Potentially Interesting Roman History

About

James Coverley

Writer, Classicist, Historian of the Roman World

James Coverley has been writing about the ancient world for the better part of two decades. He studied Classics at Oxford, where his particular interests were the historiography of the late Republic and the social history of the imperial period — two subjects that have stubbornly refused to let him go.

His writing tries to do something specific: to take the scholarship seriously without disappearing into it. Roman history has accumulated, over the past two centuries, one of the richest bodies of academic literature in the humanities. It has also, for much of that time, been written almost entirely for other academics. Potentially Interesting Roman History exists because that seems like a waste.

The articles here are intended for readers who are genuinely curious about the ancient world but who do not necessarily have a background in Classics or ancient history. They assume intelligence rather than prior knowledge, and they try — wherever the evidence allows — to treat the Romans as people rather than as monuments.

The Historia Augusta project began as an experiment. The Historia Augusta is one of the strangest and most important surviving sources for the third century, and it had never been translated into genuinely readable modern English. The project now covers the first four lives, with a new translation published every Saturday, each accompanied by a chapter-by-chapter reader's guide.

The books grew out of the newsletter. Each one began as a series of articles that seemed to belong together — that had, between them, more to say than any individual piece could manage. They are written to be read by people who know nothing about Rome and by people who have spent their careers studying it, and the ambition — not always achieved — is to make both groups feel equally at home.

Before all of this, there were other lives: a period in publishing, some years in academia, a brief and undistinguished attempt at fiction. Rome kept pulling him back. At some point it seemed simpler to stop resisting.

He lives between London and Rome.