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Widely regarded as ancient Rome’s greatest historian, Tacitus has shaped much of early modern and modern thought on Rome and its emperors. Substantial portions of his major historical works Histories and Annals, however, have not survived, depriving us of his account of crucial episodes and developments in Rome's early imperial history. This first-of-its-kind volume seeks to fill those gaps, using a range of historical and linguistic approaches to reconstruct the missing portions of Tacitus’ work. The volume offers reconstructions of the fragmentary Tacitean emperors (Augustus, Caligula, Nero, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian) and of important lost episodes such as the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem and the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

By utilizing the concept of incompleteness as a narrative tool, Tacitus and the Incomplete provides novel insights into what Tacitus’ oeuvre might have been like if the lost books had survived, and also expands on recent work on counterfactual historiography, the influence of hindsight on historical writing, the use of prolepsis and other narrative techniques, and on the limitations of historiography in the imperial period.

This book describes the tragic and bloody collapse of Roman civilization in the West in the fifth century and the near ruin of the Eastern Roman Empire. The hundred years from the death of Theodosius I to the conquest of Italy by Theodoric the Ostrogoth were years of chaos, havoc, and destruction. In the East we see the confusion of the imperial government, the palace intrigues, and the sinister role of the palace eunuchs—but survival. The events are dramatically described by eyewitnesses to the disasters—the Byzantine historians Priscus, Malchus, Olympiodorus, John of Antioch, and Candidus. The contemporary accounts are translated into English and provided with a running commentary by C. D. Gordon to form a continuous narrative of an age of turmoil—the Age of Attila.

David S. Potter has added translations of significant passages not in the original volume. He has also added extensive new notes to place the book in the contemporary study of the ancient world, as well as a new bibliography and a concordance with modern editions.

“David Potter’s re-edition, really updating, expanding, reshaping, and refreshing Colin Gordon's classic Age of Attila is a very welcome development. The Age of Attila, in Potter's expanded version, provides in English the most important literary sources for the immensely important period of the transition or decline, depending on one's view, of the Roman empire to the post-Roman kingdoms in the West, and for Roman history in the fifth century CE in general. This decisive century has always been hotly debated, but rising interest in economic history and a new wave of Attila books make this an especially fortuitous moment to have Gordon anew: no historian, no student of the later Roman Empire will be able to live without David Potter's edition of Gordon's Age of Attila!”
—Susanna Elm, University of California, Berkeley

“It has been half a century since C. D. Gordon published this valuable introduction to the fifth century, a narrative reconstituted from the fragmentary but tantalizing sources remaining for the period. David Potter has revitalized this classic work, updating it with reference to the latest critical editions and rewriting its notes to take account of recent scholarship. The book provides an excellent entry point into a world that saw the western Roman Empire crumble, Byzantium rise from its remains, and the barbarian peoples of central and western Eurasia reshape human history.”
—Noel Lenski, University of Colorado Boulder

In ancient Rome, it was believed some humans were transformed into special, empowered beings after death. These deified dead, known as the manes, watched over and protected their surviving family members, possibly even extending those relatives’ lives. But unlike the Greek hero-cult, the worship of dead emperors, or the Christian saints, the manes were incredibly inclusive—enrolling even those without social clout, such as women and the poor, among Rome's deities. The Roman afterlife promised posthumous power in the world of the living.

While the manes have often been glossed over in studies of Roman religion, this book brings their compelling story to the forefront, exploring their myriad forms and how their worship played out in the context of Roman religion’s daily practice. Exploring the place of the manes in Roman society, Charles King delves into Roman beliefs about their powers to sustain life and bring death to individuals or armies, examines the rituals the Romans performed to honor them, and reclaims the vital role the manes played in the ancient Roman afterlife.

The Art of the Roman Jurists offers a clear, detailed, and thorough account of the relationship between Roman law and society from 100 BCE to 235 CE and traces the rise of the group of legal experts known as jurists. While prominent in the first century BCE, they consolidated their position in the first years of the Principate. But it is only in the second century, starting in the reign of Antoninus Pius (138–161), that, in author Bruce W. Frier’s view, they most emphatically come into their own. The collection reveals how the jurists can evince an awareness of the impact their holdings portend for the social and economic reality. Frier's method is anchored in the ancient sources, extending far beyond the legal evidence, offering a perspective on Roman jurisprudence as it was lived. This collection of published and unpublished articles from Frier examines crucial aspects of his methodology and looks to the future of the study of Roman law.

