world with a panache and subtlety that is quite unrivalled."

Jas Elsner, Corpus Christi College Oxford and author of Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity (1997)

John Henderson gives a completely fresh and enthusiastic re-reading of Pliny’s Letters, a basic text of the Latin literary canon.  Full Latin texts with new translations are given for the key texts studied.

From the Introduction by John Henderson: 

"The thread running throughout Pliny’s Statue is, for sure, that there are many more ways to relate to art than connoisseurship and expertise.  Looking hard (in words) at the verbalization of what is experienced visually is a sure-fire way to revalue relations with art that rest on the desire to incorporate imagery in kitting out our selves."

"So this is a study of an expressive phenomenon in Roman representation.  Here is a textual icon onto whose necessary absence the author writes his identity: his name and his life, doing duty for his style and for his writing."

"With Pliny’s Statue, you may get just one image to head a chapter, but there is plenty to imagine, and to imagine looking at."

"To imagine imagining is to feel your way into engagement with art as it comes alive through its appropriation for the stories we mean to tell each other; and the stories we swap about “our” stories, and what we are doing telling them, what they are doing to as well as for us, why we bother, and go on bothering."

John Henderson is Reader in Latin Literature, University of Cambridge and Fellow of Kings College Cambridge.  He is the author of many books, including Figuring Out Roman Nobility: Juvenal’s Eighth Satire (1997) and A Roman Life: Rutilius Gallicus on Paper and In Stone (1998), both published by University of Exeter Press.

Practical Ethics For Roman Gentlemen

" Valerius Maximus was once a highly popular author: more manuscripts of his Facta et Dicta Memorabilia survive from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance than of the works of any other Greek or Latin prose author. Yet there is no modern English translation of his work (in 1995 Budé published a text with a French translation of the first three books) - which makes him useful for those of us wishing to see Latin unseens!

This early popularity and later neglect of Valerius is a phenomenon of the history of Classical Studies which deserves further study: what purposes were served by the widespread reading of this author in the early modern period; what does his disappearance from the educational curriculum, and from the canon of commonly-read authors, indicate of the changing role of Classics in the production of the educated élite of the West? Although the place of Valerius in the history of Classics has yet to be examined, there are signs that his period of neglect is coming to an end: in 1992 Bloomer's Valerius Maximus and the Rhetoric of the New Nobility was published, and now we have Skidmore's welcome addition to the field of Valerian studies.

S. takes issue with the currently dominant view which sees Valerius' aim in writing his book as primarily rhetorical, that is, that his intention was simply to provide a handy compendium of historical exempla for the use of making formal speeches. S's. contention is that it is more useful to turn our attention from rhetoric to the wider context of ethics in general: he views Valerius' work as providing moral guidance for élite Roman men by providing them with examples of good or bad behaviour by comparison with which they could decide on their own best course of action in any life's crises. To this end S. provides a detailed analysis both of the stories which Valerius chooses to include and of the authorial comment which contextualizes them and orientates the reader's reception and interpretation of them.

S. has perhaps gone too far in his polemical rejection of the relevance of oratory to Valerius: it is worth remembering the centrality of public speaking for élite Roman men and therefore the extent to which to make a speech in the proper form and enunciating the right attitudes was itself to embody and exemplify the correct performance of Roman manhood. His book is, however, a useful corrective and an important contribution to the study of Valerius and, more generally, to the place of exemplarity and the anecdote in the transmission of ideological values in Roman culture."
Journal of Roman Studies, Volume 87 1997

". . . an important contribution to the study of Valerius and, more generally, to the place of exemplarity and the anecdote in the transmission of ideological values in Roman culture."
Journal of Roman Studies, 87 (1997)

"This book has a number of advantages. Unlike Valerius, it is extremely accessible: the argument is broken down into brief chapters, and translations follow the quotations. It provides a good introductory discussion to the centrality of exempla in Roman life and thought, and it offers a challenge to the traditional approach to Valerius."Bryn Mawr Classical Review

PRACTICAL ETHICS FOR ROMAN GENTLEMEN is a collection of historical anecdotes written during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius in the fist century A.D. The book aims to redefine the significance of the work of Valerius Maxiums, author of The Memorable Deeds of the Men of Rome and Foreign Nations and is likely to become the standard reference work on this author.

