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Cover -- INTRODUCTION: Who Ruled the Roman Empire? -- ONE: Emperors and the Senate -- TWO: Demonstrations of Wealth and Power -- THREE: Life at Court -- FOUR: Patrician Men -- FIVE: Patrician Women -- SIX: Children of the Ruling Class -- SEVEN: Risks and Rewards -- Glossary -- Further Information -- Source Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Materialising the Roman Empire defines an innovative research agenda for Roman archaeology, highlighting the diverse ways in which the Empire was made materially tangible in the lives of its inhabitants. The volume explores how material culture was integral to the processes of imperialism, both as the Empire grew, and as it fragmented, and in doing so provides up-to-date overviews of major topics in Roman archaeology.

Each chapter offers a critical overview of a major field within the archaeology of the Roman Empire. The book's authors explore the distinctive contribution that archaeology and the study of material culture can make to our understanding of the key institutions and fields of activity in the Roman Empire. The initial chapters address major technologies which, at first glance, appear to be mechanisms of integration across the Roman Empire: roads, writing and coinage. The focus then shifts to analysis of key social structures oriented around material forms and activities found all over the Roman world, such as trade, urbanism, slavery, craft production and frontiers. Finally, the book extends to more abstract dimensions of the Roman world: art, empire, religion and ideology, in which the significant themes remain the dynamics of power and influence. The whole builds towards a broad exploration of the nature of imperial power and the inter-connections that stimulated new community identities and created new social divisions.

Cover -- INTRODUCTION: The Foundations of the Roman Empire -- ONE: Cities Great and Small -- TWO: The Urban Lifestyle -- THREE: Hard at Work -- FOUR: City Men -- FIVE: City Women -- SIX: Childhood in the City -- SEVEN: Leisure Pursuits -- EIGHT: Crime and Danger -- Glossary -- Further Information -- Source Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Summary of ArgumentIt has long been recognized that upper class Romans in their desire for small families practised abortion on a large scale. What is not well known is the extent to which these same upper class Romans were concerned with contraception. Some of the methods advocated by Greek and Roman doctors could have been very effective, and aspects of ancient contraceptive theory were as advanced as any modern theory before the middle of the 19th century. Such contraceptive theory was part of a lively literary medical tradition, appearing first in Aristotle and in the Hippocratic Corpus; its repeated appearance in our fragmentary sources, when considered together with the organization of doctors' training, argues for its significance in medical practice, at least among the upper class. Nonetheless, the total effect of contraception upon fertility in Rome cannot be seen only in these terms.

Roman seals associated with collyria (Latin expression for eye drops /washes and lotions for eye maintenance) provide valuable information about eye care in the antiquity. These small, usually stone-made pieces bore engravings with the names of eye doctors and also the collyria used to treat an eye disease. The collyria seals have been found all over the Roman empire and Celtic territories in particular and were usually associated with military camps. In Hispania (Iberian Peninsula), only three collyria seals have been found. These findings speak about eye care in this ancient Roman province as well as about of the life of the time. This article takes a look at the utility and social significance of the collyria seals and seeks to give an insight in the ophthalmological practice of in the Roman Empire.

The fourth and fifth centuries AD gave rise to a particular phenomenon in the Roman Empire: the colonate. The colonate involved the fiscal regulation of a relationship of surety between landowners and farmers in the later Roman Empire and played a major role in agrarian and social relations, with implications for these farmers' freedom of movement and transmission of status. This study provides a clear and comprehensive reassessment of the legal aspects of the phenomenon, embedding them as far as possible in their social and economic contexts. As well as taking the innovative approach of working retrogradely, or backwards through time, the volume provides a thorough assessment of two critical sources, the Theodosian and Justinian Codes, and will therefore be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Roman law and the agricultural and social history of late antiquity.

Rome hulks large on the landscape of our historical memory. Among history's hills and valleys the Roman Empire stands out, a craggy peak dominating the horizon. Our civilization, like others, springs from many nations and peoples, but ancient Rome and the empire its people created have a continuing fascination for present-day Americans. The mummies of Egypt intrigue us by their mystery, and the pyramids impress us by their sheer massiveness, but to most of us Egypt is but an historical curiosity to contemplate in a museum on a Sunday afternoon. Likewise, our memory of Greece is piecemeal and-fragmented, transmitted to us as a melange of literary and intellectual masterpieces. College students read Plato and Aristotle for philosophy, Euripides and Sophocles for drama, and Homer for epic, but Greece conjures no political or military grandeur as a people or an empire.

Spanning the time from the 1st century BCE to the 400s CE, this volume highlights the multifaceted interactions between Greco-Roman historiographical texts and their readers. Its contributions focus on the testimonies offered by ancient readers themselves and they engage in close readings of the historiographical works to explore how these texts involve their audiences and stimulate a fascinating range of intellectual and affective reactions.