In the present study, Craig A. Monson takes advantage of a recent discovery—the 1,450-page notary’s transcript of the 1659 investigation.  It is supplemented here by many ancillary archival sources, unknown to all previous writers. Since the story of Gironima Spana and the would-be widows is partially about what people believed to be true, however, this investigation also juxtaposes some of the “alternative facts” from earlier, sensational accounts with what the notary’s transcript and other, more reliable archival documents reveal.

Written in a style that avoids arcane idioms and specialist jargon, the book can potentially speak to students and general readers interested in seventeenth-century social history and gender issues. It rewrites the life story of Gironima Spana (largely unknown until now), who has dominated all earlier accounts, usually in caricatures that reiterate the tropes of witchcraft. It also concentrates on the dozen other widows whose stories could be the most  recovered from archival sources and whom Spana had totally eclipsed in earlier accounts. Most were women “of a very ordinary sort” (prostitutes; beggars; wives of butchers, barbers, dyers, lineners, innkeepers), the kinds of women commonly lost to history. The book seeks to explain why some women were hanged (only six, in fact, most of whom may not have directly poisoned anyone), while dozens of others who did poison their husbands escaped the gallows and, in some cases, were not even interrogated. It also reveals what happened to these other alleged perpetrators, whose fates have remained unknown until now.  Other purported culprits, about whom less complete pictures emerge, are briefly discussed in an appendix.

The study incorporates illustrations of archival manuscripts to demonstrate the challenges of deciphering them and illustrates “scenes of the crime” and other important locations, identified on seventeenth-century, bird’s eye-perspective views of Rome and in modern photographs. It also includes GPS coordinates for any who might wish to revisit the sites.

    Catullus’ life was akin to pulp fiction. In Julius Caesar’s Rome, he engages in a stormy affair with a consul’s wife. He writes her passionate poems of love, hate, and jealousy. The consul, a vehement opponent of Caesar, dies under suspicious circumstances. The merry widow romances numerous young men. Catullus is drawn into politics and becomes a cocky critic of Caesar, writing poems that dub Julius a low-life pig and a pervert. Not surprisingly, soon after, no more is heard of Catullus.
    David Mulroy brings to life the witty, poignant, and brutally direct voice of a flesh-and-blood man, a young provincial in the Eternal City, reacting to real people and events in a Rome full of violent conflict among individuals marked by genius and megalomaniacal passions. Mulroy’s lively, rhythmic translations of the poems are enhanced by an introduction and commentary that provide biographical and bibliographical information about Catullus, a history of his times, a discussion of the translations, and definitions and notes that ease the way for anyone who is not a Latin scholar.

The first-century Roman tragedies of Seneca, like all ancient drama, do not contain the sort of external stage directions that we are accustomed to today; nevertheless, a careful reading of the plays reveals such stage business as entrances, exits, setting, sound effects, emotions of the characters, etc. The Dramaturgy of Senecan Tragedy teases out these dramaturgical elements in Seneca's work and uses them both to aid in the interpretation of the plays and to show the playwright's artistry.

Thomas D. Kohn provides a detailed overview of the corpus, laying the groundwork for appreciating Seneca's techniques in the individual dramas. Each of the chapters explores an individual tragedy in detail, discussing the dramatis personae and examining how the roles would be distributed among a limited number of actors, as well as the identity of the Chorus. The Dramaturgy of Senecan Tragedymakes a compelling argument for Seneca as an artist and a dramaturg in the true sense of the word: "a maker of drama." Regardless of whether Seneca composed his plays for full-blown theatrical staging, a fictive theater of the mind, or something in between, Kohn demonstrates that he displays a consistency and a careful attentiveness to details of performance. While other scholars have applied this type of performance criticism to individual tragedies or scenes, this is the first comprehensive study of all the plays in twenty-five years, and the first ever to consider not just stagecraft, but also metatheatrical issues such as the significant distribution of roles among a limited number of actors, in addition to the emotional states of the characters. Scholars of classics and theater, along with those looking to stage the plays, will find much of interest in this study.

"A vibrant account that puts flesh on the bare bones of early Roman history."
---Celia Schultz, University of Michigan
 
The ancient Romans' story down to 264 B.C. can be made credible by stripping away their later myths and inventions to show how their national character shaped their destiny.

After many generations of scholarly study, consensus is clear: the account in writers like Livy is not to be trusted because their aims were different from ours in history-writing. They wanted their work to be both improving and diverting. It should grow out of the real past, yes, but if that reality couldn't be recovered, or was uncertain, their art did not forbid invention. It more than tolerated dramatic incidents, passions, heroes, heroines, and villains. If, however, all this resulting ancient fiction and adornment are pruned away, a national character can be seen in the remaining bits and pieces of credible information, to explain the familiar story at least in its outlines.

