Potter David S. (ed.) A Companion to the Roman Empire

Blackwell Publishing, 2006. — 691 p. — (Blackwell companions to the ancient world. Ancient history). — ISBN: 978-0-631-22644-4.A Companion to the Roman Empire provides readers with a guide both to Roman imperial history and to the field of Roman studies, taking account of the most recent discoveries.
This Companion brings together thirty original essays guiding readers through Roman imperial history and the field of Roman studies;
Shows that Roman imperial history is a compelling and vibrant subject;
Includes significant new contributions to various areas of Roman imperial history;
Covers the social, intellectual, economic and cultural history of the Roman Empire;
Contains an extensive bibliography.If this book had been commissioned in the late eighties as opposed to the late nineties, it would have had a very different shape. Fifteen years ago, historians of the Roman world were in the process of dismantling the hierarchical structure of their subject that had endured since the beginning of scholarly discourse about the Roman Empire. In the late sixties and early seventies, scholars began to move away from work concentrating on the dominant social and political group that had produced the bulk of the surviving literature. They were experimenting with the possibility that groups such as women, slaves, children, peasants, the urban poor, and even soldiers might have a history that was not dictated solely by the interests of people like the younger Pliny. Work by archaeologists, epigraphists and papyrologists had begun to show how it was possible to recover voices from outside the literary tradition. Even within the traditional, philological core of the subject there were signs of change. It was in the late sixties that lively debate erupted over the nature of the Greek literature of the Roman Empire. Characters like Galen, Aelius Aristides, and Pausanias became worthy subjects of research as excavation and epigraphic discovery restored the cities in which they had lived and worked. In the late seventies biographical approaches to Roman emperors encountered a massive challenge in Fergus Millar’s Emperor in the Roman World, which proposed, for the first time, a model for the interaction between emperor and subject that transcended the personalities of individual rulers (Millar 1977). At roughly the same time, two other developments were changing the scope of the subject. One was the growth of interest in ‘‘Late Antiquity,’’ which fueled interest in broad areas of social and intellectual history. The other was Moses Finley’s work on the economy of the ancient world. His work became the focal point of a debate between archaeologists who studied the evidence for trade and historians who questioned whether any amount of empirical data could overthrow an approach based on a theoretical model.The Emperors of Rome from Augustus to Constantine.
Introduction: The Shape of Roman History: The Fate of the Governing Class (David S. Potter).
The Sources.
Constructing a Narrative (Cynthia Damon).
Roman Imperial Numismatics (William E. Metcalf).
Documents (Traianos Gagos and David S. Potter).
Art, Architecture, and Archaeology in the Roman Empire (Lea Stirling).
Interdisciplinary Approaches (James B. Rives).
Narrative.
The Emergence of Monarchy: 44 BCE–96 CE (Greg Rowe).
Rome the Superpower: 96–235 CE (Michael Peachin).
The Transformation of the Empire: 235–337 CE (David S. Potter).
Administration.
The Administration of the Provinces (Clifford Ando).
The Transformation of Government under Diocletian and Constantine (Hugh Elton).
The Roman Army (Nigel Pollard).
Greek Cities Under Roman Rule (Maud W. Gleason).
Cities and Urban Life in the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire 30 BCE–250 CE (Jonathan Edmondson).
Social and Economic Life.
The Imperial Economy (David Mattingly).
Landlords and Tenants (Dennis P. Kehoe).
The Family (Judith Evans Grubbs).
Sexuality in the Roman Empire (Amy Richlin).
On Food and the Body (Veronika E. Grimm).
Leisure (Garrett G. Fagan).
Spectacle (David S. Potter).
Intellectual Life.
The Construction of the Past in the Roman Empire (Rowland Smith).
Imperial Poetry (K. Sara Myers).
Greek Fiction (Joseph L. Rife).
Roman Law and Roman History (John Matthews).
Roman Medicine (Ann Hanson).
Philosophy in the Roman Empire (Sara Ahbel-Rappe).
Religion.
Traditional Cult (David Frankfurter).
Jews and Judaism 70–429 CE (Yaron Z. Eliav).
Christians in the Roman Empire in the First Three Centuries CE (Paula Fredriksen).
Christian Thought (Mark Edwards).