Roman World 2 considers the history and society of Italy and the wider Roman world from the death of Julius Caesar to the end of the Severan Dynasty on AD 238.
We will cover the civil war and the establishment of the imperial system of government under Augustus, its consolidation under the Julio-Claudian Dynasties, the high empire of the Flavians, Trajan and Hadrian, the Antonines and Severans. We will examine how the institutions of the Republic – the senate and magistrates – operated within an autocratic system of government, how the Roman Empire worked on the ground, and what it was like to live in the Roman World.
The module will cover archaeological, material and textual evidence, introduce categories of evidence and methods of interpretation not met in Roman World 1, and thus built on its foundation.