Chapter 5 layers in investigation of notions of empire and longevity, examined here through the lens of more mundane and pervasive structures—its streets and public highways—to reckon with the attenuated and amalgamated temporalities that these infrastructures construct through the accumulation of large- and small-scale acts of maintenance and repair and the referencing of those interventions by milestone monuments in the extra-urban landscape.

Chapter 7: Crucial to any legal system is the plaintiff’s ability to get the defendant into court, and the supervision of the process in civil suits. In Rome the praetor decided if there was a case to answer, and presented a formula to the judge outlining the main issues. The formulary system was gradually superseded in the first century ad by cognitio, in which there was only one stage, before a magistrate, who heard the case himself and reached a judgement. Criminal cases were heard in public jury courts, and the charge was brought by a private individual (delator). Roman society was litigious, and it is useful to examine the experience of appearing in court, the place of the litigant, the availability and role of advocates, and the extent to which the state could ensure fairness in a system weighted in favour of the wealthy and the socially advantaged. State and citizen came in contact through the legal process and the courts.

Chapter 6 considers how the legal system dealt with theft, damage to property, personal insult, and violence, and how citizens obtained redress. The law of obligations is important since, for example, theft, the most common action that modern law defines under criminal law, was under Roman law a delict, prosecuted through action taken by the injured party on the basis of an obligation on the wrongdoer to make restitution. Therefore, the Romans distinguished between a delict and a crimen, which was punished by public penalty after formal trial. In the legal definition of unlawful killing, injury, outrage, and loss, concepts of negligence, deceit, and causation emerged in assessing responsibility. We then consider the definition of theft and robbery, the remedies available for plaintiffs, and the main criminal offences tried in the public jury courts. Those who did not conform with the religious establishment and social conventions, for example, magicians, Jews, and Christians, faced pursuit and prosecution.

Scholarship on ancient Greek prayer has almost always focused on its public instantiations: in sacrifice, oratory, sanctuary contexts, etc. This chapter explores the evidence for ancient Greek prayer in the liminal space where public and private clash, coalesce, and collapse. I argue that the prayers of ancient polytheists, though rarely – if ever – strictly private, routinely operated across and between different spheres such as the public and the private, the polis and the oikos, the intimate and the communal. I approach the study of ancient prayer afresh, not as a site of opposition between the individual and the polis, nor as a space in which the distinctions between these realms of praxis are erased or effaced. Rather, prayer here features as an occasion to reflect on the spectrum of possible intersections between personal piety (individual feelings towards and actions in service of the divine) and the wider superstructures of religion, politics, society, and culture within which its practitioners were imbricated and to which they sought to respond.

Chapter 6 digs deeper into the textual conventions deployed in many of the monumental inscriptions set up on restored structures. In particular, it points to how they responded to and influenced the experience of the inexorable degradation of time through a rhetoric of ruin and fragmentation that both naturalized and justified the form or extent of rebuilding and in late antiquity shifted to increasingly vivid, sensorially affective forms.

Herodotus’ Historiesare filled with instances of personal engagement with the supernatural. If we consider that phenomenon in the specific terms of ‘personal religion’, new patterns and questions emerge. This chapter demonstrates not only that personal religion in Herodotus tends to resolve itself in the political, but that this reinforces the point that there was no strict boundary between personal and polis religion. Most of the people whose experiences Herodotus relates remain ‘public figures’, and Herodotus’ historical narrative, by its nature, devotes significant attention to political affairs. Many episodes from the Histories involve atypical individuals. But their experiences with the divine nevertheless fit into common categories, and the concerns which lead these individuals to approach the divine are mostly nothing out of the ordinary. Herodotus’ stories reveal elements of personal religious practice which might otherwise be difficult to find in surviving sources. By considering both personal and civic aspects of Greek religious thought and practice in Herodotus’ work, we see the continuous presence of the gods in the lived experience of individuals.

Chapter 3 focuses on the mechanisms through which certain special temple buildings were invested with an essential "prospective" role for empire and how in the face of crisis—especially the physical destruction of the buildings along with the challenge to the claims for continuity and security that came with them—those mechanisms were renewed or transformed.

Buildings frequently change over their lifespans as they are adapted to new needs and affected by damage and decay, yet our approaches to architectural history often fail to account for the material and cultural effects of interventions on existing structures or to pursue the critical questions they raise about temporality and urban environments. The book’s Introduction orients readers to diachronic approaches to architectural history, that is, beyond the moment of initial construction, oriented to the perspective of historical actors. In recognizing moments of architectural revision and rebuilding as inflection points, it stresses the importance of accounting for architectural fabrics composed of variously dated elements and of examining the ways that architectural change shapes audience perception of the site’s history and their own era’s relationship to it. Close examination of two exceptionally long-lasting structures, the Pantheon in Rome and the Hagia Sophia/Ayasofia in Constantinople/Istanbul present a compelling contrast to most modern forms of architectural restoration and illustrate central themes of the book. The chapter situates study of historical architecture within current approaches to cultural time and to material culture and places architectural change in dialogue with text-based approaches to Roman temporality.

Chapter 5 considers the legal definition of ownership and possession and how they were acquired and protected. Possession was important in that someone who had physical control of something, for example, a farm, could use the land and enjoy its fruits even though the property was formally owned by another. Having possession of an object brought significant benefits since it was an important step to proving and acquiring ownership by usucapio (that is, having it in your possession for at least two years in the case of immovables, one year for movables). The acquisition and distribution of land was part of the history of the republic, and the management of land, the designation of boundaries, the establishment of jurisdiction, and the resolution of disputes through the legal process remained important. We then consider the role of law in arranging farm tenancy and negotiating leases, and the position of urban landlords and tenants.