This dissertation provides an intellectual and social history of learned writing on Roman religious culture during the late Republic and early Empire. I examine the ways in which an elite learned literature, for which I propose the name "civil theology", constructed "Roman religion" as a religious system. The first part of the dissertation is an intellectual history of civil theology, especially focused on how these learned texts generated "Roman religion" as an object of knowledge. In order to elucidate how texts can authoritatively construct a religious system, I pursue a comparison between civil theology and the Mishnah, a rabbinic textual compilation. The second part of the dissertation is a social history of civil theology, concentrating on the social contexts of production and reception of the discourse. Firstly, I demonstrate how the discourse was embedded in the social relations of the profoundly competitive late Republican elite. Civil theology was not a socially marginal intellectual activity. Rather, knowledge about Roman religion provided resources for the social self-presentation of the elite. Secondly, I consider how civil theology became implicated in the new imperial socio-political order. Emperors drew on civil-theological knowledge to legitimize "religious reforms" and their personal rule; for the aristocracy, civil theology became entangled with responses to the new situation of autocracy. In a conclusion, I outline the continuing influence of civil theology and its construction of "Roman religion" in the high imperial period and late antiquity and consider how Roman civil theology can complicate the established scholarly approaches to the relationship between books and religion. / The Classics

The book world of sixteenth-century England was heavily focused on London. London's publishers wholly dominated the production of books, and with Oxford and Cambridge the booksellers of the capital also played the largest role in the supplying and distribution of books imported from Continental Europe. Nevertheless, by the end of the sixteenth century a considerable network of booksellers had been established in England's provincial towns. This dissertation uses scattered surviving evidence from book lists and inventories to investigate the development and character of provincial bookselling in the period between 1520 and 1640. It draws on information from most of England's larger cities, including York, Norwich and Exeter, as well as much smaller places, such as Kirkby Lonsdale and Ormskirk. It demonstrates that, despite the competition from the metropolis, local booksellers played an important role in supplying customers with a considerable range and variety of books, and that these bookshops became larger and more ambitious in their services to customers through this period. The result should be a significant contribution to understanding the book world of early modern England. The dissertation is accompanied by an appendix, listing and identifying the books documented in nine separate lists, each of which, where possible, has been matched to surviving editions.