Books & ideas

Roman menus

Kevin Bouillot — 2026-03-24T08:00:00Z

Ancient Roman diets were based on health concerns as well as moral and political considerations. Frugality and pleasure were not mutually exclusive. Eating was about more than filling one's stomach.

The unknown slave

René de Nicolay — 2025-05-29T06:00:00Z

Few ancient authors had a discourse on slavery. Even so, many spoke about it, often indirectly or between the lines, either to criticize or justify it.

Nero's Gang

Kevin Bouillot — 2025-02-13T10:16:00Z

In ancient times, mythological and historical criminals were not always inhuman. They show us that there is nothing universal about our self-evident truths, particularly when they concern such fundamental concepts as good and evil.

Divine Sensations

Kevin Bouillot — 2024-10-29T08:02:31Z

In ancient Greece, religious rites were designed to produce a unique state of receptivity. This book, which focuses on the tools used in sensory encounters with the gods, contributes to the sensory turn that is currently revitalizing historical studies.

The Union of Choruses

Noémie Villacèque — 2023-09-28T12:20:44Z

In Athens, choral performance was much more than a dramatic method: it was a civic and collective experience, a kind of democratic embodiment of plurality. V. Azoulay and P. Ismard see in it the profound identity of a society overcoming its divisions.

Augustus: The Eternal Emperor

Sarah Rey — 2016-07-07T06:00:00Z

Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire in 27 BC, was a thoroughly ambiguous man: At once a republican and an autocrat, a conqueror and a peacemaker, he was the inventor of a tradition who governed like a sphinx. A biography has just come out that emphasizes the topicality of his reign.

Censorship and Authority in Ancient Rome

Clément Bur — 2016-05-12T07:00:00Z

How can political life be rendered moral? By reconsidering the supervision of mores (“regimen morum”) in Ancient Rome, Clément Bur demonstrates that virtue was long considered a necessary condition for preserving the authority of rulers over citizens.

The Curious Monsieur Veyne

Sarah Rey — 2015-12-17T08:00:00Z

Thanks to his work on Greco-Roman antiquity, his intellectual curiosity, his pronounced taste for interdisciplinarity, his sense of humor, and the freedom that informs all his research, Paul Veyne is a twentieth-century historian whose work cannot be avoided. A loose cannon at the heart of the academic establishment, a deep thinker and a dilettante, Veyne invites us, through his work, to a festival of thought.

Politics and Religion in Ancient Rome

John Scheid — 2013-11-28T08:30:00Z

In ancient Rome, the State did not meddle in the private religious lives of its citizens, even though the gods were part of the community and lived among them. The Roman religion accepted diverse forms of worship – provided that they did not seek to impose transcendence. In this essay John Scheid restores to the Roman religion its immanent and physical attributes.

Allotment and Democracy in Ancient Greece

Paul Demont — 2010-12-13T07:44:00Z

Contrary to the view generally accepted among historians of antiquity on the authority of Plato and Aristotle, allotment does not strictly go hand in hand with democracy. According to Paul Demont, it was rather the establishment of democracy that gradually democratized a practice that was originally aristocratic and religious.