The Antiquarian and the Myth of Antiquity: The Origins of Rome in Renaissance Thought

Cambridge University Press, 1993. Hardcover. VG- (Slight water damage to top of first few pages, which doesn't interfere with text or illus.; top edge of DJ has some wear and age; otherwise crisp and clean.). Blue cloth, yellow & illus. dust jacket, 376 pp., BW illus. "Traces the attempt by Renaissance humanists to verify the historical foundations of Rome and to map its nascent urban formation. Remarkably, their debates hinged as much on polemics as on the evidence of inscriptions and texts. Antiquarians, apart from what they could observe from the vestiges of ancient Rome, actively reinterpreted the meaning of classical antiquity in light of their own culture. In analyzing the archaeological, philological, and historical methods of this period, [this book] demonstrates how the ancestry of Rome -- its myths, rituals, and artistic symbols -- were continually redefined and reappropriated. To Roman citizens this inheritance seemed part of their historical destiny. Yet in city after city throughout Italy, local humanists showed the same determination to establish their descent from ancient civilization." (dj).