Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow

[...]Jonas Bjornebye (ch. 18) compares two types of mithraea in Rome and the patterns of movement related to them, and considers how adherents to the cult might have negotiated topography and space in Late Roman Antiquity. Broad coverage is attractive (movement as an expression of power, ritual practices, metaphors in writing, communication between different status groups, economic stability, and even violent outbreaks), but the all-inclusiveness of the volume also damages its coherency.

[...]an amateur enthusiast would have been hard-pressed to find a suitably detailed study in any language of private baths in the houses and villas of the Greek and Roman world. De H. also explains in straightforward terms the technology of the hypocaust system (hypocaustum) as it relates to private bath construction, historical frameworks for it, and the context of technological innovations into which these developments fit in the first century b.c. to first century a.d. While little attention is paid to water supply and distribution or to the administration, laws, and financing of either the baths themselves or their water supply in this chapter, all the examples are accompanied by an historical and geographical survey in chronological order. In ch. 4, ‘Der städtische Kontext’, and ch. 5, ‘Benutzung und sozialer Status’, however, we reach what seems to be the heart of the book, a discussion of the urban context for private baths and their use for the acquisition of social status — chapters that definitely tackle interesting historical arguments.