Seminar Schedule

For the five weeks’ duration of the seminar, we will meet for three mornings each week. Monday and Thursday meetings will be discussion meetings in our Academy seminar space; on Wednesdays we will head into the city for museum visits or out of town on an all day trip. The half-day or full-day field trips will be on the weekly schedule for weeks 1-3 & 5. The four day trip to sites in Campania will take place during week 4. The schedule follows the outline of topics beginning with definitions of identity in terms of self and community, the family and memory, the subcultures of occupations and work, and case studies in the Italian towns and far-flung provinces and frontiers. There will be occasions for participants to report on their research on site or in the Academy seminar room (we may need to schedule extra meetings near the end for these reports). On other days, select participants may volunteer to lead discussions on topics of significance to their research.

At the beginning of the seminar, participants will consult individually with the co-directors about their own research projects. The co-directors will remain involved with the individual projects throughout the seminar, offering appropriate advice and support when necessary.

Week I | Week II | Week III | Week IV | Week V

Week I: Establishing Roman Identities; Faces for Self and Community

Our seminar discussions during this initial week will introduce both practical and theoretical matters for investigation. We will ask how Romans establish membership within their communities, how they view themselves and how they attempt to program the ways in which they are externally viewed. Who does define the Roman self? The individual or the community? Some provocative readings in Pierre Bourdieu’s Language and Symbolic Power and Outline of a Theory of Practice along with the social theory of Erving Goffman’s Frame Analysis will provide a basis for identifying internalized conduct patterns and measures of status. Chapters and essays from Corbeill, Flower, McDonnell and others analyze ways in which Romans talk about their cultural codes.

A variety of readings in Roman sources will provide some of the theoretical side of Roman thought. Cicero’s de Officiis, the philosophically grounded prescript for conduct becoming to an ambitious Roman will focus some aspects of self-consciousness. In Cicero’s presentation of the oratorical persona in his de Oratore one may see an articulated theory of rhetorical self-presentation that can be extended to many aspects of the Roman public image. Selections from letters of Cicero and the younger Pliny as well as some lyric poems of Catullus offer more personal Roman ways of talking about oneself.

Our Wednesday field expedition will take in the collections of sculpture, painting and mosaics in the Palazzo Massimo and Centro Montemartini so as to raise questions about the visual culture of Rome and public representation in terms of style. In preparation for our readings in Tanner and Smith during the following week, we will focus especially on portraits from disparate social constituencies and on contexts for reading them. The seminar leaders will also meet with seminar participants individually to discuss their research projects.

Ancient Source Readings:
Cicero, Letters to Atticus, 1-7; 18; ad familiares 1.1-7; 2.8-13; 3.4-10; Cicero on Duties, M. Griffin and E.M. Atkins, ed. Book I. 61-140; Catullus, Poems 1;10;12;14; 22;39;41;49;84. Pliny the Younger, Letters 1.8; 1.14; 2.1.

Contemporary Interpretive Readings:
1. Bourdieu, Pierre, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. G. Raymond and M. Adamson (Cambridge, MA 1991), Chapter 7, “On Symbolic Power,” pp. 163-179.
2. Bourdieu, P., "Structures and the Habitus," from Outline of a Theory of Practice in Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology (1977), pp. 72-95.
3. Corbeill, Anthony, Nature Embodied: Gesture in Rome (Princeton 2003), Chapter 4, “Political Movement: Walking and Identity in Republican Rome,” pp. 107-149.
4. Flower, Harriet I., "Spectacle and Political Culture in the Roman Republic," in H. I. Flower, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic (Cambridge 2004), pp. 322- 46.
5. Gill, Christopher, “Personhood and Personality,” The Four Persona Theory in Cicero de Officiis I, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 6(1998), pp. 169-199.
6. Goffman, Erving, Frame Analysis (Cambridge MA 1974), Selections.
7. Hebdige, Dick, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Routledge, London/ New York, 1998), pp. 5-19;100-133.
8. McDonnell. Myles, Roman Manliness: Virtus and the Roman Republic, (Cambridge, 2006) Chapter 4, “The Visual Representation of Virtus,” pp. 142-158.
9. Rawson, E., Intellectual Life in the late Roman Republic (London 1985), Chapters 5-6, “Intellectuals in Rome I-II,” pp. 66-99.

