“One” popular culture in Ancient Rome? A few remarks on J. Toner’s book, Popular Culture in Ancient Rome, Cambridge / Malden, Polity Press, 2009

Abstract

This article proposes a critical reading of J. Toner’s book on popular culture in Ancient Rome. Scholars and researchers on Roman history have long neglected this subject, because the relevant sources are scarce and scattered. That is why Toner choses to deal with it in the long-term (1st century BC to 5th century AD), and in a vast area stretching from Scotland to the Nile. He seeks to spot and analyse a set of practices and interests common to a certain part of Roman society (“the people”), which could have shaped a “popular” culture of its own. However, it seems to us that the final result suffers not only from a partial – not to say wrong – use of the sources, but also from insufficiently mastered concepts, and the absence of diachronic perspective.