Book Review: Jerry Toner, Popular Culture in Ancient Rome, 2009.

The education of the classicist proceeds through the Roman elite. Through the texts written by the Roman elites, the Latin language is learned together with their worldview, cultures, behavioral patterns and political activities. Toner, who points out that what is learned about ancient Rome actually pertains to a very small elite class, aims to focus on the other side of Ancient Rome, namely the lives of what he calls non-elite in his book. It's a challenging task, considering that almost all Latin literature is written by elites. The author has confined his research between the 1st century BC and the 5th century AD, organizing his material into five main categories for examination: non-elites' problem-solving methods, mental health, entertainment, perceptions of their surroundings, and uprisings.

As author indicates, there is very limited material about the life of non elite. To give a consistent narrative about non elite, Toner chooses to focus on very long time period of 600 years. It is known that during the different periods of Roman history like Republican, Augustan and age of Constantinus, the social structure in Rome changed significantly so popular culture may have also differed considerably. Yet in this study, there is a tendency to generalize information derived from anecdotes of ancient writers to all Romans across different historical periods. Like time periods, differences within non elites groups -namely non elite citizens, freedmen and slaves- are disregarded too. For instance, the economic situation of six different non-elite families living in a six-story Roman apartment building must have varied significantly. There could be quite a different culture between the poorest families, who shared a tiny apartment on the top floor without bathrooms and kitchens, and the relatively wealthy but non-elite families living on the ground floor. Yet such differences are not taken into account, and the available material has been generalized under the broad category of non-elites.

The author could have overcome this issue of generalization by focusing deeply into a specific aspect of non-elite culture, such as problem-solving, instead writing a general book despite the limited material available. The section, for example, he wrote about the visual perception of the people, largely based on literary sources without focusing on graffiti and visual materials remains quite incomplete. Why write a section about visual perception without using visual material?

Although Toner has found a various material from lot of different authors, he often fails to investigate them with critical perspective. The anecdotes of satirical writers like Petronius and Lucian, as well as unreliable gossiper historians like Ammianus Marcellinus and Suetonius, are presented as if they provide an glimpses into life of non elite, without critical investigation. While striving to evade the lens of elite figures like Cicero when examining the lives of non-elites, Toner unfortunately falls into another trap by depicting the lives of Rome's non-elites through the exaggerated perspectives of satirical writers. Overall, his lack of a critical approach leaves the impression of reading a source book rather than a monograph.

Despite all the problems related to the methodology, I must say that the first two chapters were enjoyable. The use of relatively unknown -at least unknown to me-literary sources, such as Sortes Astrampsychi was informative and enjoyable for me. However, I must also mention that the aforementioned problems became more evident in the subsequent three chapters. This book will definitely disappoint classicists, and might be misleading to the general reader, so I cannot recommend it to anyone.