Seminar Description

In the first book of his philosophical treatise de Officiis, Cicero proclaims: "At the very beginning each of us must establish both who and what kind of a person we want to be and in what manner of life: a decision that is of all things the most difficult," (1.117). This sentence virtually epitomizes the topic of our proposed seminar. During five weeks in Rome we will be investigating some of the complexities of Cicero's seemingly open-ended pronouncement for Romans seeking to establish an identity within the sub-cultures of late Republican and early Imperial Rome (second-century B.C. - second century A.D.). The trenchant social and cultural issues that the seminar addresses should prove as relevant to the twenty-first century as they were in ancient Rome. How does the desire of the Roman individual for preserving a lasting memory stack up against Andy Warhol's notorious "fifteen minutes of fame"? What is the usefulness of Roman self-representation for our postmodern society with its obsessive interest in celebrities ? Although those at the very bottom of society had fewer, if any, choices about the identity in which they were born, some were clever at disguising the facts of birth.

Identity in ancient Rome has been generally defined in terms of the legal requirements and responsibilities of citizenship and the dominant values of the elites. In recent years, the focus has increasingly turned to the lower social orders. There is a tendency in the scholarship to assume the elite point of view and emphasize distinctions of status that were imposed from above, rather than to consider how individuals positioned themselves in relation to societal norms and created subcultures in the markets or workshops of Rome based on shared identities, common economic interests, and alternate systems for accruing status. The seminar investigates the reciprocal relationship between self and society among the groups that have been underrepresented in more traditional histories of Rome (but also looks to the models provided by elites). With an eye to contemporary concerns for identity politics and issues of diversity, we explore how imperial ideology affected individuals of varying ranks and backgrounds in terms of self-representation.

The seminar addresses issues crucial to both the ancient and modern worlds: how do people project a sense of themselves and their values in the transactions of everyday life and in more significant projects, such as the design of a home or the commemoration of the dead? Self-representation and the fashioning of personality have become important in our public realm; this is no less evident in ancient Rome where clothing, carriage, and gait, what we may term elements of style or lifestyle, clearly demarcated social rank and gave visual form to social identity. Yet the mixing of high and low informs the cultural horizon of soldiers and clerks. Does the adoption of high styles by those massed in the lower orders indicate common cultural allegiances or merely the manipulation of status markers? To explore these issues, Roman texts conveying elite codes of conduct and standards for self-presentation in the public performances of oratory are consulted. We see these separate but related communities as subcultures that can be reconstructed via ancient literary, historical and archaeological sources. In particular, the rich visual and material culture of art and archaeology provides a field for the businesspeople and bureaucrats of Rome to represent themselves, to fashion their own culture. For other citizens, especially in the provinces and along the frontiers, the artistic styles of the capital meant little. These questions lead to larger issues of culture and its styles: do we better appreciate culture if it appears purely "authentic" or if it is savvy in its borrowings from external sources? Does culture give coherent form to aspects of social life? Can its motifs reveal an individual's aspirations and identity within the dominant modes?

The seminar opens out to explore other vital concerns of classical scholars: the interplay of private and public life. The structures of everyday life depended on the subjects' livelihood, their neighborhood, their cohorts, and habits of mind. Within the deeply ingrained patterns of everyday life, the processes and relationships that form a community and enliven the urban scene also defined the self and shaped identity. Memorial practices, of considerable significance in interdisciplinary studies in the humanities, served to define lives and bring families and colleagues together in solemn remembrance. The grand processions of aristocratic funerals that featured masked actors impersonating revered ancestors provided spectacular tableaux of history. That even humble subjects were remembered by simple epitaphs or gravemarkers allows us to consider the importance of commemoration. On the one hand, the culture of ancient Rome reflected a hierarchical society bound by strict codes of conduct and exclusionary career paths (determined by high birth and honor rather than merit); on the other hand, the empire had a tolerance for the assimilation of select foreigners and disenfranchised groups deemed useful to its purposes.

As the seminar progresses, we will be working to define and identify the various groups and subcultures of the lower social orders. Too often classified under the broad heading of the "non-elite," they are characterized by what they are not: the elite orders of senators and equestrians. Instead, we would like to differentiate among them according to their rhetoric, images and possessions, examining how they chose to present themselves to their constituencies (what each group contributes to its society, rather than what it lacks from an aristocratic perspective). While sorting out the occupations, trades, and bureaucratic posts, we hope to add nuance to the terminology, which ranges from the inaccurate (the Roman "middle-class") to the cumbersome.

An additional aim of our enterprise will be a full evaluation of the sources of evidence for subcultures. Too often literary scholars shy away from visual images, and art historians ignore inscriptions, etc. By drawing on a wider variety of source materials, we can trace the social contours that commonly remain invisible. The funerary art and tombs of freedmen are well-studied, but other types of artifacts, such as children's toys, women's grooming implements or the mess kits of soldiers, point to social norms, ideals and other factors that affect the formation of identity. Although such artifacts of material culture are sometimes co-opted as illustrations of everyday life in ancient Rome, we would like to ask more particular questions about the objects' materials, form and styles, and inscriptions in order to analyze their social functions and meanings for those who owned them.

In studying such artifacts we will be helping our participants to expand the repertory of visual images and material culture at their disposal for classroom use. This goal can be readily accomplished through visits to museums, collections, and archaeological sites that allow participants to photograph unpublished or poorly published objects for study and teaching. At sites such as Pompeii or Ostia, we also have the contexts of works of art or archaeological objects; in other cases, the works have been long removed from their original settings, so research allows for the possibility of reconstructing the settings and the lives of the owners. Both the trips (in Rome and beyond) and the time spent in quiet study in the invaluable library of the American Academy in Rome build a sense of intellectual community among the participants, a fitting element for a seminar devoted to investigating the social worlds of the ancient city.