The Culture of the Roman Plebs - by Nicholas Horsfall (Paperback)

About the Book

This is the first attempt to reconstruct what your average Roman talked about in the bar or multi-seater latrine. From what songs he sang, to the dances and music he preferred, the shows he saw, the games he played, the Greek he learned from the Syrians and the knowledge he picked up.

Book Synopsis

The common man in the Roman street is beginning at last to attract the attention he deserves from specialists;his active, noisy role in the politics of the late Republic has been restored to him and now the time has come to try to look a bit further inside his head, at his culture, not in the conventionally book-defined sense of what - if anything - he read and wrote, but of the songs he sang, the dances and music he preferred, the shows he saw, the games he played, the scraps of knowledge he picked up, the Greek he learned from the Syrians across the landing, the odds and ends of the history of Rome he had picked up from statues, processions, plays. This is the first attempt to reconstruct what your average Roman talked about in the bar or in the multi-seater latrine. All Latin is translated and all due care is taken of the non-specialist's requirements.

Review Quotes

"Most histories of Roman antiquity principally focus on the elite aristocracy and the military generals that supported or overthrew them. The Culture Of The Roman Plebs by independent scholar Nicholas Horsfall is a welcome and long needed history that specifically addresses the life of the common people that populated and made possible what became known as the Roman Empire. From the noisy, active role of the common populace, to their songs, dances, music, shows, games, and daily life, The Culture Of The Roman Plebs fills in the larger picture. Of special note is that Nicholas Horsfall has meticulously translated and reconstructed what the average Roman talked and thought about as recorded in graffiti and the other odds and ends of notation derived from the records of ordinary Roman life as they have survived over the past two thousand years. The Culture Of The Roman Plebs is a welcome and enthusiastically recommended addition to academic library collections and would make an excellent title for community library Ancient History collections for non-specialist general readers with an interest in Roman history." -- The Midwest Book Review

About the Author

Nicholas Horsfall has been an independent scholar for the last fifteen years, in Rome and then in Oxfordshire; before that he taught at University College London. He writes chiefly on Latin poetry, but has also ventures into late Republican history and epigraphy. This is his ninth book.