Who or what makes innovation spread? Ten case-studies from Greco-Roman Antiquity and the early modern period address human and non-human agency in innovation. Was Erasmus the ‘superspreader’ of the use of New Ancient Greek? How did a special type of clamp contribute to architectural innovation in Delphi? What agents helped diffuse a new festival culture in the eastern parts of the Roman empire? How did a context of status competition between scholars and poets at the Ptolemaic court help deify a lock of hair? Examples from different societal domains illuminate different types of agency in historical innovation.

Although modernity historically defined itself by relation to the medieval, the ways in which early moderns invoked and conceptualized the medieval are still insufficiently understood. This volume's seventeen essays present some preliminary explorations into the field of early modern medievalisms.

In this, the first comprehensive survey of the economies of classical antiquity, twenty-eight chapters summarise the current state of scholarship in their specialised fields and sketch new directions for research. They reflect a new interest in economic growth in antiquity and develop new methods for measuring economic development, often combining textual and archaeological data that have previously been treated separately.

Geopolitical shifts and economic shocks, from the Early Modern period to the 21st century, are frequently represented in terms of classical antecedents. In this book, an international team of contributors - working across the disciplines of Classics, History, Politics, and English - addresses a range of revolutionary transformations, in England, America, France, Haiti, Greece, Italy, Russia, Germany, and a recently globalised world, all of which were accorded the classical treatment. The chapters investigate discrete cases of classicising crisis, while the Introduction highlights patterns among them. The book asks: are classical equations a prized ideal, when evidence warrants, or linkages forced by an implacable will to power, or good faith attempts to make sense of events otherwise bafflingly unfamiliar and dangerous? Finally, do the events thus classicised retain, even increase, their power to disturb and energise, or are they ultimately contained? Classicising Crisis: The Modern Age of Revolutions and the Greco-Roman Repertoire is essential reading for students and scholars of classics, classical reception, and political thought in Europe and the Americas.

A full-scale historical treatment of the advent of printing and its importance as an agent of change, first published in 1980.

For review see: Stephen J. Homick, in The Hispanic Historical Review (HAHR), vol. 77, no. 1 (February 1997); p. 78-80.