Roman Blood

Author: Steven Saylor
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1429908580
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Book Description
In the unseasonable heat of a spring morning in 80 B.C., Gordianus the Finder is summoned to the house of Cicero, a young advocate staking his reputation on a case involving the savage murder of the wealthy, sybaritic Sextus Roscius. Charged with the murder is Sextus's son, greed being the apparent motive. The punishment, rooted deep in Roman tradition, is horrific beyond imagining. The case becomes a political nightmare when Gordianus's investigation takes him through the city's raucous, pungent streets and deep into rural Umbria. Now, one man's fate may threaten the very leaders of Rome itself.

Blood in the Arena

Author: Alison Futrell
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292792409
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Book Description
“Fresh perspectives [on] the study of the Roman amphitheater . . . providing important insights into the psychological dimensions” of gladiatorial combat (Classical World). From the center of Imperial Rome to the farthest reaches of ancient Britain, Gaul, and Spain, amphitheaters marked the landscape of the Western Roman Empire. Built to bring Roman institutions and the spectacle of Roman power to conquered peoples, many still remain as witnesses to the extent and control of the empire. In this book, Alison Futrell explores the arena as a key social and political institution for binding Rome and its provinces. She begins with the origins of the gladiatorial contest and shows how it came to play an important role in restructuring Roman authority in the later Republic. She then traces the spread of amphitheaters across the Western Empire as a means of transmitting and maintaining Roman culture and control in the provinces. Futrell also examines the larger implications of the arena as a venue for the ritualized mass slaughter of human beings, showing how the gladiatorial competition took on both religious and political overtones. This wide-ranging study, which draws insights from archaeology and anthropology, as well as Classics, broadens our understanding of the gladiatorial show and its place within the highly politicized cult practice of the Roman Empire.

Blood and Kinship

Author: Christopher H. Johnson
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857457500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367

Book Description
The word “blood” awakens ancient ideas, but we know little about its historical representation in Western cultures. Anthropologists have customarily studied how societies think about the bodily substances that unite them, and the contributors to this volume develop those questions in new directions. Taking a radically historical perspective that complements traditional cultural analyses, they demonstrate how blood and kinship have constantly been reconfigured in European culture. This volume challenges the idea that blood can be understood as a stable entity, and shows how concepts of blood and kinship moved in both parallel and divergent directions over the course of European history.

Caligula

Author: Stephen Barber
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
The most notorious of the Roman Emperors, Caligula,was renowned for his acts of madness, cruelty and,deviancy. Award winning writers Barber and Reed,join forces to document in full the atrocities of,Caligula which included marrying his sisterinstalling a horse in the Senate, and killing,innocent victims on a whim.

Blood in the Forum

Author: Pamela Marin
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1847251676
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Book Description
A fresh and illuminating perspective on the complexities of the late Republic and the rise of Octavian.

Blood of the Provinces

Author: Ian Haynes
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191627232
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Book Description
Blood of the Provinces is the first fully comprehensive study of the largest part of the Roman army, the auxilia. This non-citizen force constituted more than half of Rome's celebrated armies and was often the military presence in some of its territories. Diverse in origins, character, and culture, they played an essential role in building the empire, sustaining the unequal peace celebrated as the pax Romana, and enacting the emperor's writ. Drawing upon the latest historical and archaeological research to examine recruitment, belief, daily routine, language, tactics, and dress, this volume offers an examination of the Empire and its soldiers in a radical new way. Blood of the Provinces demonstrates how the Roman state addressed a crucial and enduring challenge both on and off the battlefield - retaining control of the miscellaneous auxiliaries upon whom its very existence depended. Crucially, this was not simply achieved by pay and punishment, but also by a very particular set of cultural attributes that characterized provincial society under the Roman Empire. Focusing on the soldiers themselves, and encompassing the disparate military communities of which they were a part, it offers a vital source of information on how individuals and communities were incorporated into provincial society under the Empire, and how the character of that society evolved as a result.

