Poverty in Ancient Greece and Rome : Realities and Discourses

by: Carla-Uhink, F. Cecchet, L. Machado, C.

Poverty in Ancient Greece and Rome : Realities and Discourses

Edited By Filippo Carlà-Uhink, Lucia Cecchet, Carlos Machado

Description
This volume presents an innovative picture of the ancient Mediterranean world. Approaching poverty as a multifaceted condition, it examines how different groups were affected by the lack of access to symbolic, cultural and social – as well as economic – capital.

Collecting a wide range of studies by an international team of experts, it presents a diverse and complex analysis of life in antiquity, from the archaic to the late antique period. The sections on Greece, Rome, and Late Antiquity offer in-depth studies of ancient life, integrating analysis of socio-economic dynamics and cultural and discursive strategies that shaped this crucial element of ancient (and modern) societies. Themes like social cohesion and control, exclusion, gender, agency, and identity are explored through the combination of archaeological, epigraphic, and literary evidence, presenting a rich panorama of Greco-Roman societies and a stimulating collection of new approaches and methodologies for their understanding. The book offers a comprehensive view of the ancient world, analysing different social groups – from wealthy elites to poor peasants and the destitute – and their interactions, in contexts as diverse as Classical Athens and Sparta, imperial Rome, and the late antique towns of Egypt and North Africa.

Poverty in Ancient Greece and Rome: Realities and Discourses is a valuable resource for students and scholars of ancient history, classical literature, and archaeology. In addition, topics covered in the book are of interest to social scientists, scholars of religion, and historians working on poverty and social history in other periods.

1. Introduction – Filippo Carlà-Uhink, Lucia Cecchet, and Carlos Machado

Part I: Greece

2. Poverty, Wealth and Social Mobility: The cases of Megara and Athens – Lucia Cecchet

3. Processes of Impoverishment: Bau Z in the Kerameikos and Discourses about Poverty – Claire Taylor

4. Poverty and Honour in Classical Sparta – Gabriel C. Bernardo

5. Greedy Gods and Hungry Humans: Sacrifice and the Poor in Classical and Hellenistic Greece – Irene Berti

6. Poverty and Truth in Ancient Greek Philosophy – Étienne Helmer

Part II: Rome

7. Impoverished Senatorial Women in Mid-Republican Rome: Opima gloria and felix paupertas? – Lewis Webb

8. The Dynamics of Shame: Elite Poverty in Late Republican and Early Imperial Discourse – Christian Rollinger

9. Cicero, the Poor, and Roman Rhetoric – Filippo Carlà-Uhink

10. Rich and Hungry, Poor and Full: Social and Cultural Food Poverty in the Roman World – Erica Rowan

Part III: Late Antiquity

11. ?Not all Poverty is to be Praised?: Defining the Poor in a Christian Roman Empire – Daniel Caner

12. Looking for the Poor in Late Antique Rome – Carlos Machado

13. The Poor Facing Late Antique Justice: the Cases from Papyri – Christel Freu

14. Poverty, Charity and the Social Strategies of the "Poor" in Late Antiquity: the View from North Africa in the Age of Augustine – Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira

Poverty in Ancient Greece and Rome : Realities and Discourses

by: Carla-Uhink, F. Cecchet, L. Machado, C.

• ISBN-13: 9781032330044 / 978-1-03-233004-4
• ISBN-03: 103233004X / 1-03-233004-X
• Routledge, London, 2023