Valentina Arena (UCL)

The aim of this course is to analyse the role played by political ideas in the Roman Republic and early Principate. Beginning with the study of concepts such a Fides, Virtus, and Honos (Trust, Virtue, and Honour) that are first attested in Rome in the third century BC as deities, the course will proceed by analysing other values such as Concordia and Libertas (Concord and Liberty) that, although originally attested according to our literary tradition in the early Republic, also play an essential role throughout the Republic and in the writing of Roman thinkers of the first century BC. The most prolific period of republican activity in establishing these cults of abstract ideas corresponds to the age of so-called Roman imperialism, which saw the conquest of the Italian peninsula, the defeat of Carthage, and the establishment of Roman dominion over the Hellenistic East. Therefore, the course will study these ideas within the context of Roman contacts with the Greek world both of South of Italy and Greece mainland, to whose intellectual stimuli the Romans constantly reacted and with whom they always negotiated, continuously re-elaborating their intellectual framework.  Thus, the course will aim at providing Rome with a proper place within the study of intellectual history, moving away from a vision of Rome as a mere appendix of sophisticated Greece, and as a culture the only intellectual interest of which lies in Cicero’s texts.