Ancient society and history

"Many people express surprise," writes J. Donald Hughes, "when they are told that environmental problems existed in the ancient world; they are used to thinking of the environment as an exclusively modern concern. But an examination of the evidence shows that the Greeks and Romans not only suffered from some of the same predicaments that plague the present scene, but in many cases they were aware of them and commented on them.". In Pan's Travail Hughes examines the environmental history of the classical period and argues that the decline of ancient civilizations resulted in part from exploitation of the natural world. Focusing on Greece and Rome, as well as on areas subject to their influences, Hughes offers a detailed look at the impact of humans and their technologies on the ecology of the Mediterranean basin. He explores the complex relationships of human culture and the environment with topics that include deforestation and overgrazing, soil erosion, depletion of wildlife and natural resources, pollution, and urban problems such as water supply and sewage disposal. He also compares the ancient world's environmental problems to those of other eras and discusses attitudes toward nature expressed in Greek and Latin literature

Expanded and updated for this English-language translation, this book offers the first history of women in ancient Greece and Rome to be written from a legal perspective. Cantarella demonstrates how literary, anecdotal. and judicial sources can and cannot be used to discover that Greek and Roman men thought about women.

In Roman Architecture and Society James C. Anderson, Jr., offers the first book to explore fully the place of architecture and the building industry in the context of Roman life. Focusing primarily on Rome and other cities of central Italy, Anderson describes the training, career path, and social status of both architects and builders. He explains how the construction industry was organized - from marble and timber suppliers to bricklayers and carpenters. He examines the political, legal, and economic factors that determined what would be built, and where. And he shows how the various types of Roman buildings relate to the urban space as a whole.

Scholars of ancient literature have often focused on the works and lives of major authors rather than on such questions as how these works were produced and who read them and under what circumstances. In Roman Literary Culture Elaine Fantham fills that gap by examining the changing social and historical context of literary production in ancient Rome and its empire. Fantham discusses the habits of Roman readers and developments in their means of access to literature, from booksellers and copyists to pirated publications and libraries. She examines the issues of patronage and the utility of literature. She shows how the constraints of the physical object itself - the ancient "book" - influenced the practice of both reading and writing. And she explores the ways in which ancient criticism and critical attitudes reflected cultural assumptions of the time. Beginning with Cicero and his older contemporary Varro, Roman Literary Culture reviews both the public and the more private literary forms of the Augustan Age, when an elite reared on the primacy of Greek culture first confronted - and took pride in - their Roman literary inheritance. By the first century A.D., Fantham explains, Roman models dominated, and a new readership was evolving which included women and non-elite readers in the provinces who benefitted from a newly emerging commercial book trade. The second century brought a recurrence of Greek influence, as celebrated Greek rhetoricians and performers gave rise to a hybrid culture in which Greek and Latin values intertwined. The book concludes with a look at the ecumenical spread of Latin and its perpetuation through Christian literature.