February - 2024

In Popular Culture and the End of Antiquity in Southern Gaul, c. 400–550 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024, hardcover, $110, 260 pages), Lucy Grig investigates the transformations of popular culture and its entanglements with social, economic and religious changes in southern Gaul in Late Antiquity. Focusing on the diversity and agency of social groups that made up the cultural universe of Arles and its ecclesiastical territorium, she studies artisans, peasants, shepherds, and other groups present at churches, rituals, and festivals of various types. Grig does this using literary sources, especially sermons by Caesarius of Arles, and materials, such as recent archaeological reports. Thus, Grig explores the interactions of divergent forces, from the bottom-up as well as top-down, that act in a context of large transformations between the years 400 and 550 CE.

Ancient women writers of Greece and Rome (London, New York: Routledge, 2022, paperback, $48.99, 408 pages), organized by Bartolo Natoli, Angela Pitts, and Judith Hallett, is a bilingual compilation of texts written by women during Antiquity, produced roughly between the 7th BCE and 2nd CE. The volume shows a variety of literary forms, ranging from poets who wrote both in Greek (such as Sappho and Nossis) and in Latin (such as Sulpicia and Sulpicia Caleni) to letters on wooden tablets, graffiti, and monumental inscriptions. The authors are introduced with brief biographical notes and the translations feature an excellent critical apparatus. It is a great documentary selection that allows students to analyze gender relations, literacy, and a diversity of writing practices by women in different social contexts.