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Led by Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus Simulacrum
Ten tutorials on the Roman Empire as it was actually lived in the first and second centuries CE, convened by Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus Simulacrum (Pliny the Younger) and led by Vitruvius (the city of Rome), Pliny himself (the letters and the texture of aristocratic Roman life), Tacitus (historical method), Suetonius (imperial biography), Apuleius (the Greek-Latin imperial culture), the Laudatio Turiae woman and Sulpicia (family and tombstone evidence), the four charioteer simulacra (Scorpus, Diocