Chapter 1 considers the earliest development in a meadow at two crossroads in the fifth century bce to the construction of the Circus Flaminius three centuries later.

This chapter uses an econometric, stochastic, model to answer questions on Roman Egypt. The questions posed are, how did the number of children impact on the financial position of ordinary families, and is it likely that parents were driven by debt to limit their family size by abandoning new-borns? The model examines the financial stresses and strains faced by typical families in rural Roman Egypt by tracking their net income, savings and debts over a generation to see how many families thrived or fell into financial difficulty. The plausibility of the model and its sensitivity to the key assumptions is assessed. It is concluded that whilst having children could certainly assist a family’s financial well-being over the long term, a large number of small children could act as driver to indebtedness, though the primary driver would still be the quality and variability of the harvest. Turning to the second question of family limitation, the model predicts that, as a minimum, there was a significant and socially visible chance that private and state tenants would have had to abandon a new-born from financial necessity. Some families would have had to resort to it on a number of occasions.

“The Dioskouroi in Existential Crisis,” deals with Nemean 10 and its extended mythical narrative. That myth is an aitiology of the entry of Kastor and Polydeukes into immortality, framed as a choice made by Polydeukes between claiming immortality for himself or sharing both mortality and immortality with his brother. I argue that Pindar’s epinician aitiology intervenes in and revalues enduring ambiguities surrounding the relationship of the Dioskouroi to mortality and immortality by valorizing Polyedeukes’ perspective, which privileges the parameters of mortal experience. This case study emphasizes the resonances evoked by the structure of the ode itself between the disorientation of the Dioskouroi from mortal experience and from the surrounding contexts of the ode.

This chapter introduces the concepts and methods used by the other chapters in the volume, using the long-standing problem of estimating the land carrying capacity of classical Attica to illustrate the benefits of probabilistic modelling. We begin by surveying the development of techniques for managing uncertainty in ancient history (1.1) and past work on the specific problem of Attica’s land carrying capacity (1.2). The chapter then turns to theoretical questions about the nature of uncertainty and probability (1.3), introducing the ‘subjectivist’ conception of probability as degree of belief, a theoretical framework that makes probability a powerful tool for historians. We go on to discuss the procedure of using probability distributions to represent uncertainty about the actual value of a quantity such as average barley yield in ancient Attica (among other variables relevant to the problem of land carrying capacity) (1.4), the need to be aware of cognitive biases that distort our probability judgements (1.5), the use of Monte Carlo simulation to combine uncertainties (1.6), the potential problem of epistemic interdependence (1.7), the interpretation of the outputs of a Monte Carlo simulation (1.8), and the use of sensitivity analysis to identify the most important sources of uncertainty in a simulation. The appendix illustrates model code in R.

“Asklepios and the Limits of the Possible,” interrogates Asklepios’ presence in Pythian 3 through the lens of interwoven generic frameworks, arguing that these function as a critical lens for the depiction of Asklepios’ changing cultic status and its activation within Pindar’s theological project. I focus on the ode’s extended Asklepian myths, arguing that they that they alternate between depicting Asklepios as an embodiment of failed human overreach and failure and as a superhuman healer by oscillating between the structures of negative epinician exemplum and cult hymn. These interwoven Asklepian identities require the ode’s recipient, an ailing Hieron of Syracuse, to understand his own aspirations and limitations in light of Asklepios’ identities, divided into mortal and immortal strands by Pindar’s modeling. The ode encourages Hieron, as mortal worshipper, to seek Asklepios’ healing, while himself aspiring, as epinician victor, to immortality in song.

This chapter presents a new estimate of the value of coinage in circulation in the mid-second century CE Roman empire. More than 25 years ago, Richard Duncan-Jones revolutionized ancient economic history by offering a first projection through numismatic and statistical methods. At more than 20 bn sesterces, his estimate implied an anomalously high monetization ratio given past and current estimates of Roman GDP, an issue that economic historians have had to deal with ever since. In the first half, a review of the numismatic evidence points to a much smaller role for gold than posited by Duncan-Jones. The second half presents a new model of the money supply. It uses Monte Carlo simulation to estimate the value of centrally-minted precious metal coins produced annually under Hadrian, and then the total coinage in circulation ca 160 CE. Allowance for various uncertainties and other, minor components of the coinage suggests a money supply of around 16 bn sesterces, with less gold and more silver than expected. However, this is not quite low enough to explain away the monetization ratio, implying a higher GDP and more trade-oriented economy than currently thought. Two appendices contain lengthy but essential technical discussions of the assumptions in the estimate.

Chapter 8 is an account of music-making at Christian social meals over the course of the first four centuries of the Common Era. Topics include musical activities at community suppers, private Christian dinner parties, and martyr festivals, as well as ways in which certain Christian writers saw a parallel between singing by turns at Christian social meals and the customs of classical Greeks. The earliest form of Christian music was the self-composed song or hymn, whose setting was the community supper and private Christian dinner party. In time, biblical psalms were taken up as part of the individual Christian’s song repertoire for social meals and prayer gatherings. During the third and fourth centuries, personal hymnody was largely displaced by psalmody. Meanwhile, differing preferences and moral sensibilities among Christians, typically with overtones of class, troubled inner church relations over musical recreations in both church and nonchurch social settings.

Chapter 9 synthesizes certain leading themes of the book and discusses some opinions of ancient intellectuals who reflected on the purpose and pleasures of music in convivial settings. The topics include musical self-display and public honor, social music as play, and the purpose of a symposion and its music. The chapter examines the philosophical opinions of Aristotle, Xenophon, Diogenes of Babylon, Philodemus, and Plutarch about various aspects of these topics, and concludes with a look at musical figures in the introduction to Athenaeus’ Deipnosophists (Learned Banqueters).

The group music-making at aristocratic symposia, described in Chapter 1, developed in a sixth-century social context where ordinary people (the demos) were gaining power in ways that threatened elite claims to superiority and oligarchic right to rule. In this cultural environment, sympotic music-making by upper-class men, “gentlemanly lyrody,” served as a symbol of the superiority that elites arrogated to themselves and expected ordinary people to respect. The ability to perform a certain repertoire to self-accompaniment was a badge of social superiority. This lyrody was directly connected to the refined education that aristocratic boys received; when practiced at adult men’s symposia, it represented a display of paideia. The chapter also examines the question of whether nonelites eventually acquired the skills and repertoire of gentlemanly lyrody, which might have robbed it of its social cachet; and what happened to that cachet when increasing numbers of professional musicians came to dominate the entertainment scene, offering a popular new music for the stage that eventually entered the drinking party. The chapter also considers evidence that some elites did not participate in the sympotic musical culture of their class.

Chapter 4 takes the story from the death of Augustus to the Gothic War a half millennium later when the circus plaza shrank as new structures were added to accommodate changing uses.