We have extremely strong reasons for supposing that the exposure of infants, very often resulting in death, was common in many different parts of the Roman Empire, and that it had considerable demographic, economic and psychological effects. The evidence for the first of these propositions has been reviewed or alluded to in several recent publications.1 However, a thorough new study, covering the whole of Greek and Roman antiquity, would be worth while. In the meantime Donald Engels has declared that in (...) the Greek and Roman worlds the exposure of children was ‘of negligible importance’ , 112–20). (shrink)

Summary This article, in order to advance the debate about the nature of Roman money, sets out the strongest arguments in favour of the crucial importance of credit-money in the Roman economy. It invokes some texts that were not employed in previous discussions. The article also replies to the chief arguments of those scholars who have more or less maintained the traditional view that all, or almost all, Roman money consisted of coins. The most important question here concerns trust and (...) information: to what extent did Romans know enough about those who owed them money to accept payment in documentary form? On this question, the author takes the ‘optimistic’ view. (shrink)

This book provides in five essays background information on some of the most current problems affecting the modern Middle East.

In this study of Baraka's transformation of white avant-grade poetics into a unique black poetics, Harris argues that Baraka's work can be best understood in the context of a jazz aesthetic. Baraka, he says, has taken white avant-garde and postmodernist poetic modes and political ideas, and through a formal and social process of transformation typical of jazz revision, transformed them into a black poetics and metaphysics. Harris describes the failure of the postmodernists to provide suitable aesthetic and social solutions for (...) ethnic and political problems. Baraka set as his models jazzmen like John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, who attempted to destroy white music so that a new black music could be born. To "jazzify" his poetry, he adapted a "fast rap" of scatting, "songification" and other oral and performance techniques. Harris concludes a discussion of Baraka's influence on black literature. ISBN 0-8262-0483-X: $20.00. (shrink)