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When we think of Romans, Julius Caesar or Constantine might spring to mind. But what was life like for everyday folk, those who gazed up at the palace rather than looking out from within its walls? In this book, Jeremy Hartnett offers a detailed view of an average Roman, an individual named Flavius Agricola. Though Flavius was only a generation or two removed from slavery, his successful life emerges from his careful commemoration in death: a poetic epitaph and life-sized marble portrait showing him reclining at table. This ensemble not only enables Hartnett to reconstruct Flavius' biography, as well as his wife's, but also permits a nuanced exploration of many aspects of Roman life, such as dining, sex, worship of foreign deities, gender, bodily display, cultural literacy, religious experience, blended families, and visiting the dead at their tombs. Teasing provocative questions from this ensemble, Hartnett also recounts the monument's scandalous discovery and extraordinary afterlife over the centuries.
List of contents
Introduction; Part I. The Life and Death of Flavius Agricola: 1. The Monument, The Epitaph, and Their Setting; 2. The Person, A Life, and Its Presentation; 3. Flavia Primitiva: Wife, Mother, Casta Cultrix; 4. Flavia Primitiva, Experience, and Community; 5. To Eat is to Be? Flavius' Worldview in Perspective; 6. Meeting Flavius at the Tomb; Part II. The Many Afterlives of Flavius Agricola: 7. Flavius Agricola in Early Modern Rome; 8. Flavius in the Modern World; Epilogue.
About the author
Jeremy Hartnett is Professor of Classics at Wabash College, where he holds the Charles D. and Elizabeth S. LaFollette Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities. His book The Roman Street: Urban Life and Society in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Rome (2017) was awarded the James Henry Breasted Award by the American Historical Association.
