Invisible Romans / Robert Knapp.

Invisible Romans / Robert Knapp.

9780674063280

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2011]

©2011

English

In English.

1 online resource (400 p.) : 30 color illustrations, 32 halftones

10.4159/harvard.9780674063280 doi

DG78 .K57 2011eb

937

What survives from the Roman Empire is largely the words and lives of the rich and powerful: emperors, philosophers, senators. Yet the privilege and decadence often associated with the Roman elite was underpinned by the toils and tribulations of the common citizens. Here, the eminent historian Robert Knapp brings those invisible inhabitants of Rome and its vast empire to light.He seeks out the ordinary folk-laboring men, housewives, prostitutes, freedmen, slaves, soldiers, and gladiators-who formed the backbone of the ancient Roman world, and the outlaws and pirates who lay beyond it. He finds their traces in the nooks and crannies of the histories, treatises, plays, and poetry created by the elite. Everyday people come alive through original sources as varied as graffiti, incantations, magical texts, proverbs, fables, astrological writings, and even the New Testament.Knapp offers a glimpse into a world far removed from our own, but one that resonates through history. Invisible Romans allows us to see how Romans sought on a daily basis to survive and thrive under the afflictions of disease, war, and violence, and to control their fates before powers that variously oppressed and ignored them.

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