Dr Skidmore argues that modern scholarship's view of Valerius' work as a mere source-book for rhetoricians is misconceived. The popularity of the work during the Middle Ages and Renaissance was due to its value to the readers of those times as a source of moral exhortation and guidance which was as relevant to them as it had been to Valerius' contemporaries.

The wider appeal of the book lies in its examination of earlier forms of exemplary literature, in its discussion of how Roman literature was communicated to its audience, and in its original theory concerning the identity of Valerius Maximus himself.

Readership: University libraries; scholars, researchers, undergraduates and postgraduates in Classical Studies; the general reader with an interest in classical literature.

CLIVE SKIDMORE is currently employed in local government in the West Midlands.

The Provincial at Rome

"The editor  . . . deserves congratulations not simply for making these interesting works available but also for partly rectifying the incomplete state of the footnotes left behind by the author."
Phoenix, 2002

"Antony Birley and his Dusseldorf team have done a fine job in editing and presenting Syme's manuscript - clearly a considerable responsibility ... This is a fascinating book, and can be highly recommended ... it deserves attention as an historiographical gem, of enormous interest and importance in helping us understand Syme's development to become one of the greatest modern authorities on imperial Rome."
Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 00.06.14

This volume offers a new insight into the development of a great historian, as well as giving an exciting and immensely readable new approach to late Republican and early Imperial Roman history. Drafted in 1934-35, but laid aside in favour of The Roman Revolution (1939), The Provincial at Rome was to have been Ronald Syme's first book. It is a brilliantly written study of the enlargement of the Roman élite in the early empire, an analysis, in thirteen chapters, of the Emperor Claudius' enrolment of 'Gallic chieftains' into the Senate in AD 48. The edition also includes five unpublished papers dealing with Rome's conquest of the Balkans, a region Syme knew intimately.

"This is terrific. Syme wrote The Provincial at Rome when he was 31, with all the bravura of a brilliant young scholar confident of his powers and enjoying the opportunity to display them. Anthony Birley has done an excellent and appropriate editing job."
Professor T.P. Wiseman, University of Exeter

Market: Scholars and graduate students of classical studies and historiography. Historians of Rome. Academic libraries.

Author: Sir Ronald Syme was regarded long before his death in 1989 as the twentieth-century's pre-eminent historian of ancient Rome. He was Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, 1929-49; Professor of Classical Philology, Istanbul, 1942-45; Camden Professor of Ancient History and Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, 1949-70; Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, 1970-1989.

Editor: Anthony Birley is Professor of Ancient History in the University of Dusseldorf and was previously Professor of Ancient History in the University of Manchester. He is the author of many books on Rome and editor of Syme's Roman Papers III-VII and Anatolica.

CONTENTS 

Editor's Introduction
The Provincial at Rome
1 Introduction
2 The Evidence
3 Admission to the Senate
4 Provincial Senators before Augustus
5 Provincial Senators before AD 48
6 Prejudice against Provincials
7 The Virtues of Provincials
8 Roman and Provincial in Spain and Narbonensis
9 'Italicus es an provincialis?'
10 Gallia Comata
11 Claudius' Speech in Tacitus
12 The 'Oratio Claudii Caesaris'
13 New Light on Tiberius and Gaius
Additional Notes:
A Spanish senators before AD 48
B Senators from Gallia Narbonensis before AD 48
C Eastern senators before AD 48
Rome and the Balkans
1 Macedonia and Dardania, 80-30 BC
2 Proconsuls of Macedonia, 80-50 BC
3 The Status of Illyricum, 80-60 BC
4 Caesar's Designs on Dacia and Parthia
5 The Early History of Moesia

Exeter Studies in History

This book seizes on one of the eternal objects of widespread attention in Ancient History and turns the tables on the scholarship that has shaped and dominated the field. 

Instead of scrutinising the documents in order to reconstruct the biography and assess the historical significance, Diana Spencer traces the deployment and development of the mythical figure of Alexander.  She explores and synthesises a selection of Latin texts, from the Late Republic to Hadrian, to form a series of themed discussions which investigate the cultural significance of Alexander for Rome. 

The selected texts—drawn from verse and prose, history, epic and oratory—are presented alongside their English translation, and provide an insight into a world where to think about Alexander was to engage with the burning ideological issues of Rome during a period of intense and often violent political and cultural change.  The book makes clear how particular texts and issues may be readily accessed, providing a valuable resource for teachers and their students, whilst also offering a new approach to cultural histories of Rome and Alexander.

