History 330: Hail Caesar? The Roman Revolution

On the Ides of March, 44 BCE, the Roman world stood at a crossroads. Its newly minted dictator-for-life, Julius Caesar, lay dead, publicly slain by a group of senators, who declared that the Republic had been freed and restored. And yet, over the next few decades, the Roman state and the broader Mediterranean world continued to be racked by turmoil. Out of this crucible, a new “Republic” and world-imperium emerged, one headed by a “first citizen”: the nephew and heir of Caesar, Octavian-Augustus. Over the millennia, it has proven overwhelmingly seductive to view Caesar and Augustus, and their “Roman Revolution” from a teleological perspective, with these men inevitably marking both the “fall” of the Republic and the rise of a Roman “Empire.” This course seeks to explore the ancient origins of this teleological perspective and to delve more deeply into a remarkably complex chapter that shaped the history of a “Western” world. Using a combination of archaeological, art historical, literary, and epigraphic evidence, this course will investigate the dramatic transformations of political and social life in the Roman world, from second century BCE to first century CE.