Carving a Professional Identity: The Occupational Epigraphy of the Roman Latin West

Contents

I. Introductory notes ;

II. Historiographic coordinates for Roman-era occupational epigraphy ;
Professions, occupations and Roman economy ;
Ancient middle classes ;
Historiographic outline ;

III. Quantitative analyses on the primary data ;
Demography and representativeness ;
Encoding the attested occupations ;
Space and time ;
People and monuments ;

IV. People and professional identities ;
Tales of trade and friendship ;
Doctors – the healing science ;
Crafting for a living ;
Entertaining the masses ;
Case study: local identities ;

V. Concluding remarks ;

Index ;

Glossary ;

Catalogue ;

References ;
Abbreviations used in the catalogue

About the Author

Rada Varga is a researcher at Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca (Romania) specialising in Latin epigraphy, digital classics, prosopography and provincial archaeology (co-directing the excavations at the fortress of ala I milliaria Batavorum from Dacia). Her main project is Romans1by1, a prosopographical database for people attested in ancient epigraphy. Currently, Dr Varga is a member of the executive committee of EADH (The European Association for Digital Humanities).

Reviews

Overall, through: the quantitative and qualita­tive analyses of the sources, the use of both traditional and new methodologies and tools for investigation, the diverse prosopographic and conceptual approach of the data, the encoding of the ancient occupations, the book represents another milestone in the research of Roman ancient society and occupations. As such, through its quality it deserves our full-attention and can be considered as a work of reference for future researches in the field.