Unit name | The Age of Augustus: History and Myth |
---|---|
Unit code | CLAS37017 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | H/6 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | Dr. Sandwell |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None, |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Department of Classics & Ancient History |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit will examine the ways in which characters and events of Rome's remote and recent past - from Aeneas to the Battle of Actium - were represented in the literature, art and architecture of the Age of Augustus and will analyse the role of such representations in the creation of the Augustan myth of the birth of a new Golden Age. In so doing, we will explore not simply the relationship between myth and history in the Augustan Age through the texts and monuments of the period, but the ways in which the reception of the resulting images of Augustus - both positive and negative - have impacted on the history of subsequent periods, from Charlemagne to Mussolini in the twentieth century.
The aims of the unit are to:
On successful completion of this unit, students should:
Seminars
One essay of 3,000 words (50%) and one examination of 90 minutes (50%).
Karl Galinsky, Augustan Culture: An Interpetive Introduction (Princeton, 1996)
Karl Galinsky (ed) The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus (Cambridge, 2005)
R.Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1939)
Richard Thomas, Virgil and the Augustan Reception (Cambridge, 2001)
A.Wallace-Hadrill, Augustan Rome (London, 1993)
P.Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor, 1988)