History 401-10 and 801-03

Beyond Athens and Rome

Small Town and Country Life in Ancient Greece and Rome

Wednesday 6.30-9.30 Meeting Place: Seabury 23A

Office Hours: M 1-3, or by appointment 297-2393

http://shakti.trincoll.edu/~greger/index.html

gary.reger@mail.trincoll.edu

About ten years ago the German scholar Hans-Joachim Gehrke wrote a little book called Beyond Athens and Sparta. In it he tried to get away from the predominance of those two great cities in Greek history to look instead at the smaller towns that, despite their size, played an important role in the Classical past. Since then, historians and archaeologists of Greece and Rome have increasingly focused their attention on the ancient world outside the great centers of politics. This course will explore some of the results of that research. Topics include (but are not limited to): agriculture and rural economics; banditry, piracy, and the dangerous countryside; rural demography; religion in a rural setting; and the new discipline of survey archaeology. Pompeii in Italy will come in for special treatment.

Books

I have not ordered any books for purchase from the Bookstore, as we will be reading a great variety of things. Most of them will be found on the open shelves in the Library. Please be considerate of your classmates. Do NOT check books out, and replace them in their proper home on the shelves when you are done. The few items on reserve are marked (R). A xeroxed packet of readings is available for purchase from Gigi St. Peter in the History Department office.

Assignments

1. Read and come prepared to discuss. As a seminar, this class depends on lively, informed, and frequent participation of all members. I expect everyone to come having read and thought about the material, and prepared to contribute to our mutual discussion about it.

2. Lead one class session (or more, depending on enrollment). Each student will be responsible for leading at least one discussion. I have no preference about how this is done, except that in each session all the readings should be covered; the historical questions they raise should be explored; matters of method and source problems should be elucidated. The readings listed for each session are hardly exhaustive of the topic, and it would behoove students to do some research to come up with further material. It might be a good idea to begin with c. 20 minutes of your own prepared "lecture," setting out the issues as you see them and offering an agenda for the rest of the session.

3. Two brief (6-7 pp.) papers. Each student will write two brief papers reacting to two classes. These are due one week after the session to which they relate, and may be turned in any time through December 2. Because of the flexible due dates, no late papers can be accepted.

4. Final research paper. A major research paper of 20-25 pp. is due on December 10. The paper will be developed on the following schedule:

1. Meet with me to decide on a topic by no later than Friday, October 9.

2. Turn in a thesis statement of roughly 2 pp. and a bibliography of primary

and secondary sources, the latter of which must include at least three (3)

articles from scholarly journals, on Wednesday, October 21.

3. Give an oral presentation of your work on December 2 or 9 (time to

be determined by enrollment).

4. Turn in completed final draft on Wednesday, December 9.

Schedule and Readings

Sept. 2: Introduction

Sept. 9: Sources for the country I: Literary texts

Readings: Vergil, The Georgics; Dio Chrysostom, Orations no. 7 and 45; Pausanias, Description of Greece 8 (Arkadia in the central Peloponnesos); Strabo, Geography 5-6.1.15 (Italy), 8.2-4 (part of Greece); handout.

Jim Roy, "The Countryside in Classical Greek Drama, and Isolated Farms in Dramatic Landscapes," in Human Landscapes in Classical Antiquity. Environment and Culture, eds. Graham Shiply and John Salmon (London 1996) 98-118.

Robin Osborne, Classical Landscape with Figures (London 1987) 9-26.

Sept. 16: Sources for the country II: Inscriptions and coins

Readings: Handout.

B.V. Head, Historia numorum (London 1911)

C. Papageorgiadou-Banis, The Coinage of Kea (Athens 1997).

M.J. Price and B.L. Trell, Coins and their Cities. Architecture on the Ancient Coins of Greece, Rome, and Palestine (London 1977).

Sabine Schultz, Die Münzprägung von Magnesia am Mäander in der römischen Zeit (Hildesheim 1975).

Otto Mørkholm, Early Hellenistic Coinage (Cambridge 1991)

Sept. 23: Sources for the country III: Early Travelers in Greece

Readings::

R. Eisner, Travelers to an Antique Land. The History and Literature of Travel in Greece (Ann Arbor 1991).

Patrice Brun, Les archipels égéens dans l'antiquité grecque (Ve-IIe siècles av. notre ére) (Paris 1996) 210-216.

George Wheler, A Journey into Greece in the Company of Dr. Spon of Lyons (London 1682).

Richard Pococke, A Description of the East, 2 vols. (London 1743-1745).

William Leake, Travels in the Morea, 3 vols. (London 1830).

Edmond About, Greece and the Greeks of the Present Day (New York 1857).

Charles T. Newton, Travels and Discoveries in the Levant, 2 vols. (London 1865).

James Theodore Bent, Aegean Islands, the Cyclades, or Life Among the Insular Greeks (London 1885).

