CLASS 3724 - [Death in the Roman Empire]

(crosslisted) ARKEO 3724, ARTH 3724, RELST 3724
(HB) (CA-AS)

Spring. Not offered 2015-2016. 4 credits.

V. Platt, A. Alexandridis.

This co-taught class will explore Roman culture from the late Republic to Late Antiquity through the lens of death and remembrance. We will focus on visual, epigraphic and literary evidence for the ways in which different social groups dealt with loss and mortality and used the context of the tomb to express their social, ethnic, religious and familial identities, both for themselves and to society at large. As well as focusing on Roman Italy, we will explore the blending of Roman and local funerary traditions in diverse contexts within the empire, from the province of Britannia to the Egyptian Fayum and Syrian Palmyra. In addition to the themes of burial ritual, funerary portraiture, the use of mythological and religious iconography, and the influence of Roman traditions upon early Christian burial practices, we will explore the wider significance of death in Roman culture, including the display of death as spectacle in the arena, the impact of imperial funerary monuments upon the urban landscape, and the notion of the “good death” in the Roman moral tradition. The class will be a mixture of lecture and seminar, i.e. students are required to present short papers.