LibGuides: HST 141: Primary Resources: Rome

Suggested Books

The Etruscan World by Jean MacIntosh Turfa (Editor) The Etruscans can be shown to have made significant, and in some cases perhaps the first, technical advances in the central and northern Mediterranean. To the Etruscan people we can attribute such developments as the tie-beam truss in large wooden structures, surveying and engineering drainage and water tunnels, the development of the foresail for fast long-distance sailing vessels, fine techniques of metal production and other pyrotechnology, post-mortem C-sections in medicine, and more. In art, many technical and iconographic developments, although they certainly happened first in Greece or the Near East, are first seen in extant Etruscan works, preserved in the lavish tombs and goods of Etruscan aristocrats. These include early portraiture, the first full-length painted portrait, the first perspective view of a human figure in monumental art, specialized techniques of bronze-casting, and reduction-fired pottery (the bucchero phenomenon). Etruscan contacts, through trade, treaty and intermarriage, linked their culture with Sardinia, Corsica and Sicily, with the Italic tribes of the peninsula, and with the Near Eastern kingdoms, Greece and the Greek colonial world, Iberia, Gaul and the Punic network of North Africa, and influenced the cultures of northern Europe. In the past fifteen years striking advances have been made in scholarship and research techniques for Etruscan Studies. Archaeological and scientific discoveries have changed our picture of the Etruscans and furnished us with new, specialized information. Thanks to the work of dozens of international scholars, it is now possible to discuss topics of interest that could never before be researched, such as Etruscan mining and metallurgy, textile production, foods and agriculture. In this volume, over 60 experts provide insights into all these aspects of Etruscan culture, and more, with many contributions available in English for the first time to allow the reader access to research that may not otherwise be available to them. Lavishly illustrated, The Etruscan World brings to life the culture and material past of the Etruscans and highlights key points of development in research, making it essential reading for researchers, academics and students of this fascinating civilization.
Call Number: DG223.3 .E883 2013
ISBN: 0415673089
Publication Date: 2013-08-13
Imperial Rome the Critical Century, Ad 193-284 by Clifford Ando A pioneering history of this period of crisisThe Roman empire during the period framed by the accession of Septimus Severus in 193 and the rise of Diocletian in 284 has conventionally been regarded as one of crisis. Between 235 and 284, at least eighteen men held the throne of the empire, for an average of less than three years, a reckoning which does not take into account all the relatives and lieutenants with whom those men shared power. Compared to the century between the accession of Nerva and the death of Commodus, this appears to be a period of near unintelligibility. The middle of the century also witnessed catastrophic, if temporary, ruptures in the territorial integrity of the empire. Large portions of the eastern and western halves of the empire passed under the control of powers and principalities who assumed the mantle of Roman government and exercised meaningful and legitimate power over millions. Even those regions that remained Roman were subjected to deprivation and pillage by invading armies. The Roman peace, which had become in the last instance the justification for empire, had been shattered.Clifford Ando describes and integrates the contrasting histories of different parts of the empire and assesses the impacts of administrative, political and religious change.Key features: o Follows Rome's confrontation and conflict with a new world power, Sassanian Persia, in which two Roman emperors lost their liveso Devotes special attention to legal historyo Examines the changing nature of religious pluralism and the Christian persecution
Call Number: E-Book
ISBN: 9780748629206
Publication Date: 2012-01-01
The State of Speech by Joy Connolly Rhetorical theory, the core of Roman education, taught rules of public speaking that are still influential today. But Roman rhetoric has long been regarded as having little important to say about political ideas. The State of Speech presents a forceful challenge to this view. The first book to read Roman rhetorical writing as a mode of political thought, it focuses on Rome's greatest practitioner and theorist of public speech, Cicero. Through new readings of his dialogues and treatises, Joy Connolly shows how Cicero's treatment of the Greek rhetorical tradition's central questions is shaped by his ideal of the republic and the citizen. Rhetoric, Connolly argues, sheds new light on Cicero's deepest political preoccupations: the formation of individual and communal identity, the communicative role of the body, and the "unmanly" aspects of politics, especially civility and compromise. Transcending traditional lines between rhetorical and political theory, The State of Speech is a major contribution to the current debate over the role of public speech in Roman politics. Instead of a conventional, top-down model of power, it sketches a dynamic model of authority and consent enacted through oratorical performance and examines how oratory modeled an ethics of citizenship for the masses as well as the elite. It explains how imperial Roman rhetoricians reshaped Cicero's ideal republican citizen to meet the new political conditions of autocracy, and defends Ciceronian thought as a resource for contemporary democracy.
Call Number: E-Book
ISBN: 9781400827947
Publication Date: 2009-01-10
From Rome to Byzantium Ad 363-565 by A. D. Lee Outlines the significant developments in the period AD 363 to 565These centuries witnessed a number of momentous changes in the character of the Roman empire. Most obviously, control of the west was lost during the fifth century, and although parts of the west were reconquered in the sixth century, the empire's centre of gravity had shifted irrevocably to the east, with its focal point now the city of Constantinople. Equally important was the increasing dominance of Christianity not only in religious life, but also in politics, society and culture. A. D. Lee charts these and other significant developments which marked the transformation of Ancient Rome into medieval Byzantium. By no means only a story of decline and fall, it also explores the reasons for the resilience of the east, as well as Rome's legacy to the emerging medieval world.Key features:" draws together the threads of 'Roman' history up to this point" also points the way forward to the developments, both in the east and the west of the former Roman Empire in the centuries which followed
ISBN: 9780748631759
Publication Date: 2013-01-01