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The Roman World introduces students to the society, literature and art of ancient Rome, through a study of its major historical and literary figures, such as Julius Caesar, Augustus, Nero, Virgil and Ovid. We shall look at Rome’s place in the ancient Mediterranean world, and its connections with ancient Greece and other cultures, such as Egypt and Gaul. Through almost constant warfare, Rome accumulated an enormous Mediterranean empire, and this subject will investigate how this shaped Roman ...
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Ancient Rome and its culture still exerts an enormous influence on modern culture, particularly in the west. Through media such as film, literature, art, architecture, law codes and political institutions we are still influenced by Rome and we continue to reuse and reinvent Roman forms.This lecture considers some of the ideas which are transmitted …
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Buried under the ash from the cataclysmic eruption of the volcano Vesuvius in AD 79, Pompeii and other sites around the Bay of Naples provide extraordinary insights into a Roman town –not just what it looked liked, but how it functioned also. This lecture looks at some of the main public buildings of Pompeii, and especially the development of Pompe…
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Amphitheatres are notorious as the places where the Romans held their more gruesome forms of "entertainment", including gladiatorial fights, executions of condemned prisoners, and wild beast hunts. As such displays grew more complicated and imaginative in their staging and special effects, so too did the design of the amphitheatres in order to acco…
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After Nero's suicide in 68 CE Rome was plunged into civil war again, as successive military commanders were declared emperor. The victor was Flavius Vespasian, who managed to found a new (Flavian) dynasty. Vespasian oversaw the building of the Colosseum, and both he and his son, Titus, remained popular. However, the third Flavian, Domitian, is depi…
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Nero’s subversive courtier, Petronius, is almost certainly the Petronius Arbiter who wrote the satirical work Satyricon, one of the most interesting and bizarre pieces of Roman literature which survives. This novel deals with the nefarious adventures and sexual exploits of three characters travelling through southern Italy, and unusually in Roman l…
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Work is represented as something dirty and sordid by the Roman elite, particularly Cicero, while freedmen always retained some of the stigma associated with their former slave status. This lecture looks at the way workers and freedmen were represented in both elite texts and by themselves, and shows a quite different picture emerging from the tombs…
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Work is represented as something dirty and sordid by the Roman elite, particularly Cicero, while freedmen always retained some of the stigma associated with their former slave status. This lecture looks at the way workers and freedmen were represented in both elite texts and by themselves, and shows a quite different picture emerging from the tombs…
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Nero seems to have encouraged innovative art and architecture (including his own extravagant houses), and to have fostered literary achievement. But his 'Golden House' in particular proved unpopular, as it dominated Rome and gave rise to the rumour that Nero himself started the fire of 64 CE so that he could rebuild the city (and then blamed the Ch…
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Claudius is famous as the survivor of the Julio-Claudian family – an unlikely emperor according to both ancient historians and Robert Graves alike. His apparent devotion to his wives led Tacitus and Suetonius to ridicule him, and may he may have been murdered by his fourth wife, Agrippina, the mother of Nero. Nero, in turn, is Rome's most infamous …
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When Augustus died in 14 CE, he had successfully established a dynastic form of monarchy which was confirmed by the continuation of the principate. This is despite the loss of all of the male heirs related to him by blood, as his successor was his stepson, Tiberius, seen as gloomy and paranoid in ancient sources. He was in turn succeeded by Caligul…
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Augustus continued the late Republican trend of utilising public building as a propagandist tool, to promote himself and his regime. However, Augustan monuments are also notable for their elevation of the emperor's dynasty and their portrayal of women and children – a first in Roman public art. These buildings are therefore useful tools for popular…
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Love poetry during the Augustan period is notable for the elegiac genre, a short-lived but significant body of poetry which represents the poet as enslaved and entirely dominated by his mistress. This lectures examines the love poetry of Propertius and Ovid, and also looks at Ovid's controversial poem, The Art of Love, which trivialised the family …
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War is the central theme of Aeneid 7-12, as Aeneas faces opposition to his settlement in Italy, primarily from the Rutulian prince, Turnus. This lecture concentrates on books 7, 10 and 12, showing how Juno, via Allecto manipulates Turnus and other characters to create conflict and bloodshed in Italy. Throughout, Virgil reminds us of the sorrow and …
