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Valuing Labour in Greco-Roman Antiquity
Series: - Mnemosyne, Supplements, Volume: 481
How did ancient Greeks and Romans regard work? It has long been assumed that elite thinkers disparaged physical work, and that working people rarely commented on their own labors. The papers in this volume challenge these notions by investigating philosophical, literary and working people’s own ideas about what it meant to work. From Plato’s terminology of labor to Roman prostitutes’ self-proclaimed pride in their work, these chapters find ancient people assigning value to multiple different kinds of work, and many different concepts of labor.
"Valuing Labour represents an important step in the reevaluation of ancient labor. It will be interesting to a variety of readers because of its temporal, geographic, and methodological extent, and presents some novel interpretations of both familiar and more unusual sources."
Jane Sancinito in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2024.12.12
Jane Sancinito in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2024.12.12
List of Figures and Tables
1 Introduction: Value at Work
Miko Flohr and Kim Bowes
2 Plato’s Exemplary Craftsman
Ineke Sluiter
3 Πόνος and πονέω in Aristotle
J.J. Mulhern
4 Galen on Hands and the Teleology of Work
Ralph M. Rosen
5 On Valuing Roman Art and the Labour of Art Making
Lauren Hackworth Petersen
6 Emotional Labour in Antiquity: The Case of Greco-Roman Prostitution
Sarah Levin-Richardson
7 Meaning in the Making: Representing Glass Production in Imperial Rome
Bettina Reitz-Joosse
8 Who’s Afraid of Wage Labour? Analysing Some Texts of the Second Sophistic
Christel Freu
9 The Value of Work: Work and Labour within the Roman Upper-class Household
Miriam J. Groen-Vallinga
10 The Labour of Listening: Internal Audiences in Theocritus
Amelia Bensch-Schaus
11 Labor in the locus amoenus: Agricultural Industry as Premise of Pastoral Leisure
Riemer A. Faber
12 Work Underfoot: The Rustic ‘Calendar’ Mosaic of Saint-Romain-en-Gal
Nicole G. Brown
13 Rural Labour and Identity at Vagnari in Southern Italy
Liana Brent and Tracy Prowse
14 Foreign Labour, Common Ground: The Value of Craftspeople in Early Democratic Athens
Helle Hochscheid
15 The Craftsman’s View: Labour and (Self-)Appreciation as Reflected in Signatures
Natacha Massar
16 Professionals as paradeigmata of aretê in Hellenistic Honorific Decrees
Antiopi Argyriou-Casmeridis
17 Images of Craft: Activity and Presentation of Work in Gallo-Roman Tombstones
Fanny Opdenhoff
Index
1 Introduction: Value at Work
Miko Flohr and Kim Bowes
Section 1 Revisiting the Canon
2 Plato’s Exemplary Craftsman
Ineke Sluiter
3 Πόνος and πονέω in Aristotle
J.J. Mulhern
4 Galen on Hands and the Teleology of Work
Ralph M. Rosen
5 On Valuing Roman Art and the Labour of Art Making
Lauren Hackworth Petersen
Section 2 Pushing the Boundaries of Labour
6 Emotional Labour in Antiquity: The Case of Greco-Roman Prostitution
Sarah Levin-Richardson
7 Meaning in the Making: Representing Glass Production in Imperial Rome
Bettina Reitz-Joosse
8 Who’s Afraid of Wage Labour? Analysing Some Texts of the Second Sophistic
Christel Freu
9 The Value of Work: Work and Labour within the Roman Upper-class Household
Miriam J. Groen-Vallinga
Section 3 Labour and the Countryside
10 The Labour of Listening: Internal Audiences in Theocritus
Amelia Bensch-Schaus
11 Labor in the locus amoenus: Agricultural Industry as Premise of Pastoral Leisure
Riemer A. Faber
12 Work Underfoot: The Rustic ‘Calendar’ Mosaic of Saint-Romain-en-Gal
Nicole G. Brown
13 Rural Labour and Identity at Vagnari in Southern Italy
Liana Brent and Tracy Prowse
Section 4 Labour and Civic Values
14 Foreign Labour, Common Ground: The Value of Craftspeople in Early Democratic Athens
Helle Hochscheid
15 The Craftsman’s View: Labour and (Self-)Appreciation as Reflected in Signatures
Natacha Massar
16 Professionals as paradeigmata of aretê in Hellenistic Honorific Decrees
Antiopi Argyriou-Casmeridis
17 Images of Craft: Activity and Presentation of Work in Gallo-Roman Tombstones
Fanny Opdenhoff
Index
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