Author: Diana Spencer is a Lecturer in Classics at the University of Birmingham.

Roman Domestic Buildings

"A book that can serve excellently as an introduction to the studies of Roman private houses, either for undergraduate students in archaeology or for general readers with an interest in ancient culture. The authors succeed in transmitting important information concerning the way of living in countryside and town, not only in Italy but also in the remote regions of the empire."
Mnemosyne, Vol. LII, 1999

" . . . deals with topics that are important for any teacher of Latin or Classical Civilisation, while its scale and clarity of organization make it accessible to sixth-formers."
JACT Review, Summer 1998

". . . a useful starting place. Unfamiliar words are collected in a glossary, and notes to each chapter provide references to some of the more specialist works. An index of sites serves as a guide to finding discussion of them in the text and to their location on four maps. The text is amplified by black and white plates and a generous number of line drawings, the latter generally placed conveniently close to the discussion. A guide to further reading is also included . . ."
The Classical Review, Vol. XLVIII, No. 1, 1998

"In format, price, and tone the book easily succeeds (like its forerunner companion, Roman Public Buildings) in divulging a great deal of information in accessible terms."
Greece and Rome, 44.2 (October 1997)

"The rich variety of buildings across the Roman Empire is cleverly explored by the authors, the similarities and the differences being equally fascinating . . . One fascinating element to emerge is the Romans' love of their gardens. How timeless seem some of the attempts to include garden space in densely populated urban areas." British Archaeology

A companion to Roman Public Buildings, this volume completes the architectural picture of Roman society by looking at the political, social and economic significance of residential buildings of all kinds. The book includes a chapter by Nicholas Purcell on gardens and luxury estates. The book is fully illustrated, and an index of sites with reference maps and a glossary is included.

Readership: Advanced level students and undergraduates taking courses in Roman and Greek civilisation and Roman architecture. An informative text for students studying with the Open University. The book is also accessible to the interested general reader.

IAN BARTON was until his retirement Head of Classics at University of Wales, Lampeter.

Roman Drama and Roman History

Exeter Studies in History

In this sequel to HISTORIOGRAPHY AND IMAGINATION, Professor Wiseman explores the question of how the Romans understood their own past and the role of early drama in generating and transmitting legends.

The first six of the book's twelve essays are concerned with stories and scenarios in the surviving literature which are best explained as having been first created for the stage. The other essays discuss the family traditions of Roman aristocrats, the rites of spring enjoyed by the Roman plebs, the use of Roman history in the radical politics of the nineteenth century, and how a great modern Roman historian exploited the novelist's art. The book is designed to be accessible to anyone with an interest in the ancient world, and all Latin and Greek is translated.

"Wiseman is a master of constructive fiction, and everything he writes is exhilarating. In fact, it would be hard to think of an ancient historian whose work is beter designed both to inspire advanced students with a sense of what impressive edifices can be constructed with bricks so short on straw-and also to hone their skills at testing, if necessary to destruction, the weak links in chains of overextended argumentation."
Times Literary Supplement, May 28, 1999

"This collection of essays demonstrates great depth and breadth of knowledge in the areas of Roman history, literature, culture, and archaeology, as well as exceptional analytical skill and creative imagination, which contemporary historians of republican Rome have come to associate with the name of T.P. Wiseman."
Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 98.12.14

". . . this volume is no disappointment, dealing as it does with two controversial and interlocking themes: the origin of the historical tradition on early Rome, and the nature of drama and dramatic festivals in the Roman Republic. . . Wiseman is a fine writer for many reasons. He produces interesting and compelling theories for the specialist and yet never loses the common touch. Indeed, this book, in which all Latin and Greek is translated, has a style which should appeal, as the publisher intends on the back cover, to "anyone with an interest in the ancient world."
Scholia Reviews ns 8 (1999) 8

"Wiseman is one of the most imaginative and challenging historians of Rome in the world. This book will be a major contribution to Roman studies."
Dr Mary Beard, Newnham College, Cambridge

• Useful undergraduate teaching text
• Accessible to anyone with an interest in the ancient world

Market: Scholars, teachers, students and researchers in the field of Classical Studies and Ancient History. Academic libraries. The general reader with an interest in the Classical world.

Author: Peter Wiseman is Professor of Classics at the University of Exeter and a Fellow of the British Academy. His most recent book was described by the London Review of Books as "enthralling" and by the Times Literary Supplement as "quite simply brilliant".

