This book is a welcome addition to those seeking to illustrate ‘Roman’ culture by providing the uninitiated with access to the ancient sources, with H. bringing to bear his own particular interest in the epigraphical evidence and introducing a number of texts not usually encountered outside more specialist source collections: the poignant passage, for instance, from the Moretum, usually restricted to collections focusing on rural life.

This collection will meet the needs of those it seeks to serve: ‘the non-specialist and those with a casual interest in learning about the Romans’ (p. xii), enticing many to seek further acquaintance. Its purview is wide, the misleading confines of the title now established as formulaic for such exercises. It is neither confined to the quotidian nor to Rome. It is an introduction both to Roman culture generally and to the phenomena that make Roman culture interestingly distinct or familiar.

Its gaze is traditional. One will find sections on women, children and slaves, but not on men – though H., in his section on virtues, in one of his characteristically useful introductions to passages offered, outlines the derivation of virtus and points to courage on the battlefield as ‘one of the defining virtues of masculinity’ (p. 22), an uncontentious statement at least for the period in which the image of the citizen militiaman held sway in the Roman social imaginary (whatever the demographic reality). H.’s statement that ‘men's virtues fell generally in the realm of their public lives’ (p. 21) hints at a focus on the elite. That is not to say that this collection focuses solely on the privileged. It does not. But reading the Scipionic epitaphs and a climactic passage of Augustus’ Res Gestae, there is no sense of confronting the humdrum realities of life in the capital. The virtues and vices that follow have been chosen, one suspects, to pique the interest of the curious. Vices are represented by the criminality of Catiline, the homicidal cruelty of Caligula, the gluttony of Vitellius, the ‘sick jokes’ of Commodus and the extravagance of Elagabalus. Here the media are the message; these provide ‘descriptions’ of vice rather than examples of it – one hopes that the target audience does not carry away the impression that such was to be experienced on a daily basis. (H. duly registers the excesses of these anecdotal pieces of evidence.)

It is easier to criticise such collections for their exclusions than to put together a compilation that will satisfy everybody. H. is all too aware of the pain of omission (p. ix). Those who come to this volume without previous instruction will find much to entertain them, students with teachers to guide them through the maze of mirrors (and H.’s running introductions point the way) will find here a useful base for discussion, and scholars who come with an open mind will be glad to have been reminded of a few items they may have forgotten and perhaps to stumble across items previously unnoticed.