Italy Before Rome: A Sourcebook

This book brings together sources translated from a wide variety of ancient languages to showcase the rich history of pre-Roman Italy, including its cultures, politics, trade, languages, writing systems, religious rituals, magical practices, and conflicts.

This book allows readers to access diverse sources relating to the history and cultures of pre-Roman Italy. It gathers and translates sources from both Greek and Latin literature and ancient inscriptions in multiple languages and gives commentary to highlight areas of particular interest. The thematic organisation of this sourcebook helps readers to make connections across languages and communities, and showcases the interconnectedness of ancient Italy. This book includes maps, a timeline, and guides to further reading, making it accessible to students and other readers who are new to this subject.

Italy Before Rome is aimed at undergraduate and graduate students, including those who have not studied the ancient world before. It is also intended to be useful to researchers approaching this material for the first time, and to university and schoolteachers looking for an overview of early Italian sources.

Katherine McDonald is an Assistant Professor in Roman History at Durham University, UK, and has previously worked at Cambridge and Exeter. Her previous work includes Oscan in Southern Italy and Sicily: Evaluating Language Contact in a Fragmentary Corpus.