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Walk a day in a Roman's sandals. What was it like to live in one of the ancient world's most powerful and bustling cities - one that was eight times more densely populated than modern day New York?
During the course of a day we meet 24 ancient Athenians from all levels of society - from the slave-girl to the councilman, the fish-seller to the naval commander, the housewife to the hoplite - and get to know what the real Athens was like by spending an hour in their company.
This voyage of exploration chronicles twenty-four hours in the life of a Roman patrician, beginning at dawn on an ordinary day in the year 115 A.D., with Imperial Rome at the height of its power.
Spend 24 hours with the ancient Chinese. Travel back to AD 17, during the fourth year of the reign of Wang Mang of the Han dynasty, a vibrant and innovative era full of conflicts and contradictions. But as different as the Han culture might have been to other great ancient civilizations, the inhabitants of ancient China faced the same problems as people have for time immemorial: earning enough money, coping with workplace dramas and keeping your home in order . although the equivalent in this era was more about bribing inspectors, avoiding bullying from abusive watchmen and trying to keep your house from being looted by Huns. In each chapter we meet one of 24 citizens of this ancient culture, from the midwife to the soldier, the priest to the performer and the bronze worker to the tomb looter, and see what an average day in ancient China was really like.
This “dashing chronicle” reveals what tourists have been visiting in Rome, from the era of the Roman Republic to contemporary times (The Independent). There is no place like Rome. Throughout its long, long history, its many changes in form and fortune, Rome has always been a tourist centre. In every age—Classical, Christian, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, Romantic, Modern—people have flocked to see its wonders. This is the story of what Rome’s visitors have looked at over the past two thousand years, the buildings, the statues, the paintings, the artifacts that have most impressed each generation of travellers from the time of the Roman Republic in the second century BC up to the present age of mass tourism. It is the history both of how Rome has changed with the centuries and how the taste of those who have visited the city has changed with it.
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 This book takes us through one day in the life of Hadrian’s Rome, with the city seen from the different perspectives of twenty-four of its inhabitants. The people are the city: the buildings and monuments that tourists admire are secondary, important only as the physical echo of the people who built and lived among them. #2 The city of Rome was more than just a collection of buildings and a society of interlocked communities. It was an attitude, and an entrepreneurial spirit that allowed the Romans to believe that, no matter how bad things were, they could always be better. #3 The Roman fire department, the Vigiles, had a special duty to maintain law and order on the streets after dark, but their main function was fire prevention. The city was divided into seven districts for fire prevention purposes, and Brevis and his colleagues were well aware that it was in the district they covered that the worst fire in Roman history began. #4 The Roman watch has the power to break into any premises where they suspect a fire might get out of control. They are not above handing out some basic physical chastisement, and they have long-established protocols for attacking the fire.
Rome was the largest city in the ancient world. As the capital of the Roman Empire, it was clearly an exceptional city in terms of size, diversity and complexity. While the Colosseum, imperial palaces and Pantheon are among its most famous features, this volume explores Rome primarily as a city in which many thousands of men and women were born, lived and died. The thirty-one chapters by leading historians, classicists and archaeologists discuss issues ranging 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, the volume introduces groundbreaking new research against the background of current debates and is designed as a readable survey accessible in particular to undergraduates and non-specialists.
An investigation of the America-Rome analogy that goes deeper than the facile comparisons made on talk shows and in glossy magazine articles. America's post–Cold War strategic dominance and its pre-recession affluence inspired pundits to make celebratory comparisons to ancient Rome at its most powerful. Now, with America no longer perceived as invulnerable, engaged in protracted fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and suffering the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, comparisons are to the bloated, decadent, ineffectual later Empire. In Why America Is Not a New Rome, Vaclav Smil looks at these comparisons in detail, going deeper than the facile analogy-making of talk shows and glossy magazine articles. He finds profound differences. Smil, a scientist and a lifelong student of Roman history, focuses on several fundamental concerns: the very meaning of empire; the actual extent and nature of Roman and American power; the role of knowledge and innovation; and demographic and economic basics—population dynamics, illness, death, wealth, and misery. America is not a latter-day Rome, Smil finds, and we need to understand this in order to look ahead without the burden of counterproductive analogies. Superficial similarities do not imply long-term political, demographic, or economic outcomes identical to Rome's.