Week II: Family, Community and Memory:

For Romans family structure is a primary context for self-representation although the manner and contexts for representation differ greatly across the social spectrum. Members of previously distinguished families seek to compete with their own family records. A passage in Cicero’s de Officiis spells out the kind of conduct burden that this places upon members. Polybius and other ancient historians tell of the great public funerals of such persons which included a manner of historical pageant, a procession in which surviving male relatives donned the masks of their ancestors so that the living and the dead joined together to celebrate the glory of their lineage. From recent studies by Harriet Flower and Sorcha Carey we can learn a great deal about these remarkable spectacles including how ancestral masks, made of wax, were kept within the atrium where guests were received to impress these persons with the prestige of the house. Although no ancestor masks have survived we know that aristocratic habits of commemoration favored the portrait bust or statue to evoke the ethos of leadership through specific physiognomic features. Articles by RRR Smith and J. Tanner offer sharply contrasting interpretations of the ideology of this late Republican physiogmonic style.

Statues of family members displayed in such public places as the Forum or Capitoline Hill were a matter of pride. Quite the opposite manner for individuals without such traditions, such as the freedperson class (discussed in recent publications by Lauren Petersen) that comprises the core of Roman non-elite society, funerary monuments provided honor and often with a display of faces emphasizing unity. Eve D’Ambra presents some examples of this form of memory in her article, “Acquiring an Ancestor”. The work of funerary art ensured that the individuals lived on in memory and occasionally refer to the very acts of commemoration as we will see during the week’s field trip to the Museo Civico of Aquileia which houses the famous Amiternum relief as well as many other items exemplifying the public identities of citizens.

Elite families also had the possibility of representing their communal status through large scale gifts and donations. The second destination for the week’s full day field trip will be modern Casino (ancient Casinum) where the civic donations of the Ummidii (theater and amphitheater) as well as inscriptions will show us what a prominent and prosperous elite family well known to the Younger Pliny could contribute to the shape of a town.

Ancient Text Readings:
Polybius, Roman History, 6.53-54; Horace, Odes 1. 12; Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, Book 6 Intro-6; Younger Pliny 3.3; 35; 7.18; 7.24; 9.22.

Contemporary Interpretive Readings:
10. Carey, Sorcha, Pliny’s Catalogue of Culture: Art and Empire in the Natural History, (Oxford, 2003), Chapter 6, “Imaging Memory,” pp. 138-178.
11. D' Ambra, E., "Acquiring an Ancestor: the Importance of Funerary Statuary among the Non-Elite Orders of Rome," in J.M. Hojte, ed., Images of Ancestors (Aarhus 2002), pp. 223-246.
12. Dixon, Susanne, The Roman Family, (Baltimore, 1992), Chapter 1, “In Search of the Roman Family,” pp. 1-24.
13. Flower, H.I., "Were Women ever Ancestors in Republican Rome?" in J.M. Hojte, ed., Images of Ancestors (Aarhus 2002), pp. 159-184.
14. -------------Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture (Oxford 1996). Chapter 7, “Ancestors at Home: Imagines in the Atrium,” pp. 185-222.
15.. Hope, Valerie, Constructing Identity: The Roman Funerary Monuments of Aquileia, Mainz, and Nimes. BAR Int'l. Series 960 (Oxford 2001).
16. Smith, R.R.R., "Greeks, Foreigners and Roman Republican Portraits," JRS 71 (1981), pp. 24-38. Smith, C.J., The Roman Clan: the Gens from Ancient Ideology to Modern Anthropology, (Cambridge, 2006), Selection.
17. Tanner, Jeremy, "Portraits, Power and Patronage in the late Republic," JRS 90 (2000), pp. 18- 50.

