This is a really excellent idea for a book, the sort of topic where it suddenly seems remarkable that no one has previously thought of doing it. The modern image of Roman history is dominated by ideas of catastrophe, as Toner briefly discusses in his closing chapter: shocking military defeats at Cannae and in the Teutoburg Forest, the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum by Vesuvius and — much more drawn out in reality, but often conceived as a dramatic calamity — the fall of the Empire as a whole, overwhelmed by hordes of barbarians. Alongside such events, which at least in the case of the military disasters haunted the Roman as well as the modern imagination, recent research on ancient environmental and economic history has emphasized the continual threat of other forms of ‘natural’ catastrophe — flood, drought, famine, plague — that appear more mundane (not least because disease and food shortage were endemic in antiquity) but had the potential to affect far more people, over a larger area and with greater consequences.

This immediately raises a whole range of questions about the actual frequency of crisis and disaster, their causes, and their consequences, both in material terms and in their impact on Roman conceptions of the world. T.'s account covers all these aspects of the topic, from theoretical approaches to the definition of disaster and an attempt at surveying the history of Rome in terms of ‘landmark’ disasters to the ways in which Romans of different classes — and of course the state — sought to respond to individual catastrophes and to an environment in which catastrophe was, if not actually endemic, then perceived as a constant possibility. A wide range of sources, especially literary sources, is considered, extending across the whole Roman period (and beyond; Thucydides' narrative of the Athenian plague of 430 b.c.e. is clearly too compelling to be omitted) with a particular emphasis on late antique Christian sources.

The study is strongest on the psychological and cultural response to disaster, which is clearly T.'s main interest; the discussion of the material context (demography, epidemiology, geology — to explain the prevalence of earthquakes and volcanic activity — and climate) is rather brief, though he does emphasize the crucial point that no disaster is ever purely ‘natural’ — it is human action, or inaction, that turns an event into a disaster. T. concludes that the Roman Empire was an especially risk-prone society, above all because of the inadequate response and frequent indifference of the state to the problems of most of its subjects, leaving them vulnerable. One might object that this was true of most pre-modern societies, so the idea that Rome was different needs further exploration. Indeed, the sociologist Ulrich Beck — listed in the bibliography but not discussed — has argued that the modern West has become a ‘risk society’, obsessed with possible catastrophe, precisely because of the more activist modern conception of the state and a new belief in technological mastery of nature, whereas antiquity had no such illusion of control and hence, arguably, was more likely to accept such risks as part of the natural order of things.

What is disappointing about this book is its resolutely limited, even lightweight, approach. T. states his wish at the beginning to reach as wide an audience as possible in opening up a new area of study. However, this starting-point leads nowhere. T.'s references cannot offer a guide to existing research on these topics, for the obvious reason that there is very little; but they do not attempt to offer any kind of substitute for the inquisitive reader who wants to learn more. For the most part, they simply give the reference to the ancient source discussed in the text with passing references to some relevant works in other fields like the sociology of risk (which would have little to offer the student interested in the ancient world). Those conclusions are always stimulating and often quite convincing; but T.'s chosen approach means that non-specialist readers (including specialists from other disciplines, who might be very interested in the Roman dimension of disaster and crisis) are required simply to accept T.'s interpretations on trust, while ancient historians must re-trace T.'s research. Frustratingly, T. offers us the conclusions of his wide reading in the ancient sources and contemporary social science, but without showing any of the working.