The Romans

The Romans established the only successful pan-Mediterranean empire in history, lasting nearly 1,000 years, with a legacy living everywhere today, from the U.S. Constitution to the English alphabet. Who were these people? We will study their social-political history from the city’s founding in 753 BCE to its fall in 476 CE, confronting the opinions of ancient authors directly to study historical questions such as: what challenges and problems did empire create? How did gender shape Roman lives? Or what does the decline of Rome’s democracy reveal about the state of American democracy?