THE DEVELOPMENT OF ROME

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32430, 17 October 1970, Page 10

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ROME

The Idea of the City in Roman Thought. By Lidia Storoni Mazzolanl. Hollis and Carter. 288 pp. Notes, Bibliography, Index. In his preface to this volume, Michael Grant criticises the popularity of “compartmentalised study,” and it must be admitted that this book provides him with a powerful weapon. Ostensibly a diachronic study of the Roman concept of the city to the time of Constantine, this book will find few readers who are familiar with all the subject areas it embraces. As Michael Grant points out, the English title is inadequate, since the original “Citta” is not the exact equivalent of the English “city,” especially in its connotations. In fact, this book is more concerned with religious ethics than with urban development, and its theme is as much racism and ethnic integration as Roman history. At first appearances, this book seems rather contrived in its structure, as if it has been written backwards. The emphases in the period up to the Flavians seem arbitrary and artificial: Polybius, the first of the great Italian political thinkers, is virtually ignored,

nor is this compensated by extensive reference to his major influences— Aristotle is only named once in the whole book. The first century A.D., which included radical legislation on racial and humanitarian issues and the ethnic conflicts of Nero’s reign, also gets relatively little attention. And some subjects which seem of marginal relevance, like the precedent of Alexander, are given extended treatment. '*■ It is only as one reads on that one becomes gradually aware that Mrs Storoni Mazzolani’s chief interest is “The City of God” and its evolution in the development of Rome. In tracing its ancestry, her examination of Roman policy and absence of policy is necessarily selective, and her attention is directed to political theoreticians only if their doctrines had significant practical consequences. She does give the influence of exotic cults and religions the place it deserves, but adopts an approach of retrospective evaluation, working, one suspects, ultimately from Augustinian criteria. This is a stimulating book, wellwritten and fluidly translated; its idiosyncratic approach makes it most suitable for specialist readers.