A Roman Life: Rutilius Gallicus On Paper and In Stone

Exeter Studies in History

"Henderson brilliantly capitalises on the survival of both an inscription and a poem (Statius, Silvae 1. 4) about the high-ranking Rutilius Gallicus, the emperor Domitian’s urban prefect.  With this rare collusion of epigraphical and literary criticism he takes us on a dazzling excursion through Roman social and cultural history and imperial politics and poetics.  The book also draws attention to the importance of Statius’ Silvae as significant lyrical and cultural productions of Domitian’s reign."
Professor Carole Newlands, Department of Classics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Some will feel that Henderson at times reads too much into the poem, but the reader of  Statius must be sensitive to a variety of levels of subtlety. . . The notes themselves provide a full accounting of the intertextual references that abound in any Statian poem.  All Latin is translated in a style that is true to Statius’ mixture of wit and hyperbole.  It would not be Henderson without some neat wordplay.  My favourite?  Commenting on Statius account of Gallicus’ cure at the hands of Apollo and Aesculapius, Henderson writes, ‘Not dead, just Asclepe!’
Classical Review. Vol 50, no 1. 2000

" . . . like Statius' poem, erudite and entertaining, a salon piece."
JACT Review, Autumn 1998

Rutilius Gallicus was chief of police, poet and courtier of the Roman Emperor Domitian. He is a unique figure in that he can be studied in detail through both text and inscription, thereby fusing literature with history, and linking poetry with epigraphy. His recovery from a critical illness was celebrated in a sparkling poem by Statius, the poet laureate whose work is currently being read with new interest.

As well as taking the reader on a tour across the city of Rome and the provinces, and through Flavian history and culture, Gallicus is by turns a sternly formal public servant, a delicate amateur poet and speaker, a workaholic chasing an early grave, the darling of his people, the strong-man of his tyrant Emperor, the miraculously resurrected patient of Apollo and a soldier-hero of the empire. How long could his luck last?

• Suitable for all levels of study; all Greek and Latin is translated
• Accessible and entertaining insight into imperial Rome
• Established but controversial author

Market: University and advanced school students of Classical studies, ancient history, cultural history. For courses on imperial Rome, social history, introductions to epigraphy, Flavian poetry. Classical scholars. Academic libraries.

Author: John Henderson is Reader in Latin Literature, University of Cambridge and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. He is the author of Figuring Out Roman Nobility: Juvenal's Eighth 'Satire' (Exeter, 1997) and (with Mary Beard) Classics: A very short introduction (Oxford, 1995).

Roman Political Life, 90BC-AD69

Three related essays by well-known ancient historians on the nature of Roman politics in the late Republic and the Julio-Claudian period.

Roman Public Buildings

Exeter Studies in History

"Here is a concise and useful book covering all aspects of Roman public buildings . . . I found myself enthralled by the articles on buildings for entertainment and aqueducts. Both are fascinating in detail and range and particularly lucidly written. Its clear layout and comprehensive indexing make it a useful handbook for anyone and I was particularly impressed with the glossary which deals well with obscure detail but does not by-pass the apparently obvious. Figures and plates are well selected and clear and all the sites described are illustrated." 
JACT Review

Roman Public Buildings was first published in the Exeter Studies in History series in 1989. It examines the development of Roman architecture and the significance of different types of buildings for the political, social and economic history of the period. A glossary of technical terms is included.

Readership: Advanced level students and undergraduates taking courses in Roman and Greek civilisation and Roman architecture. An informative text for Open University students. The book is also accessible to the interested general reader.

IAN BARTON was until his retirement Head of Classics at University of Wales, Lampeter.

Satire and Society in Ancient Rome

Exeter Studies in History

This volume explains how satire can and cannot be used as a source for Roman social history: the possibilities and the limitations. The principal themes of friendship, city and country life, the law, food and women are explored.

Scythians and Greeks

Scythians and Greeks focuses on the ancient history of the northern Black Sea region: a major ‘new frontier’ of Classical studies. 

The book presents a series of engagements with key themes bearing on cultural interactions within the region, from archaic Greek colonial settlement (approx. sixth century BC) down to the region’s inclusion within the Roman imperial system (first century AD).  By bringing together contributors from Russia, Ukraine and Georgia, the book makes available material and ideas which are either wholly new or known only to a very limited circle of specialists.  The particular focus is on the relationships which developed, in peace and war, between the local peoples of the region (conventionally termed “Scythians”) and the cultures of the classical Graeco-Roman world.

