Age of Augustus: Topography, Architecture, and Politics

Catalog description

Augustus Caesar boasted that he had found Rome a city in brick, but left it in marble. This course explores the transformation of Rome from an unadorned village to the capital of an empire. Was Rome's first emperor trying to fashion himself a Hellenistic monarch on the model of Alexander and his successors? Was he simply operating within republican traditions, which had been established through centuries of aristocratic competition at Rome? Our source materials will include ancient works of art and architecture, literary accounts, maps, and critical urban theory.