Risk in the Roman World

JERRY TONER is a Fellow, Tutor and Director of Studies in Classics at Churchill College, Cambridge. He is a cultural historian whose work has a focus on history 'from below'. His book, Popular Culture in Ancient Rome (2009), analyses the life of the non-elite in Roman society. He has also written on Roman leisure and the Games, including The Day Commodus Killed a Rhino: Understanding the Roman Games (2014). He is interested in the use of Classics to create imagery and stereotypes relating to subordinate groups, a theme explored in Homer's Turk: How Classics Shaped Ideas of the East (2013). Other areas of research interest include the sensory history of Rome and mental health in Antiquity. He came to the idea of risk from looking at how ordinary people developed coping strategies but also from his study of ancient disasters (Roman Disasters, 2013). There have been over thirty translations of his books into sixteen languages.

'This is a highly readable, superbly documented survey of the ancient Roman cultural encounter with risk and uncertainty. J. S. Louzonis, CHOICE

• Acknowledgements; 1. Risk and uncertainty; 2. A world full of risks; 3. A risk culture; 4. Risk management; 5. Moral hazards: constructing risk; 6. Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.