Taking particular plays and poems from Roman comic theatre and the genre of Latin satire, this book finds Rome sending up Roman culture - making a mess of drama, jesting at rustic gaucherie, caricaturing the cult of masculine aggression. Writing Down Rome explores the robust poetic of self-denigration. Henderson's essays celebrate the energetic self-mockery that powers much of Roman poetry. They range widely over comedy, lyric, bucolic, and, in particular, the Roman speciality of satire.

John Henderson examines the relationship between religion and society in late medieval Florence through the vehicle of the religious confraternity, one of the most ubiquitous and popular forms of lay association throughout Europe. This book provides a fascinating account of the development of confraternities in relation to other communal and ecclesiastical institutions in Florence. It is one of the most detailed analyses of charity in late medieval Europe.
" A] long-awaited book. . . . It is] the most complete survey of confraternities and charity, not only for Florence, but for any...

For the Roman writers "Fighting for Rome" became not the expansive imperialism of the all-conquering Republic, but a collapse into horror and un-Roman autocracy brought about by the Caesars' fighting for control of Rome. The essays in this volume range across the literary forms--history and satire, lyric and epic--working closely with particular texts. Conceived over the decade after the Cold War, they have been updated and rewritten to make a book that brings the ancient texts before the reader in a strikingly immediate way.