Week III: Self and Occupation:

This week continues our focus on the lives of non-elite individuals through representations of their occupations or status. The famous banquet sequence in Petronius’ picaresque Satiricon, simulates the conversations of freedpersons about their lives and their occupations. Some of the persons about whom Statius writes in his “occasional poems” the Silvae are freedmen who have prospered materially within the social world, but are, all the same living within the limitations imposed upon their class. Much of the material evidence for these matters occurs in funerary contexts. Joshel’s Work, Identity and Legal Status reveals a great deal about real-life working individuals by means of their self-representation in the form of inscriptions, particularly epitaphs that honored workers or entrepreneurs in their own terms, but many tombs also present images of the occupations of which the owners were proud, as the images of Ostian working women presented by Kampen, the relief frieze that encircles the tomb of the baker, even such mythological allusions as D’Ambra discusses in “Myth for a Smith.”

With reference to John Clarke’s Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans we can consider the difficulties presented by some of this evidence: the social “invisibility” of working people and how archaeologists and art historians handle material culture, as opposed to the monuments of high art) the issue of artistic quality versus artiginal skills in the art they commissioned and the problem of imitation of elite practices.

The week’s major trip will be to the port area of Ostia where we will visit the tombs of working people in the Isola Sacra Necropolis, and then the reliefs, portrait sculpture and inscriptions in the Museum. A morning trip to the Vatican Museum will let us study the famous tomb reliefs of the freedmen Haterii, but also the vico magistri relief, and the commemoration of a circus victory featuring the sponsor and chariot driver. Participants may also wish to visit the Museum of Roman Culture at EUR for a close-up of the relief sequence of the baker and his tomb.

Ancient Text Readings:
Petronius, Satiricon, Cena Trimalchionis; Nagle, Betty Rose, The Silvae of Statius, translated with notes and introduction, Bloomington, Indiana 2004. Poems 2.6; 3.2;3.3;4.4.

Contemporary Interpretive Readings:
17. Clarke, John, Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representations and Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C. - A.D. 315, (Berkeley, 2003).
18. Coarelli, F., "Public Building in Rome between the Second Punic War and Sulla," PBSR 45 (1977), pp. 1-23. 19. D' Ambra, Eve, "A Myth for a Smith: A Meleager Sarcophagus from a Tomb in Ostia," AJA 92 (1988), pp. 85-100, 311.
20. George, Michele, "A Roman Funerary Monument with a Mother and Daughter," in S. Dixon, ed., Childhood; Class and Kin in the Roman World (London and New York 2001), pp. 178-89.
21. Fitzgerald, William, Slavery and the Roman Literary Imagination, (Cambridge 2000), Chapter 5, “Enslavement and Metamorphosis,” pp. 87-114.
22. Hackworth Peterson, Lauren. The Freedman in Roman Art and Art History (Cambridge, 2006).
23. Hesberg, Henner von, and Paul Zanker, eds., Romische Graberstrassen: Selbstdarstellung, Status, Standard. Kolloquium in München vom 28. Bis 30. Oktober 1985 (Munich 1987).
24. Joshel, Sandra, R., Work, Identity, and Legal Status in Rome: A Study of the Occupational Inscriptions (Norman, Oklahoma 1992), Chapter 2, “Slavery, Freedom and the Construction of Identity”, pp. 25-61; Chapter 3, “The Meaning of Work,” pp. 62-91.
25. Kampen, Natalie B., Image and Status: Roman Working Women in Ostia (Berlin 1981).
26. Koortbojian, M., "In commemorationem mortuorum: Text and Image along the 'Street of Tombs," in J. Elsner, ed., Art and Text in Roman Culture (Cambridge 1996), pp. 210-33.
27. Petersen, Lauren H., "The Baker, His Tomb, His Wife, and Her Breadbasket: The Monument of Eurysaces in Rome," Art Bulletin 75 (1993), pp. 230-57.
28. Susini, Giancarlo, "Spelling out along the Road: Anthropology of the Ancient Reader, or, rather, the Roman Reader," Alma Mater Studiorum 1,1 (1988), pp. 117-24.

