Society on Stage: Streets and Urban Life in Pompeii and Herculaneum

FAIN: FT-59240-11

Jeremy Hartnett
Wabash College (Crawfordsville, IN 47933-2484)

This interdisciplinary study examines the Roman street as a social arena. Among Roman urban spaces, streets were the most inclusive and least predictable, bringing everyone from slave to senator into spontaneous, face-to-face contact. Consequently, they offered an environment where social boundaries were challenged and, therefore, the performance of status was key. This project unites material evidence from Pompeii and Herculaneum with legal, historical, and literary sources to describe the push and pull among various players as they used this stage for self-aggrandizing display and the negotiation of social and political tensions. In exchanges mediated through architecture, images, ritual, and informal movements, streetlife profoundly affected how individual Romans conceived of the social hierarchy and their place within it. This monograph should find a broad readership among scholars and students of classics, archaeology, art and architectural history, and urban studies.

Associated Products

The Roman Street: Urban Life and Society in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Rome (Book)
Title: The Roman Street: Urban Life and Society in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Rome
Author: Jeremy Hartnett
Abstract: Every day Roman urbanites took to the street for myriad tasks, from hawking vegetables and worshipping local deities to simply loitering and socializing. Hartnett takes readers into this thicket of activity as he repopulates Roman streets with their full range of sensations, participants, and events that stretched far beyond simple movement. As everyone from slave to senator met in this communal space, city dwellers found unparalleled opportunities for self-aggrandizing display and the negotiation of social and political tensions. Hartnett charts how Romans preened and paraded in the street, and how they exploited the street's collective space to lob insults and respond to personal rebukes. Combining textual evidence, comparative historical material, and contemporary urban theory with architectural and art historical analysis, The Roman Street offers a social and cultural history of urban spaces that restores them to their rightful place as primary venues for social performance in the ancient world.
Year: 2017
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9781316226438
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Prizes

The James Henry Breasted Prize
Date: 1/3/2019
Organization: American Historical Association
Abstract: This prize is offered for the best book in English in any field of history prior to CE 1000.

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