May - 2026

In Império Romano (Contexto, 2026, 173 pages, R$47), Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira presents a critical synthesis of the formation, expansion, and transformation of the empire, highlighting its political, social, and cultural structures through historiographical analysis and interdisciplinary interpretation, engaging with archaeology and social history. Using ancient textual, archaeological, epigraphic, and numismatic sources, the author starts from a bottom-up perspective to address the daily life of the population, social conflicts, and the diversity of the Roman provinces, analyzing power structures, hierarchies, experiences, and aspirations of subordinate groups, such as women, enslaved people, peasants, and the urban poor. The author also presents and contrasts different modern interpretations of Rome, valuing the social and political context of the sources to understand how popular groups, elites, and institutions acted in the functioning of the empire.

The Lives of Roman Freedwomen in the Latin West: An Epigraphic Study (Edinburgh University Press, 2025, £ 100,00), by Tatjana Sandon, is a study of the socioeconomic role of freed women (former slaves), addressing their daily lives, social status, and experiences in the Roman West. The author utilizes a vast body of documentation of nearly 10,000 inscriptions from Rome, Italy, and the western provinces, with an emphasis on funerary monuments, tombstones, altars, and votive offerings, cross-referencing this data with Roman onomastics to identify the legal status of women and trace their networks of relationships. Thus, the author investigates the familial, professional, religious, and social roles of freedwomen, aiming to reconstruct diverse social experiences and highlight the perspectives of the freedwomen themselves on their lives and identities.