Ancient History from Below

Cyril Courrier is Associate Professor of Roman History at Aix-Marseille University—CNRS, France, and junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He is the author of La plèbe de Rome et sa culture (fin du IIe s. av. J.-C.-fin du Ier s. ap. J.-C.) (2014) and co-editor (with Sandrine Agusta-Boularot) of the ninth volume of Inscriptions latines de Narbonnaise dedicated to the city of Narbonne (2021).Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira is Professor of Ancient History at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He is the author of Potestas Populi: Participation Populaire et action collective dans les villes de l’Afrique romaine tardive (2012) and Sociedade e Cultura na África Romana (2020).

• List of figures; List of contributors; Foreword: What is This History to Be?, Brent D. Shaw; Acknowledgements, Cyril Courrier and Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira; Abbreviations; Introduction 1. Ancient history from below: an introduction, Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira and Cyril Courrier; Part 1: Who is below? Subaltern conditions, languages and communities; 2. Subaltern community formation in antiquity: some methodological reflections, Kostas Vlassopoulos; 3. Southern Gaul from below: the limits and possibilities of epigraphic documentation, Cyril Courrier and Nicolas Tran; Part 2: Experiences of poverty, dependency and work; 4. Poverty, debt, and dependent labour in the ancient Greek world: thinking through some issues in doing ancient history from below, Claire Taylor; 5. Destitute, homeless and (almost) invisible: urban poverty and the rental market in the Roman world, Cristina Rosillo-López; 6. Roman agriculture from above and below: words and things, Kim Bowes; Part 3: Gender, ethnicity and subalternity; 7. Hellenicity from below: subalternity and ethnicity in classical Greece and beyond, Gabriel Zuchtriegel; 8. Subaltern masculinities: Pompeian graffiti and excluded memories in the early Principate, Renata Senna Garraffoni; Part 4: Politics from below: subaltern agency and collective action; 9. Metics, slaves and citizens in classical Athens: rethinking the polis from below, Fábio Augusto Morales ; 10. What is below? The case of the Athenian riot of 508/7 BC, Alex Gottesman; 11. Slave agency in Livy’s history of Rome: between rebellion and counterconspiracy, Fábio Duarte Joly; 12. The crowd in late antiquity: problems and possibilities of an inquiry, Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira; Epilogue Agency, past, present and future, Pedro Paulo A. Funari; Index

"This trail-blazing volume...offers an innovative bottom-up perspective on the Ancient World. ...This book aims to rewrite not only the past from an innovative perspective, but also the future of the discipline on the key value of intersectionality, reminding the entire scientific community that a writing history is a political act: it has always been an act of power, but it could also become an act of social justice." - New England Classical Journal"[This book] contributes to advancing the movement to re-evaluate ancient popular cultures that has been underway for two decades, following what has been taking place for longer in other periods in line with the work of Howard Zinn among others. Their study is also a manifesto for a "bottom-up" approach to ancient history, whereas the nature of our sources, the context of writing and the social identity of historians have long favored a top-down approach. Brent D. Shaw offers in his preface a historiographical panorama shedding light on the difficulties of such a history but also its perspectives and its challenges." - Clément Bur, Anabases"...the volume is a bracing challenge to anyone working on the ancient Mediterranean world. Most of the contributions ask big questions and propose answers through the analysis of specific and detailed data. As a whole it represents a sophisticated international collaboration that rewards careful consideration." - Gnomon