The Crisis of the Roman Republic

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course considers the turbulent last decades of the Roman Republic and its fitful conversion into an autocracy. The focus of the course is on the leading figures of these decades—Julius Caesar, Cicero, Pompey, and Marc Antony—and the social and political background of their achievements and their struggles. Elements of that background to be considered include: problems of the economy and of land reform; the struggles between aristocrats and populists; constitutional crises; provincial conquest and exploitation; the role of philosophy; and the use of the lawcourts as a weapon of political competition. The course will close by considering how nascent autocracy addressed the sources of conflict that beset the Republic. Attention will be devoted throughout to the literary and artistic forms of this highly creative period, including invective, judicial, and deliberative oratory, lyric poetry, satire, and didactic poetry. Authors to be considered include Cicero, Caesar, Lucretius, Catullus, Horace, Vergil, Plutarch, and Suetonius.