God, Space, and City in the Roman Imagination is a unique exploration of the relationship between the ancient Romans' visual and literary cultures and their imagination. Drawing on a vast range of ancient sources, poetry and prose, texts, and material culture from all levels of Roman society, it analyses how the Romans used, conceptualized, viewed, and moved around their city. Jenkyns pays particular attention to the other inhabitants of Rome, the gods, and investigates how the Romans experienced and encountered them, with a particular emphasis on the personal and subjective aspects of religious life. Through studying interior spaces, both secular (basilicas, colonnades, and forums) and sacred spaces (the temples where the Romans looked upon their gods) and their representation in poetry, the volume also follows the development of an architecture of the interior in the great Roman public works of the first and second centuries AD. While providing new insights into the working of the Romans' imagination, it also offers powerful challenges to some long established orthodoxies about Roman religion and cultural behaviour.

This book is about Virgil's ideas of nature, landscape, history, and patriotism. It is also concerned with ideas of nature throughout antiquity and with the poetry and culture of the 1st century BC as a whole. It combines a close reading of Virgil's texts with a broad vision of the revolution in Western sensibility they helped to effect.

One of a major new Classics series - books that have changed the history of thought, in sumptuous, clothbound hardbacks. Lucretius' poem On the Nature of Things combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour he demonstrates to humanity that in death there is nothing to fear since the soul is mortal, and the world and everything in it is governed by the mechanical laws of nature and not by gods; and that by believing this men can live in peace of mind and happiness. He bases this on the atomic theory expounded by the Greek philosopher Epicurus, and continues with an examination of sensation, sex, cosmology, meteorology, and geology, all of these subjects made more attractive by the poetry with which he illustrates them.

Lucretius' poem On the Nature of Things combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour he demonstrates to humanity that in death there is nothing to fear since the soul is mortal, and the world and everything in it is governed by the mechanical laws of nature and not by gods; and that by believing this men can live in peace of mind and happiness. He bases this on the atomic theory expounded by the Greek philosopher Epicurus, and continues with an examination of sensation, sex, cosmology, meteorology, and geology, all of these subjects made more attractive by the poetry with which he illustrates them.

What is it about Jane Austen's writing that brings such pleasure? There are good, even great novelists who are not good storytellers, and there are highly gifted storytellers who write thoroughly bad books. Jane Austen was both a very good storyteller and a great novelist. How did she do it? Richard Jenkyns's sparkling study delights in Austen's craft, wit, and pathos. His deep reading of the novels illuminates the subtlety, depth, and innovation that lie within them. He explores the development of her style, storytelling, and characterization, her technical prowess, and her place in comparison with her contemporaries, with a grace and wit worthy of the subject herself. All who read this book will come away with their admiration for Austen deepened, and their pleasure in her work enhanced.

Read the Bldg Blog interview with Mary Beard about the Wonders of the World series(Part I and Part II)

Westminster Abbey is the most complex church in existence. National cathedral, coronation church, royal mausoleum, burial place of poets, resting place of the great and of the Unknown Warrior, former home of parliament, backdrop to the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales--this rich and extraordinary building unites many functions.

"Westminster Abbey" is both an appreciation of an architectural masterpiece and an exploration of the building's shifting meanings. We hear the voices of those who have described its forms, moods, and ceremonies, from Shakespeare and Voltaire to Dickens and Henry James; we see how rulers have made use of it, from medieval kings to modern prime ministers. In a highly original book, classicist and cultural historian Richard Jenkyns teaches us to look at this microcosm of history with new eyes.

If the grandeur that was Rome has long since vanished, the impact of the Eternal City can still be felt in virtually every corner of Western culture. Students of speech and rhetoric to this day study the works of Cicero for guidance. We find Roman Law setting the model for legal systems from the twelfth century to the present. And Latin itself, far from being a "dead language," lives on not only in the Romance languages, but also in English vocabulary and grammar. Rhetoric, language, law--these are just a small part of the great Roman influence that has lasted throughout the centuries.
The Legacy of Rome has long been considered the standard introduction to the achievements of the Roman world. Now in a completely new edition, this classic work brings together the latest scholarship in the field from some of the world's leading classical scholars. Unlike the previous version, which focused on such narrow topics as commerce and administration, the new edition broadens the spectrum of influence, showing the impact, for example, of Roman literature, art, politics, law, and language on western civilization. Jasper Griffin, for instance, looks to the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, and Wordsworth, among others, to trace the lasting influence of the great Roman poet Virgil on the development of poetic forms such as the pastoral, epitomized by Virgil's Eclogues, and the epic poem, exemplified by the Aeneid. A.T. Grafton shows how Renaissance intellectuals such as Machiavelli and Guicciardini looked to Rome's past for political enlightenment, and found models of military strategy in the works of Tacitus and Livy. Editor Richard Jenkyns dispels the misconception of the Romans as purely imitative of the Greeks; he points out such uniquely Roman concepts as jurisprudence and citizenship, and architecture based on the round arch and the vault, as evidence of Roman innovativeness. Other contributors--George A. Kennedy, Robert Feenstra, and Nicholas Purcell--discuss the importance of the study of Roman rhetoric in preparing speakers for public life, the lasting influence of the Justinian code on Western legal development, and the impact on future civilizations of the romanticized notion of an imperial Rome and its magical ruins.
Ranging from the pastoral tradition, to the development of the comedy, to the lasting influence of the Latin language, The Legacy of Rome provides a much-needed new appraisal of the richness of the great civilization which gave rise to a large part of Western heritage.