Andrew Wallace-Hadrill is Professor of Classics at the University of Reading and has been Director of the British School at Rome since 1995. His previous books are Suetonius: The Scholar and his Caesars (1983), Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (1994) and Domestic Space in the Roman World (co-edited with Ray Laurence, 1997). He is currently directing a major project on a Pompeian neighbourhood with Michael Fulford and, since 2001, has directed the Herculaneum Conservation Project. He frequently contributes to radio and television programmes on various aspects of Roman life and in 2004 was awarded an OBE for services to Anglo-Italian cultural relations.

• Part I. Cultures and Identities: 1. Culture, power and identity; 2. Dress, language and identity; Part II. Building Identities: 3. Roman Italy: between Roman, Greek and local; 4. Vitruvius: building Roman identity; Part III. Knowledge and Power: 5. Knowing the ancestors; 6. Knowing the city; Part IV. The Consumer Revolution: 7. Luxury and the consumer revolution; 8. Waves of fashion; Epilogue: a cultural revolution?

'A brilliant analysis of cultural change, by a historian with an unrivalled mastery of both the literary and the archaeological evidence.' Peter Wiseman, University of Exeter