HISTORY OF CLASSICAL WORLD
Academic year and teacher
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2020/2021
- Teacher
- ATTILIO MASTROCINQUE
- Credits
- 6
- Didactic period
- Primo Semestre
- SSD
- L-ANT/03
Training objectives
- The course is aimed at improving the students’ knowledge of the birth of the imperial organization in Rome under Augustus, the fundamental principles which it was based on, the dialectics between it and non-Romans between it and the precedent republican system. The analysis will focus on texts and documents concerning the most important historical transitions and the institutional changes.
Critical analyses of documentary sources (either archaeological or literary or epigraphical) will be proposed to the students. This analysis is meant to allow students to distinguish and understand the peculiar features of the different kinds of documentation and subsequently, to put them in comparison one to another; it is also meant to single out and describe the principles which the Roman social life was based on, and know the gods who sponsored the fundamentals of the social life. Another aim is that of making understand the reasons why the bases of the social life in the Roman world had been discarded during the 1st century BC.
Students will be able to evaluate autonomously some testimonies to Roman history by means of comparisons between different authors or between authors and different kinds of documentation, in order to evaluate the reliability of each document.
Students are expected to improve their communication skill by expressing their opinions or even their doubts concerning the dealt topics and by receiving answers and directions about how to organize their speech.
The understanding skill should be improved, as well, by means of a critical reading of historical texts and the study of images of monuments and other iconographies.
At the end of the teaching activities a student should be able to show that he has understood the most important problems discussed in the classes, that he is able to analyse in a critical manner both the sources and the iconographies taken into account. A student should explain this following a logical series of points, clearly and on the basis of the fundamental documents. Prerequisites
- basic elements of ancient history.
Course programme
- The Christianization of the Roman Empire
1) First: classes devoted to selected topics;
2) Second: Eusebius of Caesarea, The Life of Constantine, Milano, Rizzoli, BUR, 2009 (an English translation is available online); 2) Libanius, In defence of temples; suggested edition: Libanio, In difesa dei templi, ed. by R.Romano, Naples, D'Auria, 2007). Knowledge of the original, Greek text is not mandatory.
3) Third: knowledge of passages from classical authors and monuments which will be read and commented during the course. Didactic methods
- The educational activity is based on normal classes devoted to the above mentioned topics. Students will be provided with images and texts thanks to powerpoint files with images of archaeological documents and historical texts, which will be recorded and put online. Students who are unable to attend one or more classes will find the recorded teaching activities, the texts and images online in the site of the University of Ferrara. At the end of each lesson a short debate is possible in order to clarify what could have been eventually difficult to understand.
Learning assessment procedures
- oral exam. Questions will be posed in order to ascertain what learning and knowing level is reached. Eventually, the questions could go further in deep by focussing on texts and/or monuments discussed during the course.
Reference texts
- Eusebius of Caesarea, The Life of Constantine, Milano, Rizzoli, BUR, 2009 (an English translation is available online); 2) Libanius, In defence of temples; suggested edition: Libanio, In difesa dei templi, ed. by R.Romano, Naples, D'Auria, 2007 (or another edition)
