This book explores how public space in Republican Rome was an unstable category marked, experienced, and defined by multiple actors and audiences.

This second edition examines all aspects of Roman history, and contains a new introduction, three new chapters and updated bibliographies.

Few sources reveal the life of the ancient Romans as vividly as do the houses preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius. Wealthy Romans lavished resources on shaping their surroundings to impress their crowds of visitors. The fashions they set were taken up and imitated by ordinary citizens. In this illustrated book, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill explores the rich potential of the houses of Pompeii and Herculaneum to offer new insights into Roman social life. Exposing misconceptions derived from contemporary culture, he shows the close interconnection of spheres we take as discrete: public and private, family and outsiders, work and leisure. Combining archaeological evidence with Roman texts and comparative material from other cultures, Wallace-Hadrill raises a range of new questions. How did the organization of space and the use of decoration help to structure social encounters between owner and visitor, man and woman, master and slave? What sort of "households" did the inhabitants of the Roman house form? How did the world of work relate to that of entertainment and leisure? How widely did the luxuries of the rich spread among the houses of craftsmen and shopkeepers? Through analysis of the remains of over two hundred houses, Wallace-Hadrill reveals the remarkably dynamic social environment of early imperial Italy, and the vital part that houses came to play in defining what it meant "to live as a Roman."

Ancient Rome as a Museum considers how cultural objects from the Roman Empire came to reflect, construct, and challenge Roman perceptions of power and identity. Rutledge argues that Roman cultural values are indicated in part by what sort of materials Romans deemed worthy of display and how they chose to display, view, and preserve them.

This book examines how Pompeian peristyle gardens were utilized to represent the socioeconomic status of Roman homeowners, introducing fresh perspectives on how these spaces were designed, used, and perceived. Pompeian Peristyle Gardens provides a novel understanding of how the domus was planned, utilized, and experienced through a critical examination of all Pompeian peristyles – not just by selecting a few well-known examples. This study critiques common scholarly assumptions of ancient domestic space, such as the top-down movement of ideas and the relationship between wealth and socio-political power, though these possibilities are not excluded. In addition, this book provides a welcome contribution to exploring the largely unexamined middle class, an integral part of ancient Roman society. Pompeian Peristyle Gardens is of interest to students and scholars in art history, classics, archaeology, social history, and other related fields.

Roman Architecture casts new light not only on many familiar monuments of the city of Rome, but also on less well-known examples from across the Roman empire. Rome and its empire were fundamental to the development of western architecture, and its forms and motifs remain significant elements of our own built environments. Roman Architecture places the varied architecture of ancient Rome, from its humble apartment blocks to its grand public structures, within the broader context of Roman society. It takes as its starting point the writings of the Roman architect Vitruvius, as one voice in a broader contemporary debate about the nature and value of architecture. What did the Romans themselves think architecture was for? What was built, by whom and why? How was architecture represented in text and image? The interplay of type and variation that are the hallmark Roman architecture are here traced back to the human actions and choices from which they originated. Janet DeLaine explores how the desires of patrons for novelty and individuality were met by architects and builders working within the practical constraints of available materials and the moral prescriptions of religious and social norms to create new forms. Ranging from early Rome to the late empire, this volume casts new light on many familiar monuments of the city of Rome, but also on less well-known examples from across the empire. Through an examination of the key types of buildings at the heart of Roman society and their decoration, it reveals the symbolic meaning of architecture in terms of competitive power displays and commemoration, and it explores how architecture helped to define being 'Roman' at different times and in different places of the empire.