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Although the Aeneid is set in the remote, mythical past, it deals with Vergil's present, most prominently in books 6 and 8. In book 6, Aeneasvisits the Underworld, and, after meeting figures from his past, sees a parade of future Roman heroes, who are, for the contemporary reader, leaders from Roman history and recent past. This history is again de…
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The doomed love affair of Aeneas and Dido is, on the face of it, an unusual tale for ancient epic. This lecture shows how Vergil's account of Dido's passion and death relates to Rome's wars with Carthage and to its association with another Eastern queen, Cleopatra VII. This book also introduces the themes of passion and madness into the epic - forc…
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Roman Myth as Poetry: Trojan Ancestors II
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The fall of Troy might be the most famous myth from Classical antiquity. In the second book of the Aeneid, Aeneas himself tells the story of Troy's destruction, as a first hand account to Dido, in Carthage. This lecture investigates the Greek antecedents for this myth in Homeric epic, and what it tells us about the fate of Troy and Aeneas himself. …
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Vergil's Aeneid is one of the highlights of Roman literature, and its influence over all later Roman writing, as well as post antique European literature, is immeasurable. Composed during the Augustan era, it is a multilayered text: it persistently engages with contemporary Roman politics and society, even though it is an epic poem set in the remot…
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Roman Revolution: The Augustan Principate
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The rise of Augustus is often represented as a political and cultural revolution at Rome. Julius Caesar's heir claimed to be restoring the Republic after years of civil war, but in fact he inaugurated a dynastic system of one-man rule, which we call the Empire. This lecture explores these changes, as a backdrop to the literary and artistic developm…
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Republican Spaces: Power and Monumentality
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The city of Rome was a space for individual competition during the Republic. Triumphant generals dedicated public buildings such as temples or basilicas as a means of preserving the memory of their victory, as well as transferring glory to their descendants. But Roman monuments and sculpture was always a delicate balancing act between respecting tr…
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Cicero was the most prominent orator of his day and a significant political figure in the late Republic. However his success was anything but expected: Cicero did not come from a well-known elite family, and he prided himself on achieving political power by his own talents as a great speaker and law advocate. Paradoxically Cicero backed the conserv…
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The last hundred years of the Republic saw tensions between competing military and political leaders at Rome, out of which grew urban violence, politically-motivated murders and brutal civil war. Today we trace the historical background of the years 133-44 BCE, beginning with the Gracchi brothers' revolutionary attempts to deal with the urban poor,…
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Comic plays are the earliest complete literary texts we have from Rome, and the comedies of the mid-Republican poet Plautus have been enormously influential on European drama. In this lecture we look at what Plautus takes from Greek New Comedy, what is especially Roman about his plays, and how he plays with convention in the Pseudolus. Copyright 20…
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Rome's growing power in the Mediterranean during the mid-Republic (4th to 2nd centuries BCE) gave it wealth, luxury goods and access to new cultures. This lecture will investigate the history of the mid-Republic and how this affected early Roman literature, particularly the comic drama of Plautus. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights rese…
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This lecture looks at Roman slavery and power structures during the Roman Republic. Although the foundation of the Republic was represented by the Romans as an attempt to overthrow tyranny, Republican government clearly favoured rule by the elite. At the other end of the social scale, slaves were the most clearly excluded from power and even person…
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This lecture will explore the stories which Romans believed formed their earliest history, including the myth of Romulus and Remus, the arrival of Aeneas from Troy, and the kings of Rome. As we shall see, these tales can tell us a great deal about the Romans' own sense of identity, and, in particular the virtues and values they considered significa…
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The disposal and commemoration of the dead gives us significant insight into a society. This is particularly true of the Romans, who venerated their ancestors and kept images of them in their homes. Funerary monuments were an indicator of wealth, status and aspiration for both elites and freedmen, but slaves are almost entirely excluded from the re…
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