LFU:online

We will focus on basic problems of Roman history discussing main sources as well as basic debates in research.

Greg Woolfs, Rome. An Empire's Story (Oxford 2012) can be used as an English textbook. Approaches in research (e.g. "Romanisation") and basic sources will be focused.

The Roman World was not a homogeneous zone of Romanness, although it tended to present itself that way, in opposition to the surrounding ‘Barbarians’. It incorporated pre-existing regional, ethnic and civic identities and transformed them. When the Roman empire eroded in the 5th–7th centuries, new identities complemented the provincial ones in a dynamic process in which newly-defined peoples and regions began to emerge.

The spread of Roman civilization in Italy and the provinces of the Roman Empire – ‘Romanization’ – was seen as an acceptance of something like a Roman ethnicity by local populations, or as a phenomenon of migration. A variety of processes of change was successively labeled with the term although from one study to another the parameters vary considerably. Romanization was never a clear cultural, political, economic or social development nor ever completed, and several critical approaches have been published yet. The first phase affected only local elites or military personnel, large parts of the population may have lived in structures similar to pre-Roman conditions or those in the Barbaricum. Roman identity was taken for granted or even used politically. Romanness remained until 212 a concept of elites. The frontiers and the Roman army have to be taken into consideration as melting pots delivering identities.

Lecture using PowerPoint

Written exam