This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
This book tries to describe what an intelligent person would have witnessed in Ancient Rome if by some legerdemain he had been translated to the Second Christian Century, and conducted about the imperial city under competent guidance. The year 134 after Christ has been chosen as the hypothetical time of this visit, not from any special virtue in that date, but because Rome was then architecturally nearly completed, the Empire seemed in its most prosperous state, although many of the old usages and traditions of the Republic still survived, and the evil days of decadence were as yet hardly visible in the background. The time of the absence of Hadrian from his capital was selected particularly, in order that interest could be concentrated upon the life and doings of the great city itself, and upon its vast populace of slaves, plebeians, and nobles, not upon the splendid despot and his court, matters too often the center for attention by students of the Roman past. At the time of original publication in 1925, William Stearns Davis was Professor of Ancient History, University of Minnesota. Richly illustrated throughout.
Walk a day in a Roman's sandals. What was it like to live in one of the ancient world's most powerful and bustling cities - one that was eight times more densely populated than modern day New York?
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
Discover la dolce vita on this grand tour of !--?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /--Italy's historic capital told through 30 dramatic true stories spanning nearly 3,000 years, plus detailed walking tours complete with easy-to-read maps. From the Curia Pompei, site of Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, to the Borgia Apartments in the Vatican, see the real-life places where history happened in this richly illustrated guide. Along with infamous power games between heroes and villains, you will find Rome's smart and powerful women, such as Agrippina, St. Agnes, Margherita, Artemisia, and more. Then relax like Goethe and Keats at the Café Greco, Rome's chicest coffee bar since 1760, or visit the Palazzo Colonna, the site of Audrey Hepburn's Roman Holiday.
Rome's most important and controversial archaeologist shows why the myth of the city's founding isn't all myth Andrea Carandini's archaeological discoveries and controversial theories about ancient Rome have made international headlines over the past few decades. In this book, he presents his most important findings and ideas, including the argument that there really was a Romulus--a first king of Rome--who founded the city in the mid-eighth century BC, making it the world's first city-state, as well as its most influential. Rome: Day One makes a powerful and provocative case that Rome was established in a one-day ceremony, and that Rome's first day was also Western civilization's. Historians tell us that there is no more reason to believe that Rome was actually established by Romulus than there is to believe that he was suckled by a she-wolf. But Carandini, drawing on his own excavations as well as historical and literary sources, argues that the core of Rome's founding myth is not purely mythical. In this illustrated account, he makes the case that a king whose name might have been Romulus founded Rome one April 21st in the mid-eighth century BC, most likely in a ceremony in which a white bull and cow pulled a plow to trace the position of a wall marking the blessed soil of the new city. This ceremony establishing the Palatine Wall, which Carandini discovered, inaugurated the political life of a city that, through its later empire, would influence much of the world. Uncovering the birth of a city that gave birth to a world, Rome: Day One reveals as never before a truly epochal event.