Ancient World

The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster

Paperback

Price:
$53.00/£45.00
ISBN:
Published:
Dec 18, 1995
1993
Pages:
224
Size:
7.75 x 10 in.
Illus:
2 halftones
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This inquiry into the collective psychology of the ancient Romans speaks not about military conquest, sober law, and practical politics, but about extremes of despair, desire, and envy. Carlin Barton makes us uncomfortably familiar with a society struggling at or beyond the limits of human endurance. To probe the tensions of the Roman world in the period from the first century b.c.e. through the first two centuries c.e., Barton picks two images: the gladiator and the “monster.”