Fanny Dolansky - Rome: A Sourcebook on the Ancient City

Rome

Bloomsbury Sources in Ancient History

The Bloomsbury Sources in Ancient History series presents a definitive collection of source material in translation, combined with expert contextual commentary and annotation to provide a comprehensive survey of each volumes subject. Material is drawn from literary, as well as epigraphic, legal, and religious sources. Aimed primarily at undergraduate students, the series will also be invaluable for researchers, and faculty devising and teaching courses.

Athenian Democracy: A Sourcebook, Luca Asmonti

Christianity in the Later Roman Empire: A Sourcebook, David M. Gwynn

Food and Drink in Antiquity: A Sourcebook, John F. Donahue

Greek and Roman Sexualities: A Sourcebook, Jennifer Larson

Rome: A Sourcebook on the Ancient City, Fanny Dolansky and Stacie Raucci

Women in Ancient Rome: A Sourcebook, Bonnie MacLachlan

Women in Ancient Greece: A Sourcebook, Bonnie MacLachlan

Rome

A Sourcebook on the Ancient City

Fanny Dolansky and Stacie Raucci

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Figures

Maps

This book was written with the support of many people. We would like to thank the editorial staff at Bloomsbury Academic for their guidance and patience, especially Alice Wright, Lucy Carroll, and Clara Herberg. We are indebted to the anonymous readers for the press who provided valuable feedback on the initial proposal and the manuscript as a whole. A number of institutions offered crucial funding and spaces to write: the Humanities Research Fund at Union College, the Mary Elvira Stevens Traveling Fellowship from Wellesley College, the Fondation Hardt in Switzerland, and the Humanities Research Institute at Brock University, which supported both an early period of research in Rome and reproduction rights for the images in the volume.

Special thanks to Eliza Burbano and Pierre Castro, extraordinary undergraduate research assistants at Union College, and to the students in our classes for being sounding boards for this book.

On a more personal note, Stacie would like to thank her husband Patrick Singy and her parents Joseph and Lenore Raucci for endless support. Fanny would like to thank Phil Venticinque for helpful critique and encouragement at the beginning of this project in particular, and her family, especially her parents Ben and Diane and younger sister Lila, for support throughout.

Kings (traditional dates)

Emperors

The purpose of this volume is to lead you, the reader, on a journey through the ancient city of Rome via selected writings from antiquity. Inside these pages you will find passages from ancient Greek and Latin texts that we have translated into English and provided commentary on, where appropriate. This sourcebook is meant to provide you with an experience that is at the intersection of topography, social history, and cultural studies. This is why we have chosen to organize our book by themes rather than by geographical regions of the city. As you will see, there are chapters devoted to politics, spectacles, religion, and daily life, among other topics. Our overarching goal has been to place the sites of the city in the context of the lived experience of its inhabitants. In order to understand and appreciate the perspectives of the inhabitants as much as possible, we have provided chapters that explore the city at both ordinary and extraordinary moments of life.

Why take this thematic approach? We wanted to bring awareness to the symbiotic relationship between the city and its people. Diane Favro (1999: 205) aptly notes that, Roman urban settings were not mere backdrops, but active participants in city life. She adds (206) that urban sites could function as director, actor, and audience. While in this last phrase at least Favro is discussing the role of the city in Roman performances specifically, the idea can be applied to the city as a whole and is a useful framework to help us think about the living city. The spaces of the city could facilitate certain kinds of activities and serve as witness to events. In turn, people could change the way urban sites were used through their actions. By mingling monuments with experiences, we hope that you will begin to see a vibrant relationship between the city and its inhabitants and thereby picture the living city.

Walking through the streets of Rome long after the time periods covered in this volume, many people have commented on the ruins we still see standing today, whether they are the easily spotted and magnificent remains of the Colosseum Romes many layers of history are visible in its remains. This is why, as you engage with Romes cityscape and the texts contained within this volume, you should try to remember that the marks left by people on the city have been made over many periods of time. Author Andr Aciman (2002: 3) writes that, Rome is not about one path, or about one past, but an accumulation of pasts. In reading the literary, historical, and inscriptional sources in this volume, one should keep in mind that ancient writers were not all looking at the same Rome. They were writing in different time periods and therefore looking at different cityscapes from each other. And of course they were bringing different perspectives, too, based on their individual backgrounds and particular circumstances.