HIST1010B THE ROMANS AND THEIR PAST
Introduction
The Romans and Their Past offers an introduction to some of the main sources for
Roman history, and to Roman ways of representing individuals and institutions from
the distant and recent past. The first half of the course concentrates on the 'facts'
and interpretations of early Roman history and the Hannibalic War offered by
historians and poets of the age of Augustus; the second half looks at the Roman
state and politics from the perspective of Cicero, and at the emperors Caligula and
Claudius as critically portrayed by Tacitus and Suetonius. The aim is to show how
our knowledge of Roman history is shaped by the nature of each of these sources.
Teaching
The course will be taught over a single term, by Julietta Steinhauer. It will be taught
in ten two-hour seminars which meet weekly, on Wednesdays 10 a.m. until 12 noon
in Gordon House G09 (ground floor).
Course requirements
(a) Attendance : students must attend all seminars. Illness is a valid excuse for
missing a class only when verified by a certificate from a GP or from the Student
Health Centre. Failure to attend to the satisfaction of your tutor means that you
may be de-registered from the course.
(b) Class presentations : each student is required to offer one or more oral
presentations in class, on subjects assigned by the tutor. Each week one or two
students will be asked to prepare a short presentation to open a discussion in
which all participate. It is, of course, essential that all participants do a
considerable amount of preparatory reading : the main source texts indicated
below are a minimum, and further reading (as suggested in the bibliography) is
strongly recommended.
(c) Essays : each student must write 2 essays; at least one of these (and preferably
both) should be word-processed or typed. Essays should be about 2,500 words
in length.
Essay Titles
FIRST ESSAY:
1. What significance did the legend of the foundation of their city hold for the
Romans ?
2. To what extent do stories about the early Republic reflect concerns of the
Augustan age ?
3. What do traditions about early Republican heroes tell us about the Roman
self-image ?
4. Why did the war against Hannibal feature so prominently in Roman
historiography ?
SECOND ESSAY:
1.
2.
3.
4.
In what ways and why did Cicero idealize the Roman constitution ?
Did Cicero's career live up to his political ideals ?
How reliable is Suetonius' account of Caligula and his reign ?
Does Tacitus offer a fair treatment of Claudius and his reign ?
Essay deadlines:
HIST1010B
First essay:
Second essay:
To be confirmed.
To be confirmed.
You will be penalised if you fail to meet this deadline unless you have been
granted an extension by the Chair of the Board of Examiners. Application forms
are available from the History Office. Such extensions are likely to be granted
only in cases of bereavement or serious illness (see the Student Handbook on
our website).
Arrangements for the return of the other copy will be made in class by the tutor.
(d) Assessment : the two essays will each count for 50% of the final assessment.
Students need a combined mark of 40 to pass the module.
(e) Total workload : apart from 20 contact hours, the course demands approximately
60 hours of private reading, and 40 hours spent in writing up essays.
Submission Procedures
Coursework essays must not exceed the advertise word length and must include
footnotes/endnotes, but exclude the bibliography.
In order for your submissions to be deemed complete, you must:
1.
Submit to Turnitin a full and final version of your coursework essays,
including bibliography, to the relevant moodle page by the stated deadline.
2.
Submit TWO identical hardcopies and attach ONE coversheet and place in
your tutor’s pigeon hole no later than one working day after the submission
deadline.
Before you submit your work, please ensure that you have read the following
guidance carefully:
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Submission procedures
Penalties relating to over-length coursework and late submission
Rules regarding plagiarism (see pages 11-14)
Study Skills Booklet (for advice regarding citing, referencing, style and
mechanism of writing)
Formatting
All essays must be well presented and clear. Please use double-spacing, 10, 11 or
12 point text, and leave margins of at least 2.5cm. Proof-read your work carefully
and do not rely entirely on spell-checkers – they can introduce mistakes, particularly
when using historical terminology and names. Please include your student reference
number as a header on each page and do not write your name anywhere on your
essay. One of the hard copies you submit will be returned to you with corrections and
feedback.
Programme
W EEK 1:
INTRODUCTION I: ROMAN HISTORIOGRAPHY
W EEK 2:
INTRODUCTION II: THE AUGUSTAN AGE
Sources : Res Gestae (Acts of Augustus); Suetonius, Augustus
W EEK 3:
LEGENDARY ROMANS I : THE FOUNDATION OF ROME
Main sources: Livy I.1-16; Vergil, Aeneid.
Also : Dionysios of Halikarnassos I; Plutarch, Romulus.
W EEK 4:
LEGENDARY ROMANS II : HEROES AND VILLAINS OF EARLY ROME
Main sources: Livy I.49-II.40; Vergil, Aeneid VI.752-892;
VIII.608-731. Also : Dionysios of Halikarnassos IV.41-VIII.67;
Plutarch, Publicola and Coriolanus.
W EEK 5:
THE HANNIBALIC W AR I: THE ENEMY
Main sources : Livy XXI-XXX; Polybios, III; IX.22-6; XI.19; XIV.1XV.19. Also : Appian, Roman History VII; Plutarch, Fabius
Maximus and Marcellus.
W EEK 6:
NO CLASS (READING WEEK)
W EEK 7:
THE HANNIBALIC W AR II: ROMAN RESILIENCE
Main sources : Livy XXI-XXX; Polybios, III; X.2-16, 34-40; XIV.1XV.19. Also : Appian, Roman History VII; Plutarch, Fabius
Maximus and Marcellus.
W EEK 8:
CICERO I: THE ROMAN STATE
Main sources : Cicero, De Re Publica II and De Legibus II-III.
Also : Polybius VI.11-18, 43-57
W EEK 9:
CICERO II: ROMAN POLITICS
Cicero, Letters to Atticus I.1-2, 12-20 (Penguin nos. 10-20);
Against Catiline I-IV (e.g. in Penguin, Selected Political
Speeches); and/or other letters and speeches). Also :
[Q.Cicero], Commentariolum
Petitionis (LACTOR 3: A Short Guide to Electioneering)
W EEK 10:
IMAGES OF EMPERORS I: CALIGULA
Main source : Suetonius, Caligula. Also : Cassius Dio, Roman
History LIX; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities XIX.1-211.
W EEK 11:
IMAGES OF EMPERORS II: CLAUDIUS
Main sources : Tacitus, Annals XI-XII; Suetonius, Claudius.
Also: Seneca, Apocolocyntosis; Cassius Dio, Roman History LXLXI; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities XIX.212-274.
All sources are available in Loeb edition and translation; most are also translated in
the Penguin Classics series (and some in Oxford World's Classics as well).
Select Bibliography
- General historical background Cambridge Ancient History (second edition), vols. VII.2 and VIII (Cambridge 1989)
Cornell, T.J., The Beginnings of Rome 753-264 B.C. (London 1995)
Heurgon, J., The Rise of Rome to 264 B.C. (London 1973)
Le Glay; M., Voisin, J.-L., Le Bohec, Y., A History of Rome (Malden, Blackwell, 2005)
Scullard, H.H., History of the Roman World, 753-146 B.C. (fourth edition, London
1980)
Woolf, G., Rome. An Empire’s Story (Oxford 2012)
Crawford, M., The Roman Republic (second edition, London 1992)
Beard, M., and Crawford, M., Rome in the Late Republic (London 1985)
Scullard, H.H., From the Gracchi to Nero (fifth edition, London 1982)
Wells, C.M., The Roman Empire (London 1984)
Wiedemann, T., The Julio-Claudian Emperors (Bristol 1989)
- On the sources Feldherr, A., The Cambridge companion to the Roman Historians (2009)
Kraus C. S., Marincola, J., Pelling, C., Ancient Historiography and Its Contexts:
Studies in Honour of A. J. Woodman (2010)
Marincola J. (ed.), Greek and Roman Historiography (2011)
Mehl, A. Roman Historiography: an Introduction to its Basic Aspects and
Development (2011²)
Miller, J. F., A. J. Woodman (eds.), Latin Historiography and Poetry in the Early
Empire: Generic Interactions (2010)
Momigliano, A., Studies in Historiography (London 1966)
Momigliano, A., Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Oxford 1977)
Ogilvie, R.M., Roman Literature and Society (London 1980)
Wiseman, T.P., Clio's Cosmetics (Leicester 1979)
Badian, E., 'The early historians', Latin Historians, ed. T.A. Dorey (London 1966), 138
Cornell, T.J., 'The formation of the historical tradition of early Rome', Past
Perspectives, ed. I. Moxon et al. (Cambridge 1986), 67-86
Champion, C. B., Cultural Politics in Polybius’s Histories (Berkeley 2004)
Walbank, F.W., Polybius (Berkeley 1972)
Smith, C., Yarrow, L. M. (eds.), Imperialism, Cultural Politics, and Polybius (Oxford
2012)
Dorey, T.A. (ed.), Livy (London 1971)
Walsh, P.G., Livy: His Historical Aims and Methods (Cambridge 1960) or Livy
(Greece & Rome New Surveys, Oxford 1974)
Chaplin, J. D., Kraus, C. S. (eds.), Livy. Oxford Readings in Classical Studies
(Oxford 2009)
Griffin, J., Virgil (Oxford 1986)
Williams, R.D., The Aeneid of Virgil : A Companion to the Translation of C. Day
Lewis (Bristol 1985)
Farrell, J., Putnam M. C. J. (ed.), A Companion to Vergil's Aeneid and Its Tradition.
Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World (2010)
Seider, A. M., Memory in Vergil’s Aeneid: Creating the Past (Cambridge 2013)
Powell, A., Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus (London 1992)
Cambridge History of Classical Literature, Vol. II.3, The Age of Augustus (1982)
Zanker, P., The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor 1988)
Martin, R., Tacitus (London 1981)
Mellor, R., Tacitus (London 1993)
Pagán V. E., (ed.), A Companion to Tacitus. Blackwell companions to the ancient
world (2012)
Woodman, A. J. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus (Cambridge 2009)
Syme, R., Tacitus (Oxford 1958)
Donna W. Hurley (trans.), Suetonius: The Caesars (Indianapolis/London 2011) esp.
the Introduction
Wallace-Hadrill, A., Suetonius (London 1983)
- On early Rome and its legends Alföldi, A., Early Rome and the Latins (Ann Arbor 1965)
Bremmer, J.N., and Horsfall, N., Roman Myth and Mythography (London 1987)
Cornell, T.J., 'Aeneas and the Twins', PCPhS 21 (1975), 1-32
Cornell, T.J., 'Aeneas' arrival in Italy', LCM 2 (1977), 77-83
Forsythe, G., A Critical History of Early Rome. From Prehistory to the First Punic War
(Berkeley 2005)
Galinski, G.K., Aeneas, Sicily and Rome (Princeton 1969)
Galinski, K., Memoria Romana. Memory in Rome and Rome in Memory (University
of Michigan Press 2014)
Grant, M., Roman Myths (London 1971)
Gruen, E.S., Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome (London 1993), ch. 1
Momigliano, A., 'An interim report on the origins of Rome', JRS 53 (1963), 95-121 (=
Terzo Contributo, Rome 1966, 545-98)
Ogilvie, R.M., A Commentary on Livy Books I-V (Oxford 1965)
Ogilvie, R.M., Early Rome and the Etruscans (London 1976)
Poucet, J., Les Origines de Rome (Brussels 1986)
Walter, U. Memoria und res publica. Zur Geschichtskultur im republikanischen Rom
(Frankfurt a. M. 2004)
- On the Hannibalic War Brunt, P.A., Italian Manpower, 225BC.- AD 14 (Oxford 1971)
Dorey, T.A., and Dudley, D.R., Rome Against Carthage (London 1971)
Errington, R.M., The Dawn of Empire. Rome's Rise to World Power (Ithaca 1972)
Hoyos, D. (ed.), A Companion to the Punic Wars. Blackwell companions to the
ancient world. (Chichester 2011)
Lazenby, J.F., Hannibal's War (Warminster 1978)
Levene, D. S., Livy on the Hannibalic War (Oxford 2010)
Scullard, H.H., Scipio Africanus : soldier and politician (London 1970)
Toynbee, A.J., Hannibal's Legacy (London 1966)
- On Cicero Fuhrmann, M., Cicero and the Roman Republic (Oxford 1992)
Habicht, C., Cicero The Politician (Baltimore 1991)
Mitchell, T.N., Cicero: The Senior Statesman (New Haven 1991)
Rawson, E., Cicero: A Portrait (London 1975)
Shackleton Bailey, D.R., Cicero (London 1971)
Steel, C. E. W., Reading Cicero (London 2005)
Steel, C. E. W. (ed.). The Cambridge companion to Cicero (Cambridge 2013)
Stockton, D.L., Cicero, A Political Biography (Oxford 1971)
Wiedemann, T., Cicero and the End of the Roman Republic (Bristol 1994)
Wood, N., Cicero's Social and Political Thought (Berkeley 1991)
Van der Blom, H., Cicero’s Role Models. The Political Strategy of a Newcomer
(Oxford 2010)
- On Caligula and Claudius Balsdon, J.P.V.D., The Emperor Gaius (Caligula) (Oxford 1934)
Barrett, A.A., Caligula: The Corruption of Power (London 1989)
Ferrill, A., Caligula: Emperor of Rome (London 1991)
Winterling, A., Caligula: a Biography (Berkeley 2011)
Hurley, D. (ed.), Suetonius: Divus Claudius (Cambridge 2001)
Levick, B., Claudius (London 1990)
Momigliano, A., Claudius : The Emperor and His Achievement (Cambridge 1961)
Osgood, J., Claudius Caesar: Image and Power in the Early Roman Empire
(Cambridge/New York 2011)
Scramuzza, V.M., The Emperor Claudius (Cambridge, Mass. 1940)
Griffin, M.T., 'The Lyons tablet and Tacitean hindsight', CQ 32 (1982), 404-18
Macalindon, D., 'Senatorial Opposition to Claudius and Nero', AJPh 77 (1956), 11332