PROGRAMME 2021-2022

A) GENERAL PART
Archaic Latium and the birth of Rome; the myths of the origins; the age of kings; the birth of the Republic and the Roman constitution; the last century of the Republic and the civil wars; the Augustan principality; the first two centuries of imperial history; the crisis of the 3rd century; the great reformers: Aurelian, Diocletian, Constantine; the 4th century and Christian Rome; Romans and barbarians; the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

B) IN-DEPTH MONOGRAPHIC STUDY
Kings, lands and borders

The places and stories of the beginnings tell of a Rome that was born plural, thanks to the contribution of allogenic elements, which, contrary to the traditional logic of identity, saw otherness as a resource rather than a threat. Far from being a source of embarrassment, as anti-Roman Greek propaganda wanted, the myth of the Asylum opened by Romulus for slaves and fugitives on the Capitoline Hill at the dawn of the city, was for the Romans the cornerstone on which to build their self-representation, but also an ethical inspiration that guided their relations with others, those who were not yet Romans but could have become so. In fact, this tradition is linked to another one, known through Plutarch, according to which the first king, after endless wars with neighbouring communities, deliberately did not mark the limits of his conquests, thus leaving the boundaries of his territory 'open'. This approach reflects a well attested motif among the poets and historians of the Augustan age: for those who lived at the time when Rome had become caput mundi, it was easy to convince themselves that such a destiny had been written ab origine in the fates of the Roman people, by the hand of its own founder. Although the two "myths", that of the Asylum and that of the conquests sine fine, seem to embody divergent, opposing values of Romanity, on closer inspection they turn out to be perfectly congruent, reflecting, from different angles, the same image: that of an "extrovert" city, eternally projected outwards, proud of its promiscuous origins and which, by virtue of this belief, could conceive of the entire ecumene as its natural space. If Rome's borders, as Ovid repeated, were destined to coincide with those of the world, it was not only because of its military power, but because the whole world had always found a welcome in Rome.

PROGRAMMA PER STUDENTI FREQUENTANTI

1) Giovanni Geraci e Arnaldo Marconi, Storia romana (con la collaborazione di A. Cristofori e C. Salvaterra), Mondadori, Milano 2016 (quarta edizione).
2) G. De Sanctis, La religione a Roma, Carocci, Roma 2012.
3) G. De Sanctis, Roma prima di Roma. Miti e fondazioni della città eterna, Roma 2021.
4) Materiale didattico illustrato a lezione.

GLI STUDENTI CHE NON POTRANNO SEGUIRE LE LEZIONI E QUELLI ISCRITTI A SOSTENERE L'ESAME DI STORIA ROMANA COME CORSO SINGOLO, IN SOSTITUZIONE DEL MATERIALE DIDATTICO DI CUI AL PUNTO 4), SCEGLIERANNO UNO DEI SEGUENTI VOLUMI:

M. Beard, SPQR. Storia dell’antica Roma, Mondadori, Milano 2016 (ed. or. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, 2015, Profile Books, London 2015);
P. Brown, Il mondo tardoantico. Da Marco Aurelio a Maometto, Einaudi, Torino 2017.
P. Buongiorno, Claudio, il principe inatteso, 21 Editore, Palermo 2017.
L. Canfora, Giulio Cesare. Il dittatore democratico, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2006.
F. Dupont, La vita quotidiana nella Roma repubblicana, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2000.
L. Fezzi, Il dado è tratto. Cesare e la resa di Roma, Laterza 2017
A. Fraschetti, Romolo, il fondatore, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2002.
A. Giardina (a cura di), L’uomo romano, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2006.
A. Giardina (a cura di), Roma antica, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2008.
A. Marcone, Augusto. Il fondatore dell’impero che cambiò la storia di Roma e del mondo, Salerno, Roma 2015.
A. McClintock (a cura di), Storia mitica del diritto romano, Il Mulino, Bologna 2020
S. Mazzarino, La fine del mondo antico, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2008.

M. Lentano, Lucrezia. Vita e morte di una matrona romana, Carocci 2012.
F. Santangelo, Roma repubblicana. Una storia in quaranta vite, Carocci 2019.
R. Syme, La rivoluzione romana, Einaudi, Torino 2020.
P. Veyne, L’impero greco-romano. Le radici del mondo globale, Rizzoli, Milano 2007 (ed. or. L’empire gréco-romain, Seuil, Paris 2005).


Vivamente consigliata per TUTTI gli studenti è la consultazione di un atlante storico del mondo antico. A titolo meramente orientativo si segnalano:

M. Baratta-P. Fraccaro et al., Atlante storico, Istituto geografico De Agostini, Novara 1979;
H. Bengston-V. Milojcic, Großer historischer Weltatlas, I. Teil (Vorgeschichte und Altertum), Bayerischer Schulbuch-Verlag, München 1978;
R. J. A. Talbert, Atlas of Classical History, Routledge, London 1985.