In the tale of Hamlet, Horatio is recorded as a loyal friend, but what if he were more? What if he filled Hamlet’s heart and dreams? And Hamlet filled his? This modern retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, told through Horatio’s eyes is much more than a tragedy. Antique Roman is also a love story about how the handsome and dashing Prince of Denmark finds himself drawn to the quiet, introverted Horatio while at university in Wittenberg. Slowly but surely, Hamlet helps the guarded Horatio see his own true value and shows him how love can bring light to life. But all too soon for the lovers, Hamlet receives word that his father, the King, has died, and he is to return to Elsinore in Denmark to comfort the grieving Queen. Horatio soon follows to support Hamlet, but finds the royal court mired in intrigue. It appears the late King’s death may not have been of natural causes, the Queen has already remarried her late husband’s brother who has taken the throne, and there have been reports of sightings of the dead King’s ghost. Told mostly in modern English, this novel also weaves in lines from Shakespeare’s original play, thus offering readers an easy-to-understand version of the Bard’s Hamlet that still captures its flavour and mastery. It also opens up intriguing possibilities about what was the real story behind the play.

An integrated collection of essays by leading scholars, Two Romes explores the changing roles and perceptions of Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity. This important examination of the "two Romes" in comparative perspective illuminates our understanding not just of both cities but of the whole late Roman world.

First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Inside Roman Libraries: Book Collections and Their Management in Antiquity

By the third century BC, the once-modest settlement of Rome had conquered most of Italy and was poised to build an empire throughout the Mediterranean basin. What transformed a humble city into the preeminent power of the region? In The Rise of Rome, the historian and archaeologist Kathryn Lomas reconstructs the diplomatic ploys, political stratagems, and cultural exchanges whereby Rome established itself as a dominant player in a region already brimming with competitors. The Latin world, she argues, was not so much subjugated by Rome as unified by it. This new type of society that emerged from Rome’s conquest and unification of Italy would serve as a political model for centuries to come. Archaic Italy was home to a vast range of ethnic communities, each with its own language and customs. Some such as the Etruscans, and later the Samnites, were major rivals of Rome. From the late Iron Age onward, these groups interacted in increasingly dynamic ways within Italy and beyond, expanding trade and influencing religion, dress, architecture, weaponry, and government throughout the region. Rome manipulated preexisting social and political structures in the conquered territories with great care, extending strategic invitations to citizenship and thereby allowing a degree of local independence while also fostering a sense of imperial belonging. In the story of Rome’s rise, Lomas identifies nascent political structures that unified the empire’s diverse populations, and finds the beginnings of Italian peoplehood.

A new look at the Cult of the Saints in late antiquity: did it really dominate Christianity in late antique Rome?

A narrative of decline punctuated by periods of renewal has long structured perceptions of Rome's late antique and medieval history. In their probing contributions to this volume, a multi-disciplinary group of scholars provides alternative approaches to understanding the period. Addressing developments in governance, ceremony, literature, art, music, clerical education and the city's very sense of its own identity, the essays examine how a variety of actors, from poets to popes, addressed the intermittent crises and shifting dynamics of these centuries with creative solutions that bolstered the city's resilience. Without denying that the past (both pre-Christian and Christian) always remained a powerful touchstone, the studies in this volume offer rich new insights into the myriad ways that Rome and Romans, between the fifth and the eleventh centuries, creatively assimilated the past in order to shape the future.