Overview

Theater, spectacle, and performance played significant roles in the political and social structure of the Roman Empire, which was diverse in population and language. A wide and varied range of entertainment was available to a Roman audience: the traditional festivals with their athletic contests and dramatic performances, pantomime and mime, the chariot races of the circus, and the gladiatorial shows and wild beast hunts of the arena. In Theater and Spectacle in the Art of the Roman Empire, which is richly illustrated in color throughout, Katherine M. D. Dunbabin emphasizes the visual evidence for these events. Images of spectacle appear in a wide range of artistic media, from the mosaics and paintings that decorated wealthy private houses to the sculpture of tomb monuments, and from luxury objects such as silver tableware to more humble ceramic lamps and pottery vessels. Dunbabin places the information derived from this visual material into the wider context provided by the written sources, both literary and epigraphic. This allows us to understand the functions that these images served in the social rituals of public and domestic life. By explicating both the social and cultural role of the spectacles themselves and the nature of their representation in art, Dunbabin provides a comprehensive portrait of the popular culture of the period.

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9780801456886

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Reviews

Theater and Spectacle in the Art of the Roman Empire is a superb book by a superior scholar whose vast erudition, lightly worn, is evident on every page. It is very well written, very clear, and extraordinarily well informed on a wide range of topics. There is no one else today who commands the range of material Katherine M. D. Dunbabin controls in this book on the artistic side, and her command of the latest literature on the documentary side is exceptional. This is a book that no one who is interested in sport and spectacle, especially in the history of drama, can possibly ignore. -David Potter, Francis W. Kelsey Collegiate Professor of Greek and Roman History and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the Department of Classical Studies, University of Michigan, author of Constantine the Emperor The comprehensive organization of Theater and Spectacle in the Art of the Roman Empire is perfect, starting with the Greek basis of the performance festival, alert to the distinctions between the Eastern and Western Empire, and to differences of ideology and practice in events that were otherwise similar. It will be an indispensable resource not only for specialists in this growing topic but also, because of its wonderful illustrations, for a much broader public. -Jeffrey Rusten, Cornell University, editor of The Birth of Comedy

Author Information

Katherine M. D. Dunbabin is Professor Emerita of Classics at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. She is the author of The Roman Banquet: Images of Conviviality, Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World, and The Mosaics of Roman North Africa.

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