This collection of essays explores aspects of the reception of ancient Rome in a number of European countries from the late eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War. Rome has been made to stand for literary authority, republican heroism, imperial power and decline, the Catholic Church, the pleasure of ruins. The studies offered here examine some of the sometimes strange and unexpected places where Roman presences have manifested themselves during this period. Scholars from several disciplines, including English literature and history of art, as well as classics, bring to bear a variety of approaches on a wide range of images and texts, from statues of Napoleon to Freud's analysis of dreams. Rome's seemingly boundless capacity for multiple, indeed conflicting, signification has made it an extraordinarily fertile paradigm for making sense of - and also for destabilizing - history, politics, identity, memory and desire.

This landmark book shows how much Victorian and Edwardian Roman archaeologists were influenced by their own experience of empire in their interpretation of archaeological evidence. This distortion of the facts became accepted truth and its legacy is still felt in archaeology today. While tracing the development of these ideas, the author also gives the reader a throrough grounding in the history of Roman archaeology itself.

The cultural and material legacies of the Roman Republic and Empire in evidence throughout Rome have made it the "Eternal City." Too often, however, this patrimony has caused Rome to be seen as static and antique, insulated from the transformations of the modern world. In Excavating Modernity, Joshua Arthurs dramatically revises this perception, arguing that as both place and idea, Rome was strongly shaped by a radical vision of modernity imposed by Mussolini's regime between the two world wars. Italian Fascism's appropriation of the Roman past-the idea of Rome, or romanità- encapsulated the Fascist virtues of discipline, hierarchy, and order; the Fascist "new man" was modeled on the Roman legionary, the epitome of the virile citizen-soldier. This vision of modernity also transcended Italy's borders, with the Roman Empire providing a foundation for Fascism's own vision of Mediterranean domination and a European New Order. At the same time, romanità also served as a vocabulary of anxiety about modernity. Fears of population decline, racial degeneration and revolution were mapped onto the barbarian invasions and the fall of Rome. Offering a critical assessment of romanità and its effects, Arthurs explores the ways in which academics, officials, and ideologues approached Rome not as a site of distant glories but as a blueprint for contemporary life, a source of dynamic values to shape the present and future.

Woolf expertly recounts how the mammoth Roman empire was created, how it was sustained in crisis, and how it shaped the world of its rulers and subjects--a story spanning a millennium and a half of history.

An examination of how the Roman past was perceived, and used, by Victorian Britain. The authority of classical texts was challenged in the mid-Victorian era through the unearthing of a very different "Rome" in the material remains under British soil. Developments in archaeology created a new picture of Roman Britain as wealthy and civilized - an image which sat more comfortably with the Victorians' own changing view of empire as they themselves became an imperial power. Changing intellectual ideas ensured that the Roman heritage could nolonger be seen solely as the preserve of the classically educated upper class: excavating with a spade allowed a larger audience to participate and own the Roman past. This book explores the whole phenomena, using archaeological activity in four British provincial towns (Caerleon, Cirencester, Colchester and Chester) to offer an explanation of how and why it happened, and providing authoritative and fresh insights into the way in which Victorian archaeology emerged, developed and altered how the modern world understood the ancient. In the process, it brings to the fore the frequently contradictory and confused ideas about Roman Britain in the Victorian imagination. VIRGINIA HOSELITZ gained her PhD at the Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Bristol.

The Edinburgh Companion, newly available in paperback, is a gateway to the fascinating worlds of ancient Greece and Rome. Wide-ranging in its approach, it demonstrates the multifaceted nature of classical civilisation and enables readers to gain guidance in drawing together the perspectives and methods of different disciplines, from philosophy to history, from poetry to archaeology, from art history to numismatics, and many more.

Until the mid-twentieth century the Western imagination seemed intent on viewing Rome purely in terms of its classical past or as a stop on the Grand Tour. This collection of essays looks at Rome from a postmodern perspective, including analysis of the city's 'unmappability', its fragmented narratives and its iconic status in literature and film.