Werner Riess

Garrett G. Fagan

What soldiers do on the battlefield or boxers do in the ring would be treated as criminal acts if carried out in an everyday setting. Perpetrators of violence in the classical world knew this and chose their venues and targets with care: killing Julius Caesar at a meeting of the Senate was deliberate. That location asserted Senatorial superiority over a perceived tyrant, and so proclaimed the pure republican principles of the assassins. The contributors to The Topography of Violence in the Greco-Roman World take on a task not yet addressed in classical scholarship: they examine how topography shaped the perception and interpretation of violence in Greek and Roman antiquity. After an introduction explaining the “spatial turn” in the theoretical study of violence, “paired” chapters review political assassination, the battlefield, violence against women and slaves, and violence at Greek and Roman dinner parties. No other book either adopts the spatial theoretical framework or pairs the examination of different classes of violence in classical antiquity in this way. Both undergraduate and graduate students of classics, history, and political science will benefit from the collection, as will specialists in those disciplines. The papers are original and stimulating, and they are accessible to the educated general reader with some grounding in classical history.

The Topography of Violence in the Greco-Roman World

Linda Fibiger

Mark Hudson

Matthew Trundle

The first in a four-volume set, The Cambridge World History of Violence, Volume 1 provides a comprehensive examination of violence in prehistory and the ancient world. Covering the Palaeolithic through to the end of classical antiquity, the chapters take a global perspective spanning sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East, Europe, India, China, Japan and Central America. Unlike many previous works, this book does not focus only on warfare but examines violence as a broader phenomenon. The historical approach complements, and in some cases critiques, previous research on the anthropology and psychology of violence in the human story. Written by a team of contributors who are experts in each of their respective fields, Volume 1 will be of particular interest to anyone fascinated by archaeology and the ancient world.

The Cambridge World History of Violence: Volume 1, The Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds

Garrett G Fagan

Were the Romans who watched brutal gladiatorial games all that different from us? This book argues they were not.

Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games

The Lure of the Arena

An uninhibited glance into the extensive baths of Rome

Bathing in Public in the Roman World

Why did the Romans turn out in their tens of thousands to watch brutal gladiatorial games? Previous studies have tried to explain the attraction of the arena by theorizing about its cultural function in Roman society. The games have been seen as celebrations of the violence of empire or of Rome's martial heritage, or as manifestations of the emperor's power. The desire to watch has therefore been limited to the Roman context and rendered alien to modern sensibilities. Yet the historical record reveals that people living in quite different times and circumstances (including our own) have regularly come out in large numbers to watch public rituals of violence such as executions, floggings, animal-baiting, cudgeling, pugilism and so on. Appreciating the social-psychological dynamics at work in attracting people to watch such events not only deepens our understanding of the spectator at the Roman games but also suggests something important about ourselves.

Teaching Company

Garrett G. Fagan, associate professor in classics and ancient Mediterranean studies and history at Pennsylvania State University, explores the history of ancient Rome beginning with pre-Roman Italy and ending with the fall of Rome.

The History of Ancient Rome

Paul Murgatroyd

This reader contains selections from Tacitus, Suetonius and Seneca on the first five Roman emperors. They present a dark world of murder, mayhem, debauchery and palace intrigue: Augustus with his firm moral policies and secret adulterous affairs; the sour and depraved Tiberius; the extravagance and madness of Caligula; the slobbering and ineffective Claudius; and Nero with his absurd artistic pretensions. Exciting, horrific and moving, the selections are also valuable for studying style and rhetoric, human nature and the roles of women, imperialism and corruption. The book is aimed at students moving on to genuine, unsimplified Latin prose after completing an introductory Latin course. It contains a useful introduction, detailed notes providing a lot of help with grammar, expression and translation, a full vocabulary, and an appreciation offering historical comment for context and analysis and literary criticism to make the passages come alive as literature and enhance students' perception and enjoyment.

An Intermediate Latin Reader

From Augustus to Nero

This book is the first to study the Roman public bathing experience primarily as a historical, social, and cultural phenomenon rather than a technological or architectural one. The focus here is on the bathers not the baths.

Garrett G. Fagan

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