The Moving City - by Ida Ostenberg & Simon Malmberg & Jonas Bjørnebye (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The Moving City: Processions, Passages and Promenades in Ancient Rome focusses on movements in the ancient city of Rome, exploring the interaction between people and monuments. Representing a novel approach to the Roman cityscape and culture, and reflecting the shift away from the traditional study of single monuments into broader analyses of context and space, the volume reveals both how movement adds to our understanding of ancient society, and how the movement of people and goods shaped urban development.

Covering a wide range of people, places, sources, and times, the volume includes a survey of Republican, imperial, and late antique movement, triumphal processions of conquering generals, seditious, violent movement of riots and rebellion, religious processions and rituals and the everyday movements of individual strolls or household errands. By way of its longue durée, dense location and the variety of available sources, the city of ancient Rome offers a unique possibility to study movements as expressions of power, ritual, writing, communication, mentalities, trade, and - also as a result of a massed populace - violent outbreaks and attempts to keep order. The emerging picture is of a bustling, lively society, where cityscape and movements are closely interactive and entwined.

Review Quotes

"This thoughtful, well-edited, and well-illustrated collection goes a long ways toward reanimating "the actual lived experience of movement" (176). Anyone interested in the subject of mobility, especially within the ancient Mediterranean world, will find much to think with in this volume, from its engagement with theoretical constructs to literary accounts and constructions to art historical and archaeological analyses. Like a walk around the City of Rome itself, The Moving City provides the reader with many enlightening and often unexpected new vistas on seemingly well-trodden ground." - Classical Journal

About the Author

Ida Östenberg is Associate Professor of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Simon Malmberg is Associate Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Bergen, Norway.

Jonas Bjørnebye held the Stein Erik Hagen Chair in Cross Disciplinary Studies at the Norwegian Institute in Rome, University of Oslo, Norway, and is now an independent scholar.