- The Prince of Medicine by Susan Mattern (2013; ISBN 978-0199767670) Intermediate Social Other – Medicine An excellent and accessible text to introduce a reader to some of the murkier qualities of the Roman world. Medicine is too often forgotten, and premodern scientists are too often ignored. The Prince of Medicine is a biography of Galen, one of Rome’s pre-eminent doctors, and gives a thorough discussion of not only his life, but the work and training of a doctor. It also shows how doctors interacted with the world around them, beyond their own patients, and how the practice of medicine could be a spectacle.
- The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy by Christer Bruun (2014; ISBN 978-0195336467) Intermediate Social Economic Political This is a go-to textbook for any modern epigraphy class, but is quite useful and readable on its own. It covers a wide range of Roman social history, economic history, and even some military and religious history, all through the lens of inscriptions. It also helps understand what certain inscriptions mean and how historians use them to their own advantage, able to spin out an extensive interpretation from a fragment of an inscribed law. It’s very much worth reading for an introductory source to general social history.
- Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town by Mary Beard (2008; 978-1861975966) Entry-Level Social Thanks to the wealth of evidence it provides, Pompeii is one of the most important sites for understanding urban life in the Roman world, and Beard’s is perhaps the most wide-ranging and accessible guide to the site. Very good on the practical aspects of daily life, how the town became a theatre for social and political competition among its inhabitants, and walking the line between micro-scale reconstruction of individual lives and the broader place of Pompeii within the Roman and wider world.
- Pompeii: The Living City’ by Ray Laurence and Alex Butterworth (2005; 978-0297645603) Entry-Level Social A somewhat experimental book, which blends together reconstructed narratives from the perspective of Pompeiian residents and ‘historical’ sections giving the background archaeological evidence. Ray Laurence is a serious Roman archaeologist and it shows, with the chapter on slavery doing a particularly good job of using the unique Pompeiian evidence to illustrate broader points about the lives of Roman slaves, and vice-versa. Sometimes a little general in its statements of fact, preferring to be vivid rather than to show all the nuances and potentially complicating details – read alongside e.g. Beard.
- Last Supper in Pompeii by Paul Roberts (2019; 978-1910807309) Intermediate Social This book was created as the catalogue for an excellent Ashmolean Museum exhibition, but is much more a contextual archaeological guide to the site rather than a straightforward walk through the objects on display. Contains a range of chapters on various themes – particularly strong on the economy, food supply and agricultural hinterland of Pompeii, as well as the use of archaeological science to reconstruct everyday life from, for example, the contents of the latrines. Not a general overview and can be dense if you don’t know the material well: to be attempted after a grounding in some entry-level texts. City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish by Peter Parsons (2007; 978-0753822333) Entry-Level Social. Another very site-specific book, focusing on the town of Oxyrynchos in Egypt as it is known from the papyrus fragments recovered from its rubbish-dumps. Very good on the details of daily life, but the weight of written evidence (far more so than for Pompeii) allows much more focus on how people thought, and in particular the reach of ‘canonical’ Classical high culture into ordinary society. A useful way to look in detail at a Roman town without being limited to Pompeii, and so to appreciate the unusual local features of both sites. Slavery and Society at Rome by Keith Bradley (1994; ISBN 9780511815386). Bradley is one of the top scholars of Roman slavery. This book is a useful introduction to the topic, spanning the Republic to empire in sources and discussion. The book covers topics like sources of enslaved people, their labor and daily life, and resistance. Gender, Domesticity, and the Age of Augustus: Inventing Private Life by Kristina Milnor (2005; ISBN 9780191515644) Discusses changing cultural expectations for women in the early empire, including Augustus’s moral legislation, and the impact on subsequent historiography. Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity by Lauren Caldwell (2015; ISBN 9781107041004) Discusses girls using sources from 1st c. BCE to 4th c. CE to outline expectations for girls’ education, exercise, virginity, marriage, and wedding rituals. Approaches topic of Roman women through formative years and how womanhood is constructed.