Sather classical lectures #77

Joan Palevsky imprint in classical literature

The good of small things -- Sallust's salient snails -- Brief lives : the case of Crispus -- Tiny irritants : itching eyes, stones in shoes, and other annoyances -- Diminishing returns : tales of the diminutive -- Notes __ Acknowledgments -- References -- Index

"Why are the small and unimportant relics of Roman antiquity often the most enduring, in both material form and our affections? Through close encounters with minor things such as insects, brief lives, quibbles, irritants, and jokes, Emily Gowers provocatively argues that much of what the Romans dismissed as superfluous or peripheral in fact took up immense imaginative space. There is much to learn from what didn't or shouldn't matter. It was often through the small stuff that the Romans most acutely probed and challenged their society's overarching values and priorities and its sense of proportion and justice. By marking the spots where the apparently pointless becomes significant, this book radically adjusts our understanding of the Romans and their world, as well as our own minor feelings and intimate preoccupations"--