- Roman Life And Society (By John Matthews)
The literary sources mentioned are available in the Loeb Classical Library, and in most cases also in
Penguin Classics, especially Tacitus, Annals (by Michael Grant, 1956) and Histories (by Kenneth
Wellesley, 1964; all dates are those of first publication); Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars (by Robert
Graves, 1957); Pliny the Younger, Letters (by Betty Radice, 1963). See also Lucian, Satirical Sketches
(by Paul Turner, 1961) and Apuleius, The Golden Ass (by Robert Graves, 1950); the last two are
extremely rewarding from a historical point of view, though their literary complexity makes them
difficult to use. Particularly recommended is the splendid collection of source-materials, documentary
and epigraphic as well as literary, by Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Rein-hold, Roman Civilization,
Sourcebook II; the Empire (paperback, New York, 1966). This collection contains hundreds of well-
chosen passages, and responds equally well to browsing or to systematic reading; a real education in
Roman history.
Fundamental both to the interpretation of Roman society and to the appreciation of the actual conditions
of life in it is M. I. Rostovtzeffs Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (2nd edn. by P. M.
Fraser, Oxford, 1957); to be read (for it is a controversial work) with Arnaldo Momigliano's appreciation
in his Studies in Historiography (London, 1966), pp. 91-104. Fergus Millar, The Roman Empire and its
Neighbours (2nd edn., London, 1981) shares some of Rostovtzeffs emphasis on the provincial diversities
of the Empire. G. E. M. de Ste. Croix's marvellously fertile The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek
World (London, 1981) in fact contains much directly on and relevant to the Roman imperial period. In
Tim Cornell and John Matthews' Atlas of the Roman World (Oxford 1982) are brief illustrated accounts
of some of the issues mentioned above (for instance public shows, manufacture and trade, technology)
and of the provinces of the Empire and the city of Rome. There is still much of interest in Ludwig
Friedlander's old Roman Life and Manners under the Early Empire, especially in the Supplementary
Volume with various excursuses (English tr. London, 1910).
On the conditions of travel in the Roman empire, see Lionel Casson's two books, Ships and Seamanship
in the Ancient World (Princeton, 1971) and Travel in the Ancient World (London, 1974), with E. D.
Hunt's fine Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford, 1982). On the role of Greeks in
Roman Society, G. W. Bowersock, Augustus and the Greek World (Oxford, 1965) and Greek Sophists
in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1969) are both excellent books, concise, lively and well documented.
The economic functioning of the cities of the Empire is much discussed; see especially Chapters I and II
of A. H. M. Jones, The Roman Economy: Studies in Ancient Economic and Administrative History (ed.
P. A. Brunt, Oxford, 1974); R. Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire: Quantitative Studies
(Cambridge, 1974) includes particularly full discussions of levels of civic munificence, and Philip
Abrams and E. A. Wrigley (edd.), Towns in Societies: Essays in Economic History and Historical
Sociology (Cambridge, 1978) contains a particularly good discussion by Keith Hopkins on the roles of
trade and agriculture in the economic development of classical cities. The subject of Bruce W. Frier,