In recent years, a long-established view of the Roman Empire during its great age of expansion has been called into question by scholars who contend that this model has made Rome appear too much like a modern state. This is especially true in terms of understanding how the Roman government ordered the city--and the world around it--geographically. In this innovative, systematic approach, Daniel J. Gargola demonstrates how important the concept of space was to the governance of Rome. He explains how Roman rulers, without the means for making detailed maps, conceptualized the territories under Rome's power as a set of concentric zones surrounding the city. In exploring these geographic zones and analyzing how their magistrates performed their duties, Gargola examines the idiosyncratic way the elite made sense of the world around them and how it fundamentally informed the way they ruled over their dominion. From what geometrical patterns Roman elites preferred to how they constructed their hierarchies in space, Gargola considers a wide body of disparate materials to demonstrate how spatial orientation dictated action, shedding new light on the complex peculiarities of Roman political organization.

Traces how the day has served as a key organizing concept in Roman culture—and beyond. How did ancient Romans keep track of time? What constituted a day in ancient Rome was not the same twenty-four hours we know today. In The Ordered Day, James Ker traces how the day served as a key organizing concept, both in antiquity and in modern receptions of ancient Rome. Romans used the story of how the day emerged as a unit of sociocultural time to give order to their own civic and imperial history. Ancient literary descriptions of people's daily routines articulated distinctive forms of life within the social order. And in the imperial period and beyond, outsiders—such as early Christians in their monastic rules and modern antiquarians in books on daily life—ordered their knowledge of Roman life through reworking the day as a heuristic framework. Scholarly interest in Roman time has recently moved from the larger unit of the year and calendar to smaller units of time, especially in the study of sundials and other timekeeping technologies of the ancient Mediterranean. Through extensive analysis of ancient literary texts and material culture as well as modern daily life handbooks, Ker demonstrates the privileged role that "small time" played, and continues to play, in Roman literary and cultural history. Ker argues that the ordering of the day provided the basis for the organizing of history, society, and modern knowledge about ancient Rome. For readers curious about daily life in ancient Rome as well as for students and scholars of Roman history and Latin literature, The Ordered Day provides an accessible and fascinating account of the makings of the Roman day and its relationship to modern time structures.

The colonization policies of Ancient Rome followed a range of legal arrangements concerning property distribution and state formation, documented in fragmented textual and epigraphic sources. When antiquarian scholars rediscovered and scrutinized these sources in the Renaissance, their analysis of the Roman colonial model formed the intellectual background for modern visions of empire. What does it mean to exercise power at and over distance? This book foregrounds the pioneering contribution to this debate of the great Italian Renaissance scholar Carlo Sigonio (1522/3-84). His comprehensive legal interpretation of Roman society and Roman colonization, which for more than two centuries remained the leading account of Roman history, has been of immense (but long disregarded) significance for the modern understanding of Roman colonial practices and of the legal organization and implications of empire. Bringing together experts on Roman history, the history of classical scholarship, and the history of international law, this book analyzes the context, making, and impact of Sigonio's reconstruction of the Roman colonial model. It shows how his legal interpretation of Roman colonization originated and how it informed the development of legal colonial discourse, from imperial reform and colonial independence in the nascent United States of America to Enlightenment accounts of property distribution. Through a detailed analysis of scholarly and political visions of Roman colonization from the Renaissance to today, this book shows the enduring relevance of legal interpretations of the Roman colonial model for modern experiences of empire.

Takes the career of Spurius Ligustinus, detailed by the Roman historian Livy, as a focus, giving a very human and empathetic approachability to the author’s lucid and thorough analysis. Inside the Roman Legions aims to tell the story of the Roman soldier through a holistic, empathetic examination of what the experience of military service in the Middle Republic was really like. It traces real examples of soldiers described in the ancient sources to reveal how they traveled, how they were organized and what campaign objectives they faced. Specifically, the author follows the ordinary soldier Spurius Ligustinus, whose life is related by the historian Livy, as an example, detailing the experiences of his career. The book begins by discussing the young future soldier’s background and what military values were conveyed to him through the prevailing culture of the time. It then follows him through a range of potential experiences, examining camp conditions and training with various types of weapons and armor, and proceeds to take the reader through the experience of fighting in a pitched battle step by step. It also addresses experiences that only some soldiers would have had, such as escaping a total defeat, deserting, or being subject to unusual punishments. Throughout, the focus of the book is on how the individual might be shaped by the experiences as they are described.