Sept. 30: Sources for the country IV: Archaeological surveys

Readings:

Archaeological Survey in the Lower Liri Valley, Central Italy, eds. W. Hayes and I.P. Martini (Oxford 1994).

Graeme Barker, A Mediterranean Valley. Landscape Archaeology (London and New York 1995).

Graeme Barker, The Biforno Valley Survey. The Archaeological and Geomorphological Record (London and New York 1995).

Susan Alcock, Graecia Capta (Cambridge 1993) 33-92.

Michael Jameson, Curtis N. Runnels, and Tjeerd H. van Andel, A Greek Countryside. The Southern Argolid from Prehistory to the Present Day (Stanford 1994).

Hans Lohmann, "Agriculture and Country Life in Classical Attica," in Agriculture in Ancient Greece, ed. Berit Wells (Stockholm 1992) 29-60.

Hans Lohmann, Atene, 2 vols. (Cologne 1993).

J.F. Cherry, J.L. Davis, and E. Mantzourani, Landscape Archaeology as Long-Term History. Northern Keos in the Kykladic Islands (Los Angeles 1991).

Osborne, Classical Landscape 53-74.

Oct. 7: Library orientation: research on the ancient world

Oct. 14: READING WEEK: NO CLASSES

Oct. 21: Agriculture

Readings:

Review relevant material from the first four sessions.

Stephanie A. Nelson, God and the Land. The Metaphysics of Farming in Hesiod

and Vergil with a Translation of Hesiod's Works and Days by David Grene (New York 1998).

Robert Sallares, The Ecology of the Ancient Greek World (Ithaca 1991).

J.H. Kent, "The Temple Estates of Delos, Rheneia, and Mykonos," Hesperia 17 (1948) 243-338.

M.S. Spurr, Arable Cultivation in Roman Italy, 200 BC to 100 AD (London 1986).

David J. Mattingly, "First Fruit? The Olive in the Roman World," in Human Landscapes in Classical Antiquity 213-253.

Osborne, Classical Landscape 27-52.

Alison Burford, Land and Labor in the Greek World (Baltimore 1993)

Marie-Claire Amouretti, Le pain et l'huile dans la Grèce antique (Paris 1986)

Agriculture in Ancient Greece, ed. Berit Wells (Stockholm 1992).

Oct. 28: Rural markets and fairs: the country comes to town

Readings:

Review relevant material from the first four sessions.

L. de Ligt, Fairs and Markets in the Roman Empire. Economic and Social Aspects of Periodic Trade in a Pre-industrial Society (Amsterdam 1993).

Joan Frayn, Markets and Fairs in Roman Italy. Their Social and Economic Importance from the Second Century BC to the Third Century AD (Oxford 1993).

L. De Ligt, "The Roman Peasantry. Demand, Supply, Distribution between Town and Countryside," MBAH 9.2 (1991) 24-56 and 10.1 (1991) 33-76. (R)

Osborne, Classical Landscape 93-112.

Nov. 4: War and violence [NOTE: this session will have to be switched with another because of a conflict. Details to follow.]

Guest: John Ma, Princeton University

Readings:

Review relevant material from the first four sessions.

Victor Davis Hanson, War and Agriculture (Pisa 1981).

Osborne, Classical Landscape 137-164.

Ramsay MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order. Treason, Unrest, and Alienation in the Empire (Cambridge, Mass. 1968).

Nov. 11: The reach of the emperor: government intervention in small town and rural life in the High Roman Empire (c. 31 BC - 200 AD)

Readings:

Review relevant material from the first four sessions.

Fergus Millar, The Emperor and his World (London 1977), 375-456.

Fergus Millar, "Italy and the Roman Empire: Augustus to Constantine," Phoenix 40 (1986) 295ff.

Oliver, Greek Constitutions of Early Roman Emperors from Inscriptions and Papyri

(1989).

Helmut Halfmann, Itinera principum (Stuttgart 1986).

Nov. 18: Pompeii: a small town in its context

Readings:

Review relevant material from the first four sessions.

Inspect the detailed plans of Pompeii published as The RICA maps of Pompeii, 7 sheets at 1:1000 and 1:10,000, ed. F. Federico (Rome 1984), in the Watkinson Library.

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton 1994).

Willem Jongman, The Economy and Society of Pompeii (Amsterdam 1991).

Ray Laurence, Roman Pompeii. Space and Society (London 1994).

Michael Fulford and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, "Unpeeling Pompeii," Antiquity 72 (1998) 128-145.

Roger Ling, The insula of the Menander at Pompeii (Oxford 1997).

The Shapes of City Life in Rome and Pompeii. Essays in honor of Lawrence Richardson, Jr. on the occasion of his retirement, ed. Mary T. Boatwright and Harry B. Evans (New Rochelle 1996).

Nov. 25: THANKSGIVING VACATION: NO CLASS

Dec. 2: Presentations I

December 9: Presentations II