Teaching Thursday: Roman History

Just a quick post today since I’m on the road.

I’ve been thinking a good bit about my Roman History course which I’ll offer this spring. There are three new Roman History books in the wind these days that are getting some buzz on my “socials.” I’ve not read any of these books, but they’re due at my house by the time I get back from Spain.

First is Ed Watts’s big new book The Romans (Basic Books 2025) which presumably is a companion volume to Roderick Beatons, The Greeks (2021). Unlike Beaton’s The Greeks, Watts’s book only goes through the 5th century AD. It is still 700+ pages and probably too long to use productively in a Roman history class, but it feels like a good bonus book to use in the future. 

Next is Kim Bowes’s Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent (2025). Like Watts’s, Bowes’s book is a bit too long to productive assign to a big picture Roman history class (and I might still be slightly inclined to assign Sarah Bonds’s book Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire (2025) if only for its length, but I have a couple months to give Bowes’s book a read. 

Finally, there’s Barry Strauss’s Jews vs. Rome (Simon & Schuster 2025) which has received as much buzz as one might imagine in the hands of its major publisher and in these days. It promises to be the most accessible book on the list and no one will easily doubt Strauss’s chops as an ancient historian. It feels like something that students could dig into as a way to get another perspective on both life in the provinces (or better hinterland) and the religious history of Rome. It could be a good counterpart to our discussion of Apuleius’s Metamorphosis.

These three books form quite a stack when places atop my interest in having at least some students read Ronald Syme’s Roman Revolution (1939) which I blogged about here. My students generally comment that I assign too much reading, but will sometimes also concede (begrudgingly and when looking for a letter of recommendation) that it is worth it. I don’t want to take this too far, however. I vividly remember in my first year teaching Greek History when my students approached me (with great [and in hindsight possibly affected] deference) and asked for less reading. It was a fair and reasonable request and I’d like to avoid that intervention in the future.