To doubt the written sources has long been acceptable, but this or that detail or narrative section must always be left for salvage by special pleading. To press home the logic of doubt is new. To reach beyond the written sources for a better support in excavated evidence is no novelty; but it is a novelty, to find in archeology the principal substance of the narrative---which is the choice in this book. To use this in turn for the discovery of an ethnic personality, a Roman national character, is key and also novel.

What is repeatedly illustrated and emphasized here is the distance traveled by the art or craft of understanding the past---"history" in that sense---over the course of the last couple of centuries. The art cannot be learned, because it cannot be found, through studying Livy and Company. Readers who care about either of the two disciplines contrasted, Classics and History, may find this argument of interest.

"Like Thucydides of the hyperactive Athenians and de Tocqueville of the nation-building Americans, MacMullen here draws a character sketch of the early Romans---the men who built Rome, conquered Italy, and created an empire. Based on profound familiarity with history, evidence, and their better-known descendants, attention to what they did and failed to do, remarkable insight, empathy, constructive imagination, and not without humor, he reconstructs the homo Romanus and thus helps us imagine what he was like, and understand why he achieved what he did. This little book is informative, full of important ideas, and delightful to read."
---Kurt Raaflaub, Brown University

Jacket image: Marcus Fabius and Quintus Tannius. Fresco. Musei Capitolini, Rome, Italy. Courtesy of Scala / Art Resource, NY..

An examination of early Roman Christianity by New Testament and classical scholars

Building on the methodologies introduced in the first volume of The First Urban Churches and supplementing the in-depth studies of Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae, Hierapolis, and Laodicea (vols. 2–5), essays in this volume challenge readers to reexamine what we know about the early church within Rome and the port city of Ostia. In the introductory section of the book, James R. Harrison discusses the material and documentary evidence of both cities, which sets the stage for the essays that follow. In the second section, Mary Jane Cuyler, James R. Harrison, Richard Last, Annelies Moeser, Thomas A. Robinson, Michael P. Theophilos, and L. L. Welborn examine a range of topics, including the Ostian Synagogue, Romans 1:2–4 against the backdrop of Julio-Claudian adoption and apotheosis traditions, and the epistle of 1 Clement. In the final section of this volume, Jutta Dresken-Welland and Mark Reasoner engage Peter Lampe’s magnum opus From Paul to Valentinus; Lampe wraps up the section and the volume with a response. Throughout, readers are provided with a rich demonstration of how the material evidence of the city of Rome illuminates the emergence of Roman Christianity, especially in the first century CE.

Pleasure gardens, or horti, offered elite citizens of ancient Rome a retreat from the noise and grime of the city, where they could take their leisure and even conduct business amid lovely landscaping, architecture, and sculpture. One of the most important and beautiful of these gardens was the horti Sallustiani, originally developed by the Roman historian Sallust at the end of the first century B.C. and later possessed and perfected by a series of Roman emperors. Though now irrevocably altered by two millennia of human history, the Gardens of Sallust endure as a memory of beauty and as a significant archaeological site, where fragments of sculpture and ruins of architecture are still being discovered.

In this ambitious work, Kim Hartswick undertakes the first comprehensive history of the Gardens of Sallust from Roman times to the present, as well as its influence on generations of scholars, intellectuals, and archaeologists. He draws from an astonishing array of sources to reconstruct the original dimensions and appearance of the gardens and the changes they have undergone at specific points in history. Hartswick thoroughly discusses the architectural features of the garden and analyzes their remains. He also studies the sculptures excavated from the gardens and discusses the subjects and uses of many outstanding examples.

In Greco-Roman Egypt, recipes for magical undertaking, called magical formularies, commonly existed for love potions, curses, attempts to best business rivals—many of the same challenges that modern people might face. In The Greco-Egyptian Magical Formularies: Libraries, Books, and Individual Recipes, volume editors Christopher Faraone and Sofia Torallas Tovar present a series of essays by scholars involved in a multiyear project to reedit and translate the various magical handbooks that were inscribed in the Roman period in the Greek or Egyptian languages.  For the first time, the material remains of these papyrus rolls and codices are closely examined, revealing important information about the production of books in Egypt, the scribal culture in which they were produced, and the traffic in single recipes copied from them.  Especially important for historians of the book and the Christian Bible are new insights in the historical shift from roll to codex, complicated methods of inscribing the bilingual papyri (in which the Greek script is written left to right and the demotic script right to left), and the new realization that several of the longest extant handbooks are clearly compilations of two or more shorter handbooks, which may have come from different places.  The essays also reexamine and rethink the idea that these handbooks came from the personal libraries of practicing magicians or temple scriptoria, in one case going so far as to suggest that two of the handbooks had literary pretensions of a sort and were designed to be read for pleasure rather than for quotidian use in making magical recipes.

