The Small Stuff of Roman Antiquity

Why are the small and unimportant relics of Roman antiquity often the most enduring, in material form and in 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. 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. There is much to learn from what didn’t or shouldn’t matter. 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.

“The Small Stuff is quintessential Gowers. Written with characteristic verve and elegance, it challenges us to think again about what constitutes a subject worth pursuing.” — WILLIAM FITZGERALD, Professor of Latin Language and Literature, King’s College London

“The bold essayistic orientation of Emily Gowers’s book—in which wit, subversive potential, and interpretive levity stunningly come together—sets a new standard, which many will no doubt attempt to imitate.” — MARIO TELÒ, author of Greek Tragedy in a Global Crisis: Reading through Pandemic Times

EMILY GOWERS is Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Cambridge and author of Rome’s Patron: The Lives and Afterlives of Maecenas.