In this book, third in a series which includes Jacques Le Goff's "Medieval Characters" and Eugenio Garin's "Renaissance Portraits," leading scholars search for the character of the ancient Romans through portraits of Rome's most typical personages. Essays on the politician, the soldier, the priest, the farmer, the slave, the merchant, and others together create a fresco of Roman society as it spanned 1300 years.
Synthesizing a wealth of current research, "The Romans" surveys the most complex society ever to exist prior to the Industrial Age. Searching out the identity of the ancient...