Includes bibliographical references and index.

Starting with the debris of finis imperii: Titus Andronicus -- Lucrece's pictorial anatomy of ruin -- Anatomizing the body of a king: knowledge, conspiracy, and memory in Julius Caesar -- 'My memory is tired': Coriolanus's forgetful Humanism -- 'Caesar's wing': negotiating the myth of Rome in Cymbeline -- World and ruin in Antony and Cleopatra.

"This is the first book of its kind to address Shakespeare's relationship with Rome's authoritative myth, archaeologically, by taking as a point of departure a chronological reversal, namely the vision of the 'eternal' city as a ruinous scenario"--

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