Series: Classical World

Gladiatorial combat, animal displays, naumachiae (staged naval battles), and spectacular executions were all an important part of Roman culture. The provision of a wide range of purpose-built buildings—from theatres to amphitheatres to circuses—as venues across the empire is testimony to the popularity and significance of these displays. Spectacle in the Roman World offers an introduction to the main forms of...

Little over one hundred years has passed since Schliemann first excavated Mycenae and revealed the riches of its ruler, burying in the Shaft graves three and a half thousand years ago. Continuing discoveries have demonstrated the achievements and connections of Mycenaean civilisation. The decipherment of their script, Linear B, an early form of Greek, has shown that the Mycenaeans were...

This book takes as its starting-point the images of women in the Parthenon sculptures, in order to investigate two levels of feminine experience in Classical Athens, the human and the divine. The interplay between women's religious prominence and their domestic obscurity is examined in relation to the young citizen women who lead the procession; while the great goddesses represented in...

The dark, unrelenting Tiberius, the furious Caligula, the feeble Claudius, the profligate and cruel Nero..are condemned to everlasting Infamy, wrote Gibbon. This 'infamy' has inspired the work of historians and novelists from Roman times to the present. Julio-Claudian Emperors summarises political events during the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, and the civil wars of the 'year of four...

For two centuries, classical Athens enjoyed almost uninterrupted democratic government. This was not a parliamentary democracy of the modern sort but a direct democracy in which all citizens were free to participate in the business of government. Throughout this period, Athens was the cultural centre of Greece and one of the major Greek powers. Democracy in Classical Athens traces the...

Written by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, one of the world's foremost scholars on Roman social and cultural history, this introduction to Rome in the Age of Augustus provides a fascinating insight into the social and physical contexts of Augustan politics and poetry, exploring in detail the impact of the new regime of government on society. Taking an interpretative approach, the ideas and...