San Antonio College Library

The infamous emperor Caligula ruled Rome from A.D. 37 to 41 as a tyrant who ultimately became a monster. An exceptionally smart and cruelly witty man, Caligula made his contemporaries worship him as a god. He drank pearls dissolved in vinegar and ate food covered in gold leaf. He forced men and women of high rank to have sex with him, turned part of his palace into a brothel, and committed incest with his sisters. He wanted to make his horse a consul....

"The period of Rome's imperial expansion, the late republic and earlier empire, saw transformations of its society, culture and identity. Drawing equally on archaeological and literary evidence, this book offers an original and provocative interpretation of these changes. Moving from recent debates about colonialism and cultural identity, both in the Roman world and more broadly, and challenging the traditional picture of 'romanisation' and 'hellenisation',...

"The study of ancient Roman society blossomed in the 1970s. By now, we possess a very large literature on the individuals and groups that constituted the Roman community, and the various ways in which members of that community interacted. There is, however, no overview that takes into account the multifarious progress that has been made in the past thirty or forty years. The purpose of this handbook is twofold. On the one hand, it synthesizes what...

One in four alleged witches in Central Europe was male. This study traces the witch trials during which these accused male witches were prosecuted and executed, opening up a little known chapter of early modern times. The book provides statistics on the number of men affected by witch hunts and describes specific regional differences in the way witch hunts were pursued in different parts of Central Europe. A gender analysis of contemporary theological...

A pathbreaking study that integrates military theory with the historical account to explain how the Roman armies functioned, triumphed, and ultimately failed.

By focusing on a single year not overshadowed by an epochal event, 428 AD provides a fresh look at a civilization in the midst of enormous change--as Christianity takes hold in rural areas across the empire, as western Roman provinces fall away from those in the Byzantine east, and as power shifts from Rome to Constantinople. Retracing the kind of route a contemporary gazetteer might have taken, Giusto Traina describes the empire's people, places,...

"More than two millennia have passed since Brutus and his companions murdered Julius Caesar - and inaugurated his legend. Though the assassins succeeded in ending Caesar's dictatorship, they could never have imagined that his power and influence would only grow after his death, reaching mythic proportions and establishing him as one of the central icons of Western culture, fascinating armchair historians and specialists alike. With Caesar, Maria Wyke...

"Octavia is a work of exceptional historical and dramatic interest. It is the only surviving complete example of the Roman historical drama known as the fabula praetexta. Written shortly after Nero's death by an unknown author, the play deals with events at the court of Nero in the decisive year 62 CE, for which it is the earliest extant (almost contemporary) literary source: Nero's divorce from his stepsister Octavia and marriage to his mistress...

The age of Augustus has long been recognized as a time when the Roman state put a new emphasis on "traditional" feminine domestic ideals, yet at the same time gave real public prominence to certain women in their roles as wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters. Kristina Milnor takes up a series of texts and their contexts in order to explore this paradox. Through an examination of authors such as Vitruvius, Livy, Valerius Maximus, Seneca the Elder,...

"In AD 200, the Roman Empire seemed unassailable. Its vast territory accounted for most of the known world. By the end of the fifth century, Roman rule had vanished in Western Europe and much of northern Africa, and only a shrunken Eastern Empire remained. What accounts for this improbable decline? Here, Adrian Goldsworthy applies the scholarship, perspective, and narrative skill that defined his monumental Caesar to address perhaps the greatest of...