Rome the Cosmopolis
Rome the Cosmopolis
Greg Woolf , University of St Andrews, Scotland
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USDRome stands today for an empire and for a city. The essays gathered in this volume explore some of the many ways in which the two were interwoven. Rome was fed, beautified and enriched by empire just as it was swollen, polluted, infected and occupied by it. Empire was paraded in the streets of Rome, and exhibited in the city's buildings. Empire also made the city ineradicably foreign, polyglot, an alien capital, and a focus for un-Roman activities. The city was where the Roman cosmos was most concentrated, and so was most contested. Deploying a range of methodologies on materials ranging from Egyptian obelisks to human skeletal remains, via Christian art and Latin poetry, the contributors to this volume weave a series of pathways through the world-city, exploring the different kinds of centrality Rome had in the empire. The result is a startlingly original picture of both empire and city.
- A book-length treatment of Rome as a world city
- Covers Rome as a cultural centre, as well as issues such as immigration and food supply
- Combines social and economic history, cultural analysis and history of art, with comparative insights
Reviews & endorsements
"Nine historians offer lively, original, and consistently interesting papers...Rome the Cosmopolis gives us much that is new and memorable." The Times Literary Supplement
"'This book is for Keith Hopkins,' begins the preface, and indeed, no finer tribute to a great scholar can be imagined than this collection of essays by students of the professor of ancient history at Cambridge University... An excellent bibliography and full index conclude a work from which students of Rome at every level can learn a great deal. Highly Recommended." Choice
"It surely belongs in specialized library collections dealing with antiquity and with Roman history, but any person fascinated by the world and lifestyle of ancient Rome will find this an irresistible book." Catholic Library World
"The mark of a good book is that it educates, stimulates, and provokes: the ten essays presented here can be heartily recommended as succeeding in these vital respects." International History Review, Richard J. A. Talbert, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"To read several or all of the essays in the span of a single protracted sitting is a particularly stimulating intellectual experience. It is to engage with a variety of scholarly talents, analytical methods and discursive techniques, sometimes complementary, sometimes competing, often dealing with the same ancient data from different perspectives and for different purposes." - Rory B. Egan, University of Manitoba
Product details
November 2006Paperback
9780521030113
268 pages
233 × 154 × 14 mm
0.379kg
18 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- List of figures
- List of contributors
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1. Cosmopolis: Rome as World City Catharine Edwards and Greg Woolf
- 2. The triumph of the absurd: Roman street theatre Mary Beard
- 3. Incorporating the alien: the art of conquest Catharine Edwards
- 4. Inventing Christian Rome: the role of early Christian art Jas' Elsner
- 5. Slavery and the growth of Rome: the transformation of Italy in the second and first centuries BCE Willem Jongman
- 6. Rivalling Rome: Carthage Richard Miles
- 7. Migration and the metropolis Neville Morley
- 8. Germs for Rome Walter Scheidel
- 9. Embracing Egypt Caroline Vout
- 10. The City of Letters Greg Woolf
- Bibliography
- Index.
