Books by Jordan Rogers
Working Lives in Ancient Rome, 2024
This book sheds new light on labor and laboring in the Roman world. It starts with the individual... more This book sheds new light on labor and laboring in the Roman world. It starts with the individual laborer and works up, emphasizing their agency in navigating, transforming, and transcending the systems and structures around them. Taking advantage of the broad applicability of notions of work and labor to human lives at every rung of Roman society, the volume also offers numerous overlapping frameworks for thinking comparatively between many different kinds of work, whether in agriculture, craft, trade, politics, art, or literature. The book is organized around the ‘typical’ work-life experience of the modern 9-to-5 and provides a means of thinking in a rigorous way about how the working lives of scholars of Rome are caught up in ancient discourse and practices.
Articles and Book Chapters by Jordan Rogers
Working Lives in Ancient Rome, 2024
Depictions of labor in the Roman world have typically been interpreted as either empirical eviden... more Depictions of labor in the Roman world have typically been interpreted as either empirical evidence for economic activities, or as status claims made by workers in imitation of the upper classes. Through a close-reading of one monument, the so-called fabri tignarii relief, this chapter instead proposes that many examples of Roman labor art should be understood as expressing an epistemic alternative to the hierarchical status model most clearly expressed by Cicero in de Finibus. The chapter argues for the relief’s associations with both funeral and state art, and considers the context of its viewing, most notably during religious sacrifice. Ultimately, the relief demonstrates the value of the laboring body to the religious maintenance of the public welfare.
Working Lives in Ancient Rome, 2024
In the wake of important work done in social history and critical theory, readings of Roman labor... more In the wake of important work done in social history and critical theory, readings of Roman laboring are often decidedly negative, associating it with violence, oppression, and the imposition of social hierarchies on workers. But as today, people also found meaning in their working lives, as jobs shaped the subjectivity of workers across the Roman world. This acknowledgment of the subjective value of work does not negate the innate violence and power imbalances associated with ancient laboring, but rather enables us to offer fresh and, in some cases, reparative readings of how they operate in Roman literature, art, and society. In addition to outlining the structure of the volume, this introductory chapter offers a framework for understanding the relationship between labor and subjectivity in the Roman world, concentrating especially on the capacity of individuals to shape their own working lives.
E-Journal: Scavi di Pompeii, 2024
The building complex at Pompeii I 14, 1/11–14 has now been the focus of two seasons of subsurface... more The building complex at Pompeii I 14, 1/11–14 has now been the focus of two seasons of subsurface excavation by the Pompeii I.14 Project, a collaboration of Tulane University and the Parco Archeologico di Pompei. Beginning at the floor level of 79 CE, the excavation proceeds through the archaeological deposits below the final city, reconstructing its pre-eruptive history piece by piece. While still in its preliminary phases, the work has begun to reveal the complex development of this area, where discernible human activity dates back to the Italian Bronze Age. The southern side of Insula I 14 began to urbanize in the second century BCE but underwent its most intensive growth in the following century. By the first century CE, much of I 14, 1/11–14 was devoted to commerce, and several of its rooms appear to have functioned as a restaurant that provide elite-style, reclined dining. Shops along the southern façade, however, suggest commercial activities of other types, as do the most distinctive finds from the building thus far: a series of ancient reed mats, preserved in two separate rooms across two late phases of activity, and a large, shallow basin of the type
appropriate for the soaking and crushing phases necessary for re ed processing.
Parts of the building, therefore, appear to have functioned as a matmaker’s workshop in the years prior to the eruption, likely part of a larger endeavor thatincluded a previously known reed workshop in the building immediately to the north (I 14, 2). A now lost election notice that had once been painted alongside I 14, 14 preserves the name of one individual involved in this industry: it was sponsored by a woman called Tegeticula, ‘Little Reed Mat’.