In The Humblest Sparrow, Michael Roberts illuminates the poetry of the sixth-century bishop and poet Venantius Fortunatus. Often regarded as an important transitional figure, Fortunatus wrote poetry that is seen to bridge the late classical and earlier medieval periods. Written in Latin, his poems combined the influences of classical Latin poets with a medieval tone, giving him a special place in literary history. Yet while interest has been growing in the early Merovingian period, and while the writing of Fortunatus' patron Gregory of Tours has been well studied, Fortunatus himself has often been neglected. This neglect is remedied by this in-depth study, which will appeal to scholars of late antique, early Christian, and medieval Latin poetry. Roberts divides Fortunatus' poetry into three main groups: poetry of praise, hagiographical poetry, and personal poetry. In addition to providing a general survey, Roberts discusses in detail many individual poems and proposes a number of theses on the nature, function, relation to social and linguistic context, and survival of Fortunatus' poetry, as well as the image of the poet created by his work.

As the first Christian emperor of Rome, Constantine the Great has long interested those studying the establishment of Christianity. But Constantine is also notable for his ability to control a sprawling empire and effect major changes. The Justice of Constantineexamines Constantine's judicial and administrative legislation and his efforts to maintain control over the imperial bureaucracy, to guarantee the working of Roman justice, and to keep the will of his subjects throughout the Roman Empire.

John Dillon first analyzes the record of Constantine's legislation and its relationship to prior legislation. His initial chapters also serve as an introduction to Roman law and administration in later antiquity. Dillon then considers Constantine's public edicts and internal communications about access to law, trials and procedure, corruption, and punishment for administrative abuses. How imperial officials relied on correspondence with Constantine to resolve legal questions is also considered. A study of Constantine's expedited appellate system, to ensure provincial justice, concludes the book.

Constantine's constitutions reveal much about the Theodosian Code and the laws included in it. Constantine consistently seeks direct sources of reliable information in order to enforce his will. In official correspondence, meanwhile, Constantine strives to maintain control over his officials through punishment; trusted agents; and the cultivation of accountability, rivalry, and suspicion among them.

President of the Archaeological Institute of America, professor at the University of Michigan from 1889 to 1927, and president of the American Philological Association, Francis Kelsey was crucially involved in the founding or growth of major educational institutions. He came to maturity in a period of great technological change in communications, transportation, and manufacturing. Kelsey took full advantage of such innovations in his ceaseless drive to promote education for all, to further the expansion of knowledge, and to champion the benefits of the study of antiquity.

A vigorous traveler around the United States, Europe, and the Mediterranean, Kelsey strongly believed in the value of personally viewing sites ancient and modern and collecting artifacts that could be used by the new museums and universities that were springing up in the United States. This collecting habit put him in touch with major financiers of the day, including Charles Freer, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan, as he sought their help for important projects.

Drawing heavily on Kelsey's daily diaries now held at the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library, John Griffiths Pedley gives us a biography that records the wide-ranging activities of a gifted and energetic scholar whose achievements mirrored the creative and contributive innovations of his contemporary Americans.

A study of women’s lives in the public sphere of the ancient city of Pompeii.

Pompeii’s well-preserved remains provide a unique opportunity for the close study of ancient lives. Drawing on statues, inscriptions, graffiti, wall paintings, and the architecture of tombs, sanctuaries, houses, and public spaces, The Lives and Deaths of Women in Ancient Pompeii examines the public lives of women in Pompeii. Art historian Brenda Longfellow explores how historical women of all social backgrounds acted in public and exerted agency on behalf of themselves and others, ultimately finding that female initiatives in Pompeii were not only accepted but desired by the community to a greater extent than has previously been recognized.

Longfellow centers her study on a few key women—including the city’s most notable female patron, Eumachia—and uses them to examine female roles in postmortem commemorations, civic patronage and benefactions, commerce, the priesthood, and the home. By following these individuals, Longfellow examines women’s lives in Pompeii in both abstract and concrete ways, allowing readers to better understand their importance to the city and society. The result is a groundbreaking book that foregrounds the agency of women in everyday Pompeii.