Overview

Valerius Maximus was an indefatigable collector of historical anecdotes illustrating vice and virtue. His Memorable Deeds and Sayings are unparalleled as a source for the opinions of Romans in the early empire on a vast range of subjects. Mueller focuses on what Valerius can tell us about contemporary Roman attitudes to religion, attacking several orthodoxies along the way. He argues that Roman religion could be deeply emotional. That it was possible to believe passionately in the divinity of the emperor - even when, like Tiberius, he was still alive - and that Rome's gods and religious rituals had an important role in fostering conventional morality. The study further explores elements of ancient rhetoric, Roman historiography, and Tiberian Rome. The fact that Valerius was a contemporary of Jesus means his work is also valuable in reflecting the attitudes and beliefs of the ruling class to which Christ and his followers were politically subject, and which formed the background to the growth and persecution of Christianity.

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9780415271080

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Reviews

Mueller's volume is a thorough revision of his Chapel Hill dissertation in 1994. I can only praise the book. We have Roman religion devoid of obfuscating theory. With lucid prose he elucidates, with enviable command of the secondary literature in five languages, some 500 passages of Valerius. The index locorum makes them easily accessible. <br>-Religious Studies Review <br> Mueller is a man with a mission, and that mission is to persuade us to take seriously Valerius Maximus' statements about religion...The book goes a long way to accomplishing Mueller's mission: scholars of Roman Religion will no longer be able to overlook Valerian rhetoric as easily as they have in the past. <br>-Classical World <br>

Author Information

HANS-FRIEDRICH MUELLER is Assistant Professor of Classics, University of Florida. In addition to lexicographical contributions to the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, he has published articles on Greek and Roman historiography and Roman religion

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