Emma Dench

2018
Empire and Political Cultures in the Roman World
Dench, Emma. 2018. Empire and Political Cultures in the Roman World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Publisher's Version
2005
Romulus' Asylum: Roman Identities from the Age of Alexander to the Age of Hadrian

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.

2004
Dench, Emma. 2004. “Samnites in English: the legacy of E. Togo Salmon in the English speaking world.” Samnium. Settlement and cultural change. The proceedings of the third E. Togo Salmon conference on Roman studies, edited by H Jones, 7-22. Providence, RI: Center for Old World Archaeology and Art.
2003
Dench, Emma. 2003. “Beyond Greeks and Barbarians: Italy and Sicily in the Hellenistic Age.” Companion to the Hellenistic World, edited by A Erskine, 294-310. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Dench, Emma. 2003. “Domination.” Cambridge Illustrated History of the Roman World, edited by G Woolf, 108-137. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.