The Commerce of War: Exchange and Social Order in Latin Epic

Latin epics such as Virgil's Aeneid, Lucan's Civil War, and Statius's Thebaid addressed Roman aristocrats whose dealings in gifts, favors, and payments defined their conceptions of social order. In The Commerce of War, Neil Coffee argues that these exchanges play a central yet overlooked role in epic depictions of Roman society.

Tracing the collapse of an aristocratic worldview across all three poems, Coffee highlights the distinction they draw between reciprocal gift giving among elites an...