Columbarium tombs are among the most recognizable forms of Roman architecture and also among the most enigmatic. The subterranean collective burial chambers have repeatedly sparked the imagination of modern commentators; but their origins and function remain obscure. Columbarium Tombs and Collective Identity in Augustan Rome situates columbaria within the development of Roman funerary architecture and the historical context of the early Imperial period. Contrary to earlier scholarship that often interprets columbaria primarily as economic burial solutions; Dorian Borbonus shows that they defined a community of people who were buried and commemorated collectively. Many of the tomb occupants were slaves and freed slaves; for whom collective burial was one strategy of community building that counterbalanced their exclusion in Roman society. Columbarium tombs were thus sites of social interaction that provided their occupants with a group identity that; this book shows; was especially relevant during the social and cultural transformation of the Augustan era.
#2681898 in eBooks 2013-12-31 2013-12-31File Name: B00HZDIT6W
Review
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Welcome study of the context for recent Irish playsBy John L MurphyProfessor Grene of Trinity College; Dublin has written widely on drama; this text gives twenty-odd close readings of plays chosen to symbolize how Ireland; in his terms; undergoes "theatrical revisionism" as its portrayed on stage. That is; playwrights strive to show an Ireland truer to reality than that previously shown by stereotypical "stage Irish" caricatures or plots. Thus; Grene argues; his selection of plays attempt to realistically capture Irish life for audiences expected to be familiar with both its distorted enactments and the more accurately dramatized Ireland that replaces it; generation after generation; in the corrective plays that supersede the earlier inaccuracies.This daunting thesis Grene illustrates by a variety of plays; familiar as Synges Playboy and unfamiliar (at least to me) as Tom Murphys A Crucial Week. Most exciting for me are his discoveries within the historical distortions placed into Translations by Brian Friel; the autobiographical elisions applied by Sean OCasey; the Tuam; Co Galway work of Murphy; the making of Behans The Hostage vs. its Irish-language precedent; and the possibilities for a change from the usual Irish themes in Yeats Purgatory and Becketts All That Fall.Grene avoids pedantry; trendy critical jargon; and keeps the reader in mind as he studies such works honestly. He credits other scholars thoughtfully; brings in the historical and political contexts but never allows them to overshadow the actual plays; and summarizes earlier debates about them well.One shortcoming: as if sensing that students might be using his book as a crib to avoid reading the plays; he does shy away more than once from examining their endings. While he exerts much effort in establishing the background and conflicts emerging from many plays earlier plots; he tends to duck out before bringing some of his close readings to a dramatic close.