Arms of Nemesis

Author: Steven Saylor
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1429908599
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
The hideously disfigured body was found in the atrium. The only clues are a blood-soaked cloak, and, carved into the stone at the corpse's feet, the word Sparta. The murdered man was the overseer of Marcus Crassus's estate, apparently killed by two runaway slaves bent on joining Spartacus's revolt. In response to the murder, the wealthy, powerful Crassus vows to honor an ancient law and kill his ninety-nine remaining slaves in three days. Now Gordianus the Finder has been summoned from Rome by a mysterious client to find out the truth about the murder before the three days are up. Enmeshed in a world of desperate slaves and duplicitous masters, extravagant feasts and sordid secrets, Gordianus must risk all he loves, including his life, to stop a senseless slaughter-and save the very future of Rome itself.

Catilina's Riddle

Author: Steven Saylor
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1429908629
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 532

Book Description
"Saylor rivals Robert Graves in his knack for making the classical world come alive." --(ortland) Oregonian "Engrossing...Ironic and satisfying." -- San Francisco Chronicle The third in Saylor's Roma Sub Rosa novels featuring Gordianus the Finder. Gordianus, disillusioned by the corruption of Rome circa 63 B.C., has fled the city with his family to live on a farm in the Etruscan countryside. But this bucolic life is disrupted by the machinations and murderous plots of two politicians: Roman consul Cicero, Gordianus's longtime patron, and populist senator Catilina, Cicero's political rival and a candidate to replace him in the annual elections for consul. Claiming that Catilina plans an uprising if he loses the race, Cicero asks Gordianus to keep a watchful eye on the radical. Although he distrusts both men, Gordianus is forced into the center of the power struggle when his six-year-old daughter Diana finds a headless corpse in their stable. Shrewdly depicting deadly political maneuverings, this addictive mystery also displays the author's firm grasp of history and human character. On first publication back in 1994, Catilina's Riddle was a finalist for the Hammet Award.

Murder Trials

Author: Marcus Tullius Cicero
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 014044288X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 556

Book Description
Cicero was still in his twenties when he got Sextus Roscius off a charge of murdering his father and nearly sixty when he defended King Deiotarus, accused of trying to murder Caesar. In between (with, among others, his speeches for Cluentius and Rabirius), he built a reputation as the greatest orator of his time.Cicero defended his practice partly on moral or compassionate grounds of 'human decency'--sentiments with which we today would agree. His clients generally went free. And in vindicating men--who sometimes did not deserve it--he left us a mass of detail about Roman life, law and history and, in two of the speeches, graphic pictures of the 'gun-law' of small provincial towns.

Mistress of Rome

Author: Kate Quinn
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101186631
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 482

Book Description
The first in an unforgettable historical saga from the New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network and The Diamond Eye. “So gripping, your hands are glued to the book, and so vivid it burns itself into your mind’s eye and stays with you long after you turn the final page.”—Diana Gabaldon, #1 New York Times bestselling author First-century Rome: One young woman will hold the fate of an empire in her hands. Thea, a captive from Judaea, is a clever and determined survivor hiding behind a slave’s docile mask. Purchased as a toy for the spoiled heiress Lepida Pollia, Thea evades her mistress’s spite and hones a secret passion for music. But when Thea wins the love of Rome’s newest and most savage gladiator and dares to dream of a better life, the jealous Lepida tears the lovers apart and casts Thea out. Rome offers many ways for the resourceful to survive, and Thea remakes herself as a singer for the Eternal ’City’s glittering aristocrats. As she struggles for success and independence, her nightingale voice attracts a dangerous new admirer: the Emperor himself. But the passions of an all-powerful man come with a heavy price, and Thea finds herself fighting for both her soul and her destiny. Many have tried to destroy the Emperor: a vengeful gladiator, an upright senator, a tormented soldier, a Vestal Virgin. But in the end, the life of Rome’s most powerful man lies in the hands of one woman: the Emperor’s mistress.