Lecture in Ancient History II [2900-HAMC-K1-ANH-KL] Semestr letni 2023/24
Wykład, grupa nr 1

Compiling a student-oriented English modern bibliography on Roman history is not easy. Anglo-Saxon historiography – in spite of a number of first-rate monographies – long dragged behind (some would say: still drags behind) its Continental counterparts, and there are no good English textbooks. The present list is a very personal choice of works of different categories broadly covering Rome’s political, social and economic history from the Early Iron Age beginnings (10th century B.C.) to the sudden near collapse of the greatest empire the Western oikumene has ever seen in the 3rd century A.C.

Cambridge Ancient History 2 , Cambridge. 7.2: The Rise of Rome to 220 B.C. (1990), 8: Rome and the Mediterranean to 133 B.C. (1989), 9: The Last Age of the Roman Republic, 146 – 43 B.C. (1994), 10: The Augustan Empire, 43 B.C. – A.D. 69 (1996), 11: The High Empire, A.D. 70– 192 (2000); 12: The Crisis of Empire, A.D. 193 – 337 (2005). (classic, all-embracing, very uneven)

M. Beard, J. North, S. Price, Religions of Rome, Cambridge 1998. (indispensable for English-speakers though overpraised: too little substance, too much modern talk)

P. A. Brunt, The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays, Oxford 1988. (epoch-making)

T. J. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome. Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000–264 BC), London–New York 1995. (the best you can find in English)

M. Crawford, The Roman Republic, Glasgow 1978. (very good, a bit too concise)

P. Garnsey, R. Saller, The Roman Empire. Economy, Society and Culture, Berkeley–Los Angeles 1987. (very good but slightly dated)

M. Gelzer, Caesar, Politician and Statesman, Oxford 1968. (originally published in 1921 but still the best)

W. V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome: 327 – 70 B.C., Oxford 1985.

(revolutionary, at least in the so-called Western historiography)

J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Continuity and Change in Roman Religion, Oxford 1979. (a bird’s eye view of problems signalled in the title)

J. Linderski, The Roman Questions. Selected Papers, Stuttgart 1995. (includes some of the most important texts ever written on Republican Rome)

A. K. Michels, The Calendar of the Roman Republic, Princeton 1967. (the best introduction to the vilest calendar humanity ever devised)

F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World, Ithaca NY 1977. (grand and irreplaceable)

K. Raaflaub (ed.), Social Struggles in Archaic Rome. New Perspectives on the Conflict of the Orders, Berkeley–Los Angeles 1986 1 , Oxford 2005 2 . (a panorama of modern views on the inner history of Early and Middle Republic)

J. Rich, G. Shipley (eds), War and Society in the Roman World, London–New York 1993. (various aspects of the Romans’ experience of and attitude to war)

J. Richardson, Hispaniae: Spain and the Development of Roman Imperialism, Cambridge 1986. (an analysis of a key aspect of Republican Rome’s history)

R. Syme, The Roman Revolution, Oxford 1939 1 (plus many others). (perhaps the most famous and most controversial – justly so on both accounts – twentieth-century book on Roman history)

R. J. A. Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome, Princeton 1984. (an exhaustive treatment of the institution which made the Roman Empire fundamentally different from others)

1. Early Republic (509–396/390 B.C.): becoming historical. Roman society in the 5th c.; political institutions and the public religion; patricians, plebeians and the conflict of the orders; Rome and its neighbours: the Roman–Latin–Hernician alliance till the conquest of Veii and the Gallic catastrophe.

2. Middle Republic I (390–287 B.C.): the making of the machine of imperial expansion and the conquest of Italy. The socio-economic revolution; the political revolution; the Republican social contract and the birth of imperial mentality.

3. Middle Republic II (287–133 B.C.): Rome the super-power. The conquest of hegemony in the Mediterranean: prelude – the war with Pyrrhos; the Punic Wars and their consequences; the easiest of conquests – Rome and the Hellenistic world; forms of control and exploitation of the Republican empire.

4. Middle Republic: society and state. (a) The profits of the empire and their distribution; new economic opportunities; the symptoms of the incoming crisis – abandonment of land and draft-dodging. (b) The Middle Republic – monarchy, aristocracy or democracy?

5. The Roman revolution and the fall of the Republic (133–42/30 B.C.). (a) The Gracchi brothers and the break of the Republican social contract; the spiral of violence from mass lynching to the first civil war. (b) The Sullan régime: a decaying oligarchy vs. warlords, street-fighters and agrarian unrest; Pompeius vs. Caesar and the second civil war; Caesar the dictator and his murder; the third civil war: Caesarians vs. Caesaricides and the end of the Republic; from triumvirate to monarchy.

6. Augustus and the making of the principate. (a) Constitution of a monarchy as restitution of the republic; the dynastic principle vs. the choice of the best; running the Empire: political estates. (b) Emperor and his army: from citizens’ militia to professional armed forces; the puzzle of imperial expansion under the Empire?

7. The heyday of the Empire. (a) Imperial society and its evolution: romanisation, the final Graeco-Roman period of the classical civilisation, the spread of Christianity. (b) Pax Romana, its glories and pitfalls.

8. The crisis of the Empire (A.D. 235–284). Barbarians, Persians, soldier-emperors and usurpers, or plagues and climatic changes: what went wrong?

Lecture

No more than 3 absences in the semester are allowed. Absences 2 and 3 may result in additional assignments.

Final written test.