The Romans developed sophisticated methods for managing hygiene, including aqueducts for moving water from one place to another, sewers for removing used water from baths and runoff from walkways and roads, and public and private latrines. Through the archeological record, graffiti, sanitation-related paintings, and literature, Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow explores this little-known world of bathrooms and sewers, offering unique insights into Roman sanitation, engineering, urban planning and development, hygiene, and public health. Focusing on the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Ostia, and Rome, Koloski-Ostrow's work challenges common perceptions of Romans' social customs, beliefs about health, tolerance for filth in their cities, and attitudes toward privacy. In charting the complex history of sanitary customs from the late republic to the early empire, Koloski-Ostrow reveals the origins of waste removal technologies and their implications for urban health, past and present.

A survey of Italy during the time of ancient Rome that brings together evidence from literary sources, inscriptions, and findings from archaeological excavations.

Books VI-X of Livy's monumental work trace Rome's fortunes from its near collapse after defeat by the Gauls in 386 bc to its emergence, in a matter of decades, as the premier power in Italy, having conquered the city-state of Samnium in 293 bc. In this fascinating history, events are described not simply in terms of partisan politics, but through colourful portraits that bring the strengths, weaknesses and motives of leading figures such as the noble statesman Camillus and the corrupt Manlius vividly to life. While Rome's greatest chronicler intended his history to be a memorial to former glory, he also had more didactic aims - hoping that readers of his account could learn from the past ills and virtues of the city.

Concepts of childhood and the treatment of children are often used as a barometer of society's humanity, values, and priorities. Children and Childhood in Roman Italy argues that in Roman society children were, in principle and often in practice, welcome, valued and visible. There is no evidence directly from children themselves, but we can reconstruct attitudes to them, and their own experiences, from a wide variety of material - art and architecture, artefacts, funerary dedications, Roman law, literature, and public and private ritual. There are distinctively Roman aspects to the treatment of children and to children's experiences. Education at many levels was important. The commemoration of children who died young has no parallel, in earlier or later societies, before the twentieth century. This study builds on the dynamic work on the Roman family that has been developing in recent decades. Its focus on the period between the first century BCE and the early third century CE provides a context for new work being done on early Christian societies, especially in Rome.

"Extensively documented with well-chosen, good quality photographs, Clarke's book effectively surveys these representative examples from the Late Republic to the Late Empire, illustrating the shift in the agendas of decoration as well as in the patterns of the lives played out behind closed doors within these highly charged domestic interiors."—Richard Brilliant, author of Visual Narratives: Storytelling in Etruscan & Roman Art "An enlightening and engaging walk through Roman cultural history. . . .This book will be essential to anyone interested in the classical past, in artistic ensembles, or in the experience of architecture."—Diane Favro, University of California, Los Angeles "Real experts in Roman painting are few. This book should be very welcome to Roman art historians and social historians wanting to present this material to their students."—Eleanor Winsor Leach, author of The Rhetoric of Space

"Using a wide range of epigraphic, archaeological, numismatic, and literary evidence, Northern Italy in the Roman World traces the evolution of Northern Italy from the Bronze Age to Late Antiquity and examines how the Roman state dramatically changed the region. This study on a much-neglected part of the Roman world uses northern Italy as a case study for examining the impact of the Roman empire on areas that it controlled. The book finds that while levels of Roman intervention varied considerably over time, the Roman state greatly influenced both local and transregional developments. This influence is shown to be pervasive and reflected in material ranging from loom weights to social networks and from ritual horse burials to the careers of writers"--

Italy’s political disaster under a microscope There is little that hasn’t gone wrong for Italy in the last three decades. Economic growth has flatlined, infrastructure has crumbled, and out-of-work youth find their futures stuck on hold. These woes have been reflected in the country’s politics, from Silvio Berlusconi’s scandals to the rise of the far right. Many commentators blame Italy’s malaise on cultural ills—pointing to the corruption of public life or a supposedly endemic backwardness. In this reading, Italy has failed to converge with the neoliberal reforms mounted by other European countries, leaving it to trail behind the rest of the world. First They Took Rome offers a different perspective: Italy isn’t failing to keep up with its international peers but farther along the same path of decline they are following. In the 1980s, Italy boasted the West’s strongest Communist Party; today, social solidarity is collapsing, working people feel ever more atomized, and democratic institutions grow increasingly hollow. Studying the rise of forces like Matteo Salvini’s Lega, this book shows how the populist right drew on a deep well of social despair, ignored by the liberal centre. Italy’s recent history is a warning from the future—the story of a collapse of public life that risks spreading across the West.