If ancient history is particularly susceptible to a top-down approach, due to the nature of our evidence and its traditional exploitation by modern scholars, another ancient history--from below--is actually possible. This volume examines the possibilities and challenges involved in writing it.
Despite undeniable advances in recent decades, -our slowness to reconstruct plausible visions of almost any aspect of society beyond the top-most strata of wealth, power or status- (as Nicholas Purcell has put it) remains a persistent feature of the field. Therefore, this book concerns a historical field and social groups that are still today neglected by modern scholarship. However, writing ancient history -from below- means much more than taking into account the anonymous masses, the subaltern classes and the non-elites. Our task is also, in the felicitous expression coined by Walter Benjamin, -to brush history against the grain,- to rescue the viewpoint of the subordinated, the tradit
