Roman Passions: A History of Pleasure in Imperial Rome
Roman Passions: A History of Pleasure in Imperial Rome
Immerse yourself in the sensual delights of Rome in all their guises. By the time of the emperors, the Romans had created the world's first global empire, and plundered the provinces for produce to be eaten, planted or displayed as novelties. At the same time the aesthetics of the city of Rome was being transferred to the provinces, establishing towns with public buildings, baths and the Latin language. With these attributes of civilisation came other trappings of Roman culture: lavish entertainments, elaborate dinner parties and vice.
In order to assure brevity and clarity without missing the spirit of Russia or losing a sense of the complexities of life (ever-present complexities which can be unraveled only in retrospect by historians), particular care has been taken to supplement the text with appropriate appendices. The chronological table, for instance, divulges by the very sequence of events the logical and sometimes illogical course of his- tory and its influence on our lives. The maps reveal better than any description the causes and results of major trends. The index provides a biographical dictionary and a glossary of foreign terms, particularly useful.
Integrating the results of scholarly work from the past decade, the authors of An Introduction to the Ancient World, Lukas de Blois and R.J. van der Spek, have fully-updated and revised all sixteen chapters of this best-selling introductory textbook. Covering the history and culture of the ancient Near East, Greece and Rome within the framework of a short narrative history of events, this book offers an easily readable, integrated overview for students of history, classics, archaeology and philosophy, whether at college, at undergraduate level or among the wider reading public.
Why We're All Romans: The Roman Contribution to the Western World
This lively account of Roman administration, law, engineering, architecture, art, and literature traces 1200 years of history from Rome's inception to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. This engaging yet deeply informed work not only examines Roman history and the multitude of Roman achievements in rich and colorful detail, but also delineates their crucial and lasting impact on Western civilization.
The Second Sex (French: Le Deuxième Sexe, June 1949) is one of the best-known works of the French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir. It is a work on the treatment of women throughout history and often regarded as a major work of feminist literature. In it she argues that women throughout history have been defined as the "other" sex, an aberration from the "normal" male sex. Beauvoir wrote the book after attempting to write about herself. The first thing she wrote was that she was a woman, but she realized that she needed to define what a woman was, which became the intent of the book.