Week IV: The Individual and Society Outside Rome:

Although not genuinely miniature versions of Rome the city, the Romanized municipal communities of Campania can bring us into a uniquely close and comprehensive relationship with the actualities of ancient occupations and pastimes in a social spectrum ranging from magistrates to craftsmen, commodity producers and even gladiators (Kohne, E. and Ewigleben, C., eds., Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome). In his Commerce and Social Standing, John D’Arms provides informative insights into dynamic interactions among classes across this spectrum from extra-urban villa property to shop ownership.

In the Castle Museum at Baiae, and later in Herculaneum, we will see inscriptions and actual ambiences associated with the socially important institution of the Augustales, societies of wealthy freedmen co-opted into public munificence, as discussed both by D’Arms and by Ostrow. In our stop at the Boscoreale Museum, we can see a wealth of real-life evidence for these activities in the form of practical instruments for craft and production and commerce in an informatively organized display housing built in immediate proximity to the completed excavation of a small working farm property.

Within Pompeii itself seminar members can visit some houses belonging to families whose political fortunes Franklin has detailed in Pompeiis difficile est. Readings in K. Milnor’s Gender and Domesticity and E. Leach’s Social Life of Painting assist the Pompeian visitor to critique the Vitruvian concept of an “ideal house” on the basis of actual evidence and will introduce both theoretical and practical views of architectural self-presentation by considering the spatial conformation of houses and other building types such as shops and taverns and its relationship with mural decoration. Comparative views of municipal culture can be seen at Paestum where the recently installed display of inscriptions, portraits and other material from Roman Paestum in coordination with the excavated remains of Roman municipal buildings will provide insights into office holding and benefactions in a compact civic unit.

The trip will begin with a hired bus. Traveling first to the Campi Flegrei, the group will make its first stop at the Castel Museum of Baiae to observe social display on two levels: both the Augustales and the family and symbolic statuary in an luxury dining room of the emperor Claudius, discovered under water two decades ago. The Boscoreale Museum will be the second stop leaving the group at Pompeii. The regional Circumvesuviana railroad provides easy access to Naples and other sites on the coastline, and Paestum also can efficiently be reached by the Ferrovia Statale. At the conclusion of the trip participants will be free for independent sight-seeing if desired before returning to Rome by train.

Ancient Text Readings:
Younger Pliny, 4.13; 4.22; 5.6; Statius Silvae 2.2;3.1;3.5.

Contemporary Interpretive Readings:
29. Dench, Emma, “Images of Italian Austerity from Cato to Tacitus” in Cebillac-Gervasoni, Mireille, Les Élites municipales de l’Italie péninsulare des Gracques à Neron, Rome (1996), pp. 247-254.
30. D’Arms, John, Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, Mass. 1981), Chapter 4, “Luxury, Productivity and Decline: Villa Society and the Bay of Naples,” pp. 72-96; Chapter 6, “The Freedmen of Puteoli and Ostia in Imperial Economy and Society,” pp. 121-148.
31. Duro, P., ed., The Rhetoric of the Frame. Essays on the Boundaries of the Artwork (Cambridge 1996).
32. Franklin, James L., Pompeiis difficile est: The Political Life of Imperial Pompeii (Ann Arbor, 2001), selections according to interest.
33. Hall, S., "The Question of Cultural Identity," in S. Hall, D. Held, and T. McGrew, eds., Modernity and its Futures (Cambridge 1992), pp. 273-325.
34. Hales, Shelley, The Roman House and Social Identity (Cambridge 2003), Chapter 1, “The Ideal House,” pp. 1-31.
35. Henderson, M., ed., Borders, Boundaries and Frames: Essays on Cultural Criticisms and Cultural Theory (London 1995).
36. Kohne, E. and Ewigleben, C., eds., Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome (Berkeley 2000).
37. Leach, E. W., The Social Life of Painting in Ancient Rome and on the Bay of Naples (Cambridge 2004), Chapter 6, "Demography and Decoration," pp.
38. Milnor, Kristina, Gender, Domesticity and the Age of Augustus: Inventing Private Life. (Cambridge, 2006), Chapter 2, “Other Men’s Wives: Domesticity and Display in Vitruvius’ de Architectura,” pp. 94-139
39. Ostrow, Steven, “Augustales along the Bay of Naples: A Case for their Early Growth,” Historia 34: 64-101

