For about one thousand years, the Distichs of Cato were the first Latin text of every student across Europe and latterly the New World. Chaucer, Cervantes, and Shakespeare assumed their audiences knew them well-and they almost certainly did. Yet most Classicists today have either never heard of them or mistakenly attribute them to Cato the Elder. The Distichs are a collection of approximately 150 two-line maxims in hexameters that offer instructions about or reflections on topics such as friendship, money, reputation, justice, and self-control. Wisdom from Rome argues that Classicists (and others) should read the Distichs: they provide important insights into the ancient Roman literate masses' conceptions of society and their views of relationships between the individual, family, community, and state. Newly dated to the first century CE, they are an important addition and often corrective to more familiar contemporary texts that treat the same topics. Moreover, as the field of Classics increasingly acknowledges the intellectual importance of exploring the reception of Classical texts, an introduction to one of the most widely read ancient texts for many centuries is timely and important.

In this exploration of the administration of law and its role in the lives of ordinary people in the northern provinces of the Roman Empire, Serena Connolly draws upon a rich but little-known legal collection from the late 3rd century known as the Codex Hermogenianus. The codex is composed of imperial responses to petitions sent to Rome, written by a team of the emperor s legal experts. These petitions and responses provide a wealth of information about provincial legal administration and the lives of the non-elite petitioners. The man who prostituted his wife, the mother whose malicious son undersold her farm, and the slaves who posed as free men to get a loan are just a few of the lives to encounter. Lives behind the Laws makes a valuable contribution to Roman social, political, and legal history."