Thomas Grunewald

“…This is the most scholarly book I’ve chosen. It was published in 1999 and translated from German, and goes all the way from the second century BC to the third century AD. It’s a little bit dry and dense but it’s a treasure trove of information on enemies and nonconformists in Rome, people who defy Roman law and order, and it’s impossible to find all this stuff in any other single book. The book is about a special, very broad class of enemies within the empire, people that Romans called latrones. The term refers to outlaws, bandits, robbers, pirates, criminals, fugitives from the law, runaway slaves and any other rebels against Roman authority. Some Roman politicians even began to use the term latrones metaphorically to insult and brand their political rivals as enemies of the state. And then, later, people who were underdogs or dissenters assumed the label of outsider as a badge of pride. They started calling themselves ‘noble outlaws’, as a way of idealising their anti-authoritarian activity. Spartacus was one of those people who was branded as an outsider and then took that on as a badge of pride.



Grünewald talks about everyday crime in the Roman Empire, individual renegades, criminal gangs, and bandits who hung out in caves on lonely roads and also the fleets of pirates that were preying on Roman shipping – pirates ruled the Mediterranean in the first century BC. …”(reviewed by Adrienne Mayor in FiveBooks).



The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/adrienne-mayor-on-enemies-ancient-rome… (meer)