Art of Ancient Italy and the Roman Empire

Catalog description

Although the Romans come to mind most immediately as the people who absorbed and passed on the achievements of Greek civilization to the Western world, the transmission of Greek culture to Western posterity was a far more complex process initially involving various other peoples across the Italian peninsula. In fall, beginning with the Italian peninsula itself, the course will focus on how the early Greeks colonized southern Italy and Sicily. We will examine how their culture then affected a range of native Italian peoples such as the Etruscans, Osci, Latins, and the early Romans, who eventually emerged as the dominant political force in Italy and then across the Mediterranean and southern Europe. We will consider how the process of Hellenization enabled the Romans to assume the management of the Greek world in military, political, and material cultural or artistic terms. In spring, now emphasizing the art of the Roman Empire, the course will explore the outcome of this development between the first and third centuries, as Rome came to dominate the entire Mediterranean basin along with much of Europe and western Asia. The course will apply a varied approach, concentrating largely on art in various media, especially architecture, while also incorporating literary and historical data to achieve a larger cultural perspective. Vikings, Varangians, and Vinlanders: Globalizing Scandinavia From Antiquity to the Early Modern Period