The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rome

Front Cover
Paul Erdkamp
Cambridge University Press, Sep 5, 2013 - History - 625 pages
The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Rome offers thirty-one original essays by leading historians, classicists and archaeologist on the largest metropolis of the Roman Empire. While the Colosseum, imperial palaces and Pantheon are famous features of the Roman capital, Rome is addressed in this volume primarily as a city in which many thousands of men and women were born, lived, and died. The clearly written and succinct chapters discuss numerous issues related to the capital of the Roman Empire: from the monuments and the games to the food- and water supply, from policing and riots to domestic housing, from death and disease to pagan cults and the impact of Christianity. Richly illustrated and designed as a readable survey accessible to all audiences, the Companion explains ground-breaking new research against the background of current debate and reaches a level of sophistication that will be appreciated by the experts.
 

Contents

The urban fabric
4
The emergence of the city
8
Population size and social structure
29
Disease and death
45
Slaves and freedmen
60
Immigration and cosmopolitanization
77
Marriages families households
93
Pack animals pets pests and other nonhuman
110
Industries and services
317
Labour and employment
336
Professional associations
352
Sex and the city
369
Civic rituals and political spaces in republican
389
Policing and security
410
Riots
425
Romans play on city of the Games
441

The urban topography of Rome
131
Housing and domestic architecture
151
Regions and neighbourhoods
169
Monumental Rome
190
Suburban surroundings
205
The Tiber and river transport
229
Traffic and land transportation in and near Rome
246
The food supply of the capital
262
providing
278
Water supply drainage and watermills
297
The urban sacred landscape
461
festivals holidays and the calendar
478
Cemeteries and catacombs
497
What difference did Christianity make?
522
text image and imagination
541
Roma Aeterna
558
Bibliography
575
Index
605
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About the author (2013)

Paul Erdkamp is Professor of Ancient History at the Free University of Brussels (VUB). Previously, he was Research Fellow at the University of Leiden. He has published two monographs: Hunger and the Sword. Warfare and Food Supply in Roman Republican Wars (1998) and The Grain Market in the Roman Empire (2005), and is editor of The Roman Army and the Economy (2002), A Companion to the Roman Army (2007) and A Cultural History of Food in Antiquity (2012). His research interests include the ancient economy, army and warfare, ancient historiography, in particular Polybius and Livy, and social and cultural aspects of food in classical antiquity. Professor Erdkamp is currently co-chair of the Roman Society Research Centre, in which various departments of ancient history and archaeology at European universities participate.

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