In Money, Culture, and Well-Being in Rome's Economic Development, 0-275 CE, Daniel Hoyer offers a new approach to explain some of the remarkable achievements of Imperial Rome

The debasement of coinage, particularly of silver, was a common feature of pre-modern monetary systems. Most coinages were issued by state authorities and the condition of a coinage is often seen (rightly or wrongly) as an indicator of the broader fiscal health of the state that produced it. While in some cases the motives behind the debasements or reductions in standards are clear, in many cases the intentions of the issuing authorities are uncertain. Various explanations have been advanced: fiscal motives (such as a desire to profit or a to cover a deficit caused by the failure to balance expenditure and revenues); monetary motives (such as changing demand for coined money or a desire to maintain monetary stability in the face of changing values of raw materials or labour costs); pressure from groups within society that would profit from debasement; misconduct at the mint; or the decline of existing monetary standards due to circulation and wear of the coinage in circulation. Certain explanations have tended to gain favour with monetary historians of specific periods, partly reflecting the compartmentalization of scholarship. Thus the study of Roman debasements emphasizes fiscal deficits, whereas medievalists are often more prepared to consider monetary factors as contributing to debasements. To some extent these different approaches are a reflection of discrepancies in the amount of documentary evidence available for the respective periods, but the divide also underlines fundamentally different approaches to the function of coinage: Romanists have preferred to see coins as a medium for state payments; whereas medievalists have often emphasized exchange as an important function of currency. The volume is inter-disciplinary in scope. Apart from bringing together monetary historians of different periods, it also contains contributions from archaeometallurgists who have experience with the chemical and physical composition of coins and technical aspects of production of base alloys

The second volume of the Handbook describes different extractive economies in the world regions that have been outlined in the first volume. A wide range of economic actors – from kings and armies to cities and producers – are discussed within different imperial settings as well as the tools, which enabled and constrained economic outcomes. A central focus are nodes of consumption that are visible in the archaeological and textual records of royal capitals, cities, religious centers, and armies that were stationed, in some cases permanently, in imperial frontier zones. Complementary to the multipolar concentrations of consumption are the fiscal-tributary structures of the empires vis-à-vis other institutions that had the capacity to extract, mobilize, and concentrate resources and wealth. Larger volumes of state-issued coinage in various metals show the new role of coinage in taxation, local economic activities, and social practices, even where textual evidence is absent. Given the overwhelming importance of agriculture, the volume also analyses forms of agrarian development, especially around cities and in imperial frontier zones. Special consideration is given to road- and water-management systems for which there is now sufficient archaeological and documentary evidence to enable cross-disciplinary comparative research.

This beautifully designed, full-color textbook introduces the Roman background of the New Testament by immersing students in the life and culture of the thriving first-century towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which act as showpieces of the world into which the early Christian movement was spreading. Bruce Longenecker, a leading scholar of the ancient world of the New Testament, discusses first-century artifacts in relation to the life stories of people from the Roman world. The book includes discussion questions, maps, and 175 color photographs. Additional resources are available through Textbook eSources.

New directions in queer theory continue to trouble the boundaries of both queerness and the classical, leading to an explosion of new work in the vast—and increasingly uncharted—intersection between these disciplines, which this interdisciplinary volume seeks to explore. This handbook convenes an international group of experts who work on the classical world and queer theory. The discipline of Classics has been involved with, and implicated in, queer theory from the start. By placing front and center the rejection of heteronormativity, queer theory has provided Classics with a powerful tool for analyzing non-normative sexual and gender relations in the ancient West, while Classics offers queer theory ancient material (such as literature, visual arts, and social practices) that challenges a wide range of modern normative categories. The collection demonstrates the vitality of this particular moment in queer classical studies, featuring an expansive array of methodologies applied to the interdisciplinary field of Classics. Embracing the indeterminacy that lies at the core of queer studies, the essays in this volume are organized not by chronology or genre, but rather by overlapping categories under the following rubrics: queer subjectivities, queer times and places, queer kinships, queer receptions, and ancient pasts/queer futures. The Routledge Handbook of Classics and Queer Theory offers an invaluable collection for anyone working on queer theory, especially as it applies to premodern periods; it will also be of interest to scholars engaging with the history of sexuality, both in the ancient world and more broadly.

Roman Inequality explores how in Rome in the first and second centuries CE a number of male and female slaves, and some free women, prospered in business amidst a population of generally impoverished free inhabitants and of impecunious enslaved residents. Edward E. Cohen focuses on two anomalies to which only minimal academic attention has been previously directed: (1) the paradox of a Roman economy dependent on enslaved entrepreneurs who functioned, and often achieved considerable personal affluence, within a legal system that supposedly deprived unfree persons of all legal capacity and human rights; (2) the incongruity of the importance and accomplishments of Roman businesswomen, both free and slave, successfully operating under legal rules that in many aspects discriminated against women, but in commercial matters were in principle gender-blind and in practice generated egalitarian juridical conditions that often trumped gender-discriminatory customs. This book also examines the casuistry through which Roman jurists created "legal fictions" facilitating a commercial reality utterly incompatible with the fundamental precepts--inherently discriminatory against women and slaves---that Roman legal experts ("jurisprudents") continued explicitly to insist upon. Moreover, slaves' acquisition of wealth was actually aided by a surprising preferential orientation of the legal system: Roman law--to modern Western eyes counter-intuitively--in reality privileged servile enterprise, to the detriment of free enterprise. Beyond its anticipated audience of economic historians and students and scholars of classical antiquity, especially of Roman history and law, Roman Inequality will appeal to all persons working on or interested in gender and liberation issues.

Antonio Gramsci and the Ancient World explores the relationship between the work of the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci and the study of classical antiquity. The collection of essays engages with Greek and Roman history, literature, society, and culture, offering a range of perspectives and approaches building on Gramsci’s theoretical insights, especially from his Prison Notebooks. The volume investigates both Gramsci’s understanding and reception of the ancient world, including his use of ancient sources and modern historiography, and the viability of applying some of his key theoretical insights to the study of Greek and Roman history and literature. The chapters deal with the ideas of hegemony, passive revolution, Caesarism, and the role of intellectuals in society, offering a complex and diverse exploration of this intersection. With its fascinating mixture of topics, this volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of classics, ancient history, classical reception studies, Marxism and history, and those studying Antonio Gramsci’s works in particular.