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"This is an important book, and that scholars dealing with early Rome will have to grapple with its basic arguments, even if they don't agree with them. W.'s great skill, fully on display here, is his ability to use both literary and material evidence to create, with enviable erudition and imagination, a plausible and engaging portrait. For the journey to unwritten Rome, this book is an inspiring and informative guide. Unwritten Rome is a learned and beautifully written book. ... on y retrouve toutes les qualities du savant anglais : une erudition tres solide, une indiscutable rigueur dans le raisonnement, une remarquable claret dans la presentation, une grande prudence critique, le tout n'excluant cependant pas un appel a l'imagination""les lecteurs qui ont apprecie The Myths of Rome, sans necessairement en partager toutes les idees, prendront certainement un vif plaisir a lire la presente Unwritten Rome."

Wiseman is attempting to reconstruct the literary environment of early Rome by means of comparative evidence, especially artistic. He brings to bear information from archaic engraved cistae and literary works of all kinds, some obscure enough. An important thesis is that the early Romans watched dramas that told stories reflected in much later traditions. He continues his efforts virtually to rewrite the history of Roman literature; Roman literature does not begin in the second century BC, as everyone including the Romans themselves believed, but as early as the sixth century or even earlier, when the Romans first encountered the Greeks in southern Italy. His argument is powerfully original and supported with deep and thorough scholarship. His bibliography is astonishing for its breadth and fineness. He translates all Latin and Greek with elegance, and I learned a good deal from his translations alone. His use of evidence is judicious and balanced, yet he is prepared for bold decisions that clarify his argument. This book will be essential reading for every serious student of the history of Roman literature; it will be quite impossible to ignore it. As Wiseman cast brilliant light on Roman myth in his recent book from your press [Myths of Rome, UEP 2004], here he does the same for the broader literary tradition. His wonderfully clear style enhances his argument at every turn. This is a feast of a book that you dive into and just keep going... Barry B. Powell, Halls-Bascom Professor of Classics Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Madison

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T. P. Wiseman is Emeritus Professor of Roman History at the University of Exeter and a Fellow of the British Academy. He came to Exeter in 1977, and was Head of Department from 1977 to 1990. His published books include Catullan Questions (1969), New Men in the Roman Senate (1971), Cinna the Poet (1974), Catullus and his World (1985), Roman Political Life (1985), and Remembering the Roman People (2009). And on the study of Roman historiography, and from there to the myth-history of early Rome: see Clio’s Cosmetics (1979), Historiography and Imagination (1994), Remus: A Roman Myth (1995), Roman Drama and Roman History (1998), The Myths of Rome (2004), which won the American Philological Association’s Goodwin Award of Merit, and Unwritten Rome (2008)

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