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Peter Garnsey and Richard Saller. The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture. 2nd edition. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015. Pp. xviii, 328. $29.95 (pb.). ISBN 978-0-520-28598-9. With Jas Elsner, Martin Goodman, Richard Gordon and Greg Woolf.
The first edition of this book was published in 1987 and quickly established itself as an indispensable guide to the economic and sociocultural history of Rome under the Principate. Almost thirty years later-mirabile dictu!-no one is likely to gainsay the appearance of an updated version. The main text, clinically lucid, has not been altered, but to accommodate the vast quantity of relevant scholarship from the intervening years Garnsey and Saller have supplied a series of addenda and expanded their bibliography. There are also two new chapters: an introduction to the political and institutional foundations of the Principate-the first edition gave no chronological direction, a serious issue for students coming to the subject for the first time-and a survey, written by Martin Goodman, of opposition to and unrest within the empire which valuably offsets the emphasis otherwise placed on imperial peace and the relatively restrained form of imperial autocracy. Altogether, the innovative qualities of the original, its thematic approach and annaliste methodology, remain admirable, while the supplementary material...