Academics
Course and Credit
CLST 145 / ARTHIST 126A / HISTORY 101F Rome: History of the City ALP, CCI, CZ
This course examines the history of the Roman city, especially the city of Rome, from the earliest times to the present day. Rome is prominent as one of the supreme centers of urban culture in the western world. Here, as nowhere else, one can read a continuous record of the successive rises, declines, and re-emergences of the city in its Italian context and as a central expression of our civilization. In this course, the students will experience the history of the city directly and personally through walking lectures and guided tours of major sites, monuments, and museums. Visits to other ancient sites in Italy help students discern Roman urban realities and ideals. The sites themselves function as "text"; we experience and analyze Rome and other cities in a "hands-on" fashion that cannot be duplicated in the classroom.
We cannot understand Rome without seeing other sites that convey the contributions of Latin, Greek and Etruscan cultures to it. We begin our trip in Latium and Campania. The fortified hill towns Ferentinum and Teanum exemplify Rome’s indigenous background. In Campania are Greek sites that influenced Rome (Cumae, Paestum), and Herculaneum, Pompeii and other Roman cities that strikingly preserve Roman daily life, covered by Vesuvius in AD 79. In Rome we experience the city itself and important environs: the Etruscan sites of Tarquinia and Cerveteri; the Latin hills; and Roman dependencies like Ostia and Tivoli. Sites convey the central theme of the course: the emergence and development of Roman civilization, the impact of other cultures upon it, and the fascination of this “head of the world” (caput mundi). Attention will be given to the idea of Rome as it emerges in the literature and propaganda of various periods, from antiquity to the present. Taught by Duke faculty. One course credit.
