| Credits | 1 |
| Restrictions | |
| Pre-Requisites | |
| Co-Requisites | |
| Core Area | |
| Area of Inquiry | Human Thought and Expression |
| Liberal Arts Practices | |
| Recommended | May be taken for history major credit. |
Provides an overview of the history of Rome from its foundation in the eighth century BCE, though its conquest of Italy and rise as a Mediterranean power, to its transition from Republic to Principate under the rule of Augustus. The aim is to gain familiarity not only with a general narrative of the history of the Roman Republic but also with the materials (literary, historiographical, artistic, archaeological, epigraphical, and numismatic) from which we build such a narrative. Two questions are central to the exploration: (1) How did the Romans grow from a small village in central Italy into one of the largest empires the world has ever known, encompassing some 60 million people and stretching from Spain to Syria, from Egypt to England? and (2) How did the Romans themselves understand this growth? Rome is the focus, but students shall also situate the Romans in a wider Mediterranean context, examining their interactions with e.g. Etruscans, Greeks, Carthaginians, Egyptians, Gauls, and Parthians.