• New basic evidence—and new interpretations—presented in an interesting mix of ancient history and archaeology

•   Sets a historical context for the famous gold artefacts of the Scythians

•   Opens the region to a wider audience . . . provides a starting point for engagement with the region

•   Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new impetus has been given to scholarly collaboration between western scholars and those from Russia and Ukraine

Market: Ancient history; classical studies; archaeology.  There has been a sharp growth in interest in the region since the fall of the USSR.  Primarily a book for scholars in the field, although it will be of interest to third-year undergraduate and postgraduate students as well.  Academic libraries. 

Editor: David Braund is Professor of Black Sea and Mediterranean History, University of Exeter.  He is the author of Georgia in Antiquity (OUP 1994) and editor of three books for UEP: The Administration of Roman Britain (1988), Athenaeus and his World (with John Wilkins, 2000) and Myth, History and Culture in Republican Rome (with Chris Gill, 2003).

CONTENTS

Introduction, David Braund

E.H. Minns and M.I. Rostovtzeff: glimpses of a Scythian friendship, Gregory Bongard-Levin, Head of Ancient History at the Institute of History, Moscow, and a full Academician

Key points in Scythian history, V.Yu. Murzin, Head of the Scythian Department of the Institute of Archaeology, Kiev

Scythian kings and “royal” burial-mounds of the fifth and fourth centuries BC, A.Yu. Alekseyev, Head of Scythian Collection, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Masters and workshops of the jewellery and toreutics from fourth century Scythian burial mounds,

Mikhail Treister, Humboldt Fellow in Germany in recent years, after a long career in Moscow museums

Snake-limbed and tendril-limbed goddesses in the art and mythology of the Mediterranean and Black Sea, Yulia Ustinova, Lecturer, Ben Gurion University, Israel, following a career in the Academy of Sciences, Moscow

Who were the “Scythian” archers on archaic Attic vases?, A.I. Ivanchik, Institute of General History, Moscow and University of Bordeaux

Bobbies or boobies? The Scythian police force in Classical Athens, Balbina Baebler, Honorary Fellow in Classics at University of Exeter

Olbia and the Scythians in the fifth century B.C.: the Scythian “protectorate”, S.D. Kryzhitskiy, Head of the Classical Department of the Institute of Archaeology, Kiev, and Director of the main Greek site in Ukraine (ancient Olbia)

The lower Dnieper region as an area of Greek/Barbarian interaction, Valeria Bylkova, Head of the Classical Section, Kherson Museum

The civic frontiers of Tauric Chersonesus in the fourth century B.C., M.I. Zolotaryov

North-east Azov in the Scythian period: a sketch, K.K. Marchenko, Institute of the History of Material Culture, St Petersburg

The Development of Graeco-barbarian contacts in the chora of the European Bosporus (sixth–first centuries), A.A. Maslennikov, Institute of Archaeology, Moscow

A new inscription from Scythian Neapolis: the tomb of Argotas, lord of horse-rearing Scythia,

Yu.G. Vinogradov, latterly Institute of History, Moscow and Yu.P. Zaytsev, a Crimean excavator

Thrace and the Bosporus under the early Roman emperors, Sergey Saprykin, Institute of History, Moscow

The Crimean Campaign of Tiberius Plautius Silvanus, V.M. Zubar, Institute of Archaeology, Kiev

Bibliography

Talking To Virgil

"Professor Wiseman in these essays bears his own learning lightly, and his hope that, just as it was written for pleasure, "this is a book to be read for pleasure", deserves to be fulfilled . . ."
Times Literary Supplement

"This is a delightful book, one which amply demonstrates how versatile Wiseman is, from cartography to the sonnets of Hopkins, dabbling in depth, always to be taken seriously, always securely grounded in scholarly evidence ... The book is accessible to the classical civilisation student and the non-specialist reader." Scholia

"... the collection contains a number of essays which in the final analysis should encourage readers of this journal to think about the classical tradition in new and potentially profitable ways ... Wiseman writes with clarity and grace, and the balanced fairness with which he sketches the superficiality of Baddeley and the eccentricities of Knight allows the reader to encounter them as interesting figures in their own right. What is more, the essays printed here suggest that there can be more to the study of the Classical tradition than we generally acknowledge." International Journal of the Classical Tradition

Top