The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome

Description

This volume investigates the neighborhoods of ancient Rome during the reign of the first Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus (27 BCE-14 CE). Focusing on a group of neighborhood-based voluntary associations that were important political and social communities for the city's diverse population of slaves and ex-slaves, it locates the Augustan neighborhoods within the broader context of the history of Rome. John Bert Lott stresses their importance as physical and cultural divisions of the city and investigates the distinctive relationship between local neighborhoods and Augustus himself. An interdisciplinary study that makes use of archaeological, epigraphic, and topographic evidence, this book makes an important contribution to our knowledge of the urban life of Rome's lower classes and to our understanding of the imperial ideology that supported the development of the dynastic Roman monarchy.

'Overall this study gives a fascinating insight into the lives of the urban plebs, which the overwhelming mass of our evidence largely obscures ... It could be of interest and value to teachers of the late republic or the age of Augustus, whose lessons would be enhanced by a perusal of it ... an interesting read.' The Journal of Classics Teaching