Stories of Daily Life from the Roman World: Extracts from the Ancient Colloquia

Description

What did Roman children do first when they arrived at school in the morning? What excuse for missing school could be counted on to stave off a whipping from the teacher? What did a Roman banker do when someone came to borrow money? What did a Roman wife say when her husband came home drunk? The answers to such questions can be found not in mainstream ancient literature (whose writers had their minds on higher things) but in language textbooks for ancient Latin learners. These 'colloquia' offer an ancient introduction to Roman culture, covering such areas as shopping, banking, bathing, dining, arguing, and going to school; recently rediscovered, they are here presented for the first time in a format aimed at readers with no prior knowledge of Latin, Greek, or the ancient world. They come complete with introductory material, extensive illustrations, and a full explanation of their fascinating history.

Eleanor Dickey was educated at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania and the University of Oxford, has taught in Canada and the United States, and is currently Professor of Classics at the University of Reading. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and has published more than 100 scholarly works, including Greek Forms of Address (1996), Latin Forms of Address (2002), Ancient Greek Scholarship (2007), The Colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana (2012-15), Learning Latin the Ancient Way (2016), Introduction to the Composition and Analysis of Greek Prose (2016), and Learn Latin from the Romans (2017). She is a dedicated and passionate teacher who enjoys introducing students to the ancient world and has brought decades of experience to making this book clear and accessible to people with no prior background.

'Eleanor Dickey's [book] deserves serious consideration for those tasked with introducing the ancient world to students ... Stories of Daily Life, in short, will prove to be a versatile, potent, and inexpensive supplement to a variety of courses on the ancient world, even for students with little familiarity with antiquity more broadly.' Charles McNamara, Gnomon