City of Rome - Syllabus
Lectures and seminars
Autumn Term 2018 (SFK)
Week 1: Rome a moveable feast
Introduction to the module. Sources & limitations
What survives of Romulus' Rome: The legend of mud
Week 2: Republican Rome (509-100 BC). Monumentalising Victory in Rome.
Part 1: Friends with Benefits: Rome and her Allies.
Part 2: Rome goes to Hell: Hellenised Rome? Victory & Defeat:
Defining moments & monuments in Republican Rome.
Week 3: Reinscribing Rome at the end of the Republic
The Forum Romanum: Caesar’s Dream and Augustus’ Reality. Reinscribing history.
Week 4: Rome: The Bowels of the Beast
Part 1: Paved with Good Intentions: Rome & its Roads.
Part 2. Cicero’s Cesspool: Rome & the Cloaca Maxima.
Week 5 : Living in Rome and in Ostia
Part 1. Up where we belong: Life in a Roman Insula
Part 2. Dwellings in Ostia.
Week 6 No class (Reading Week)
Week 7: Water, Water Everywhere. The Julio-Claudians and Waterproof concrete (Denise Wilding)
Part 1. Claudius: The Harbour at Ostia & Aqueducts
Part 2. Nero and Personal Euergetism: Palaces, Baths, and Nymphaeum.
Week 8: The Flavians and the Legacy of Imperial Fora
Part 1. Flavian Monuments
Part 2. Trajan's Projects in and around the Forum
Week 9: Glory Days. Trajan, Hadrian and the Antonines
Part 1. Trajan's Rome
Part 2. Hadrian's Pumpkins
Part 3. The Antonines
Week 10: History of excavations and coin finds
Spring Term 2019 (HM)
Week 11: Supplying Rome, and Stocking & Diffusion
Part 1. Gone to pot: The Marvels of Monte Testaccio.
Part 2. Rome & Ostia: How many horrea?
Week 12: ‘Oh what Happy Times’: The Severans
Part 1. Septimius Severus' Reconstruction
Part 2. Caracalla's Baths et alia
Week 13 ‘Time is but a Door, Death is but a Window, I will be back’ - Dying in Rome
Part 1. Pagan Burials: Recreating life in death
Part 2. ‘He is gone on to a better place’: Christianity and the Afterlife
Week 14: Rome in Crisis: The Third Century AD
Part I. Third Century Crisis?
Part II. Four is the magic number: Tetrarchy?
Seminar 3. Monuments to the Dead in Rome
Week 15: Christian Rome
Part 1. Finding Christian themes in Roman monuments
Part 2. Reusing Rome: Roman imagery in Christian monuments
Week 16: Reading week
Week 17: Religion in Rome (Hannah Mitchell)
Part I. Religion in Rome: myths and texts.
Part II. Isis & Obelisk: Egyptian Cults in Rome
Week 18: ‘Are you not entertained?’ (Hannah Mitchell)
Part 1. Spectacular Spectacula: Bread & Circuses
Part 2. The Roman Theatre: a different kind of outing?
Seminar 4: (tbc)
Week 19: (Victory Monuments tbc) (Hannah Mitchell)
Week 20: Rome in Literary sources (Hannah Mitchell)
Summer Term 2019
Week 2: Revision
Week 3: Revision