Week V: Beyond the Borders:

For its final week the seminar will take up the problem of Roman identity as it came in contact with alien cultures. In recent years the topic has become a very popular field for research. Studies by a variety of scholars will show “Romanization” both from the citizen and the foreign point of view (Woolf, Becoming Roman). Ancient literature shows us a diverse and contradictory spectrum of opinions. From even before the second century B.C., Romans traveling within the eastern Mediterranean experienced contacts with Hellenism as an example of a intensely developed literary and artistic culture.
With the expansion of empire, both governmental and social encounters increased in complexity, while the appeal of foreign imports progressed from material objects and symbols to eastern cults with exotic rites or deities (Turcan Cults of the Roman Empire). While the Augustan era poet Ovid deplores his state of exile among the “barbarians” on the Black Sea and the satirical writer Juvenal scathingly protests the presence of ethnic elements in Rome. Pliny reminds a friend departing for a governorship in Achaia of the dignity of Greek culture and his friend Tacitus considers the cultural effects of Romanization in Britain. The narrator of Apuleius’ Golden Ass suffers cultural disorientation in his travels, but adopts the religion of Isis at the conclusion of his adventures.
Less extravagantly, the second century with its flourishing rhetorical culture of the Second Sophistic sees the re-emergence of the Greek philosopher and intellectual as social types to mark intense interest in learning and introspection (Goldhill, ed. Being Greek under Rome), extending most famously to such emperors as Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. But aside from the lure of cults and highbrow culture, Romans saw images of foreigners on triumphal monuments that featured the defeated or degraded enemies of the empire, as for instance on the bases of the Forum’s Severan arch. From the proud bearers of ethnic origins to the chained prisoners of war, the other appeared in various forms in Roman art and thought (Ferris Enemies of Rome). The seminar can visit the two arches within the city and the triumphal monuments of Trajan and the Antonines. In the area of cult, they can visit the shrine of Mithras on the Aventine and the Egyptianizing sculpture in the Capitoline Museum, as well as the museum’s gallery housing the busts of philosopher, and the reliefs depicting personified provinces from the Hadrianeum.

Ancient Text Readings:
Catullus, poem 63; Ovid Poems from Exile, Book 1.1; 3; Book 3. 10-12; Younger Pliny Letters 8.24; Tacitus, Agricola,; Apuleius Golden Ass, Books 11-12

Contemporary Interpretive Readings:
40. Ferris, I. M., Enemies of Rome (London 2000).
41. Edwards, C. and Woolf, G., eds., Rome the Cosmopolis (Cambridge 2003).
42. Goldhill, S., ed., Being Greek under Rome (Cambridge 2001), Chapter “Cultural Identity: The Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire,” pp. ??
43. Laurence, R. and J. Berry, eds., Cultural Identity in the Roman Empire (London and New York, 1998)
44. Rose, C.B., "The Imperial Image in the Eastern Mediterranean," in S. Alcock, ed., The Early Roman Empire in the East (Oxford 1997) pp. 108-20.
45. Webster, Jane, “Art as Resistance and Negotiation” in Scott, Sarah and Jane Webster, eds, Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art (Cambridge 2003) pp. 29-51.
46. Turcan, Robert, The Cults of the Roman Empire, trans. A. Nevill (Oxford 1996), selections according to interest.
47. Woolf, Greg, Becoming Roman (Cambridge 1998), Chapter 1, “On Romanization,” pp.1-23.