Roman History Books and More

july 18 chat with albert bell has been moved to july 25

The author chat with Albert A. Bell Jr. about his mystery novel The Blood of Caesar: A Second Case from the Notebooks of Pliny the Younger has been moved to July 25.

Not only is the date more convenient for Albert Bell, it also gives the group more time to read the book as we are discussing the second half of "Caesar's Wives" by Anneliese Freisenbruch on July 11 instead of July 4, a public holiday in the U.S.

Domitian puts pressure on Pliny and Tacitus ... enjoy!

fustel de coulanges: the ancient city

In his online chat with us last night, Barry Strauss mentioned Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City, "one of the really great books on the Greco-Roman world – even though a lot of its ideas have proven wrong." La Cité antique (1864)

The book can be downloaded from the Internet Archive:

The ancient city : a study on the religion, laws and institutions of Greece and Rome

Or as PDF file from the McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought.

Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (Wikpedia, handle with care)

some background reading for our march chats on travel to rome and occupations in the ancient world for those who want to know more

Updated 2/20 to add another review of "Roman Woodworking."

On March 3 & 17 we will be reading Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day by Philip Matyzcak and Working IX to V: Orgy Planners, Funeral Clowns and Other Prized Professions of the Ancient World by Vicki Leon.

If you have the time and inclination, here are some other subject related books:

• Travel in the Ancient World
  by Lionel Casson
• A Taste of Ancient Rome
  by Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa
• Handbook to Life in Ancient Rome
  by Lesley & Roy Adkins
• Roman Woodworking
  by Roger B. Ulrich  my review / N.S. Gill's review

        

And then there is Apicius (Wikipedia, handle with care) and the only current online translation, thanks to Bill Thayer.  Yahoo has an Apicius Group.

At the met: 'beyond babylon' closes soon – and something for postcard afficionados

Dont' miss
Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.
through March 15, 2009

This exhibition focuses on the extraordinary art created as a result of a sophisticated network of interaction that developed among kings, diplomats, merchants, and others in the Near East during the second millennium B.C.  View images from this exhibition.

 And for postcard aficionados there is

Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard
February 3, 2009–May 25, 2009

This exhibition [focuses] on a collection of 9,000 picture postcards amassed and classified by the American photographer Walker Evans (1903–1975), now part of the Metropolitan’s Walker Evans Archive. The picture postcard represented a powerful strain of indigenous American realism that directly influenced Evans’s artistic development.  View images from this exhibition.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

the oxford roman economy project

The Oxford Roman Economy Project

A research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the period 1 October 2005 to 30 September 2010 and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford.

Parts of the site are restricted to members of the project only.

Research context

This research programme addresses the fundamentals of the Roman imperial economy and will provide a detailed analysis of major economic activities (agriculture, trade, commerce, mining), utilising quantifiable bodies of artefactual and documentary evidence and placing them in the broader structural context of regional variation, distribution, size and nature of markets, supply and demand.