Popular Culture in the Ancient World

This book adopts a new approach to the classical world by focusing on ancient popular culture.

This book provides a fascinating and innovative insight into popular culture in the ancient world. It covers a diverse range of subjects and objects - from dice oracles to dressing up, from toys to theological speculation - and will appeal to scholars and students not just of classics but also of history and cultural studies.Popular Culture in the Ancient World is the first book to provide an interdisciplinary study of the subject. Traditionally neglected by classical scholars, popular culture provides a new window through which we can view the ancient world. An international group of scholars tackles a fascinating range of subjects and objects - from dice oracles to dressing up, from toys to theological speculation. Diverse comparative and theoretical approaches are used alongside many different ancient sources to provide a wide-ranging and rigorous approach to ancient popular culture. After a substantive introduction, the book moves from classical Greece through the Roman Empire to end in the late antique world. It enriches our understanding of the ancient world as well as our conception of the legacy of the ancient world in our own.