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Keith Hopkins was a sociologist and Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge from 1985 to 2001. He is widely recognised as one of the most radical, innovative and influential Roman historians of his generation. This volume presents fourteen of Hopkins' essays on an impressive range of subjects: contraception, demography, economic history, slavery, literacy, imperial power, Roman religion, Early Christianity, and the social and political structures of the ancient world. The papers have been re-edited and revised with accompanying essays by Hopkins' colleagues, friends and former students. This volume brings Hopkins' work up to date. It sets his distinctive and pioneering use of sociological approaches in a wider intellectual context and explores his lasting impact on the ways that ancient history is now written. This volume will interest all those fascinated by Rome and its empire, and particularly those eager to experience challenging and controversial ways of understanding the past.
List of contents
Introduction: Keith Hopkins: sighting shots Christopher Kelly; 1. Contraception in the Roman Empire; 2. A textual emendation in a fragment of Musonius Rufus: a note on contraception; Afterword Caroline Vout; 3. On the probable age structure of the Roman population; 4. Graveyards for historians; Afterword Walter Scheidel; 5. Economic growths and towns in antiquity; Afterword Neville Morley; 6. Taxes and trade in the Roman empire (200 BC-AD 400); Afterword Willem M. Jongman; 7. Models, ships and staples; Afterword Peter Fibiger Bang and Mamoru Ikeguchi; 8. From violence to blessing: symbols and rituals in ancient Rome; Afterword Jä Elsner; 9. Slavery in classical antiquity; Afterword Keith Bradley; 10. Conquest by book; Afterword William Harris; 11. Novel evidence for Roman slavery; Afterword Catharine Edwards; 12. Christian number and its implications; Afterword Kate Cooper; 13. The political economy of the Roman empire; Afterword Greg Woolf; 14. How to be a Roman emperor: an autobiography; Afterword Mary Beard.
About the author
Christopher Kelly is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Cambridge and President of Corpus Christi College. His books include Ruling the Later Roman Empire (2004), The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and the Fall of Rome (2009) and Theodosius II: Rethinking the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2013). He is editor of the Journal of Roman Studies. He owes a great deal of his fascination with power and the workings of institutions to Keith Hopkins who supervised his doctoral thesis on 'Bureaucracy and corruption in the Later Roman Empire'.