Classica et Mediaevalia, 2024
This article interprets Varro's etymological discussion of locus in book 5 of De lingua Latina (1... more This article interprets Varro's etymological discussion of locus in book 5 of De lingua Latina (1-56) as representative of a Varronian "place-based" history. It argues that Varro's reconstruction of Rome's loci as cosmically essential and structuring elements of both the city and Roman culture in his present day depended upon the author's peculiar understanding of the past and of historical truth-namely, that fundamental principles of truth manifest both on different levels of reality, and at different points in time. Places-temples, hills, groves, or otherwise-therefore were particularly significant in providing access to the essential meaning of Rome's institutions, religion, and people. Varro's consideration of the Septimontium is then analyzed within this framework. The argument demonstrates how Rome's natural environment, construed as part of an original cosmos, could explain the social and political facts of the present in Varro's reconstruction of word-history. In particular, the religious importance of the Capitoline hill, and the separation of the Aventine from the rest of the city in the first century BCE, are both given etymological explanations that depend upon the long-lost natural topography of the city.
Livio, Ad Urbem Condendam: riletture del passato in età augustea, ed. Alessandro Roncaglia, 2021
In this essay, I explore the contemporary relevance of Augustus’ succession in Livy’s history, pa... more In this essay, I explore the contemporary relevance of Augustus’ succession in Livy’s history, particularly by examining how Livy provides fraternal relationships to his readers as exemplary models. I argue that Livy’s representations of Titus and Lucius Quinctius Flamininus, as well as Publius and Lucius Cornelius Scipio, were meant to act as possible exempla for two pairs of Augustan heirs—Tiberius and Drusus, and Gaius and Lucius—as well as exemplary fraternal models against which any contemporary reader could compare the actions of these pairs of brothers. While historians have long cited the importance of Livy’s allusions to Augustus and his increasingly powerful position in Roman society, little attention has been paid to how the historian dealt with contemporary concerns regarding the succession of Augustus’ powers, particularly after the near-death of the princeps and the passing of Marcellus in 23 BCE. By considering the historical relationship between Livy and the evolving approach of Augustus to his succession, it is possible to better understand Livy’s historiographical choices in their contemporary contexts.
Cartographic Perspectives, 2019
The process of mapping provides an active approach for students to engage with landscapes of the ... more The process of mapping provides an active approach for students to engage with landscapes of the past. As part of a graduate-level class called Spatial Analysis of the Past, students were given an assignment to create online maps of nineteenth-century travelers’ accounts about western Anatolia (Turkey). Travelers often record their experiences of journeying through foreign landscapes. Although usually written from the perspective of an outsider, these first-hand accounts can serve as valuable primary source documents for geographical information about these regions. The participation of students in mapping these accounts can prompt deep reflection in the classroom regarding the subjectivity of spatial representations and understandings. This class assignment served as the initial step in a larger research undertaking called the Anatolian Travelers Project, an ongoing, open access initiative. This project attempts to collect, organize, and visualize regional travelers’ accounts throu...
Book Reviews by Jordan Rogers
BMCR 2022.07.11, 2022
Play it tough. That's the way they play it and that's the way we are going to play it." So Richar... more Play it tough. That's the way they play it and that's the way we are going to play it." So Richard Nixon in a recorded conversation discussing and ultimately revealing his participation in the cover-up of the Watergate scandal by his administration. Political deals, machinations, and conspiracies concocted in smoke-filled back-rooms might seem more appropriate to modern politics or even the silver screen, but C. Rosillo-López argues in Political Conversations in Late Republican Rome that they were an integral and typical part of political life in the Late Republic. As expected, the book builds upon the author's long pedigree of research on how political information was communicated in Late Republican Rome among the populace more generally, among the elite, and within specific institutional contexts.
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Books by Jordan Rogers
Articles and Book Chapters by Jordan Rogers
appropriate for the soaking and crushing phases necessary for re ed processing.
Parts of the building, therefore, appear to have functioned as a matmaker’s workshop in the years prior to the eruption, likely part of a larger endeavor thatincluded a previously known reed workshop in the building immediately to the north (I 14, 2). A now lost election notice that had once been painted alongside I 14, 14 preserves the name of one individual involved in this industry: it was sponsored by a woman called Tegeticula, ‘Little Reed Mat’.
Book Reviews by Jordan Rogers
appropriate for the soaking and crushing phases necessary for re ed processing.
Parts of the building, therefore, appear to have functioned as a matmaker’s workshop in the years prior to the eruption, likely part of a larger endeavor thatincluded a previously known reed workshop in the building immediately to the north (I 14, 2). A now lost election notice that had once been painted alongside I 14, 14 preserves the name of one individual involved in this industry: it was sponsored by a woman called Tegeticula, ‘Little Reed Mat’.