Cities in the ancient world relied on private generosity to provide many basic amenities, as well as expecting leading citizens to pay for bread and circuses - free food and public entertainment. This collection of essays by leading scholars from the UK and USA explores the important phenomenon of benefaction and public patronage in Roman Italy. Ranging from the late republican period to the later Roman Empire, the contributions cover a wide range of topics, including the impact of benefactions and benefactors on the urban development of Roman Italy, on cultural and economic activity, and on...

Human rights is at the forefront of contemporary thinking, but the extensive literature on the subject focuses on human rights in today's world and pays little or no attention to the contributions of classical antiquity. This book provides the modern concept of human rights with a pedigree and uncovers its roots. After an introductory chapter on human rights in ancient Greece, Richard A. Bauman provides a detailed exposition of the Roman position of the Republic and the Principate. The first Roman experiments centre largely on the turn of the 3rd century BC. In the 2nd century this leads into...

Raised and educated in Rome, Juba II (48BC - AD 23) was sent to uphold Roman interests in northwest Africa as ruler of the new client kingdom of Mauretania. Together with his wife Kleopatra Selene, daughter of Mark Anthony and Kleopatra VII, he established a rich, multi-cultural environment at their capital, renamed Caesarea, where Egyptian, Hellenistic Greek and indigenous elements came together. Juba combined a reign of more than half a century with a career as a distinguished scholar and writer, producing an extensive collection of works and shaping Roman knowledge of the southern half of...