Why read Mosaics of Knowledge?

Book cover of Mosaics of Knowledge: Representing Information in the Roman World

Book description

Today's information technology often seems to take on a life of its own, spreading into every part of our lives. In the Roman world things were different. Technologies were limited to small, scattered social groups.

By examining five technologies-lists, tables, weights and measures, artistic perspective, and mapping-Mosaics of Knowledge demonstrates…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Mosaics of Knowledge as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Paul Hay

Author

One of my areas of scholarly interest is Roman intellectual history; I am curious about how Romans thought about their world and how this thinking changed over time (often through the introduction of new concepts or terms).

This interest allows me to examine the ways in which the Romans, at a cognitive level, simply understood information differently from how we do today. Riggsby analyzes various forms of information technology (maps, lists, tables, etc.) that seem basic and obvious, yet he reveals how rare it was for the Romans to deploy them (and usually in quite context-specific ways, such as military…

From Paul's list on The best books for an aspiring Roman history buff.