Contents:

Preface by P. DUCREY; Introduction by K. COLEMAN and J. NELIS-CLEMENT;J. NOLLE "Stadtprägungen des Ostens und die 'explosion agonistique': Überlegungen zu Umfang, Aussagen und Hintergründen der Propagierung von Agonen auf den Prägungen der Städte des griechischen Ostens"; O. M. VAN NIJF "Political games"; C. KOKKINIA "Games vs. buildings as euergetic choices"; M. L. CALDELLI "Associazioni di artisti a Roma: una messa a punto"; J-P. THUILLIER "L'organisation des ludi circenses: les quatre factions (République, Haut-Empire)"; R. WEBB "The nature and representation of competition in pantomime and mime"; G. CHAMBERLAND "La mémoire des spectacles: l'autoreprésentation des donateurs"; C. JONES "The organization of spectacle in Late Antiquity".

 This article identifies and analyzes bureaucratic features in the language employed by Pliny and Trajan in Epistles 10 as an example of communication between two officials of senior but unequal status who were engaged in managing provincial affairs in the Roman empire. 

This book is the first full-scale edition of the so-called Liber spectaculorum by Martial. A comprehensive introduction addresses the role of epigram in commemorating monuments and occasions, the connection between spectacle and imperial panegyric in Martial's oeuvre, characteristics of the collection, possible circumstances of composition and 'publication', transmission of the text, and related issues. Each epigram is followed by an apparatus criticus, an English translation, and a detailed commentary on linguistic, literary, and historical matters, adducing extensive evidence from epigraphy and art as well as literary sources. The book is accompanied by four concordances, five tables, two maps, 30 plates, and an appendix.

Modern treatments of Rome have projected in highly emotive terms the perceived problems, or the aspirations, of the present: 'race-mixture' has been blamed for the collapse of the Roman empire; more recently, Rome and Roman society have been depicted as 'multicultural'. Moving beyond these and beyond more traditional, juridical approaches to Roman identity, Emma Dench focuses on ancient modes of thinking about selves and relationships with other peoples, including descent-myths, history, and ethnographies. She explores the relative importance of sometimes closely interconnected categories of blood descent, language, culture and clothes, and territoriality. Rome's creation of a distinctive imperial shape is understood in the context of the broader ancient Mediterranean world within which the Romans self-consciously situated themselves, and whose modes of thought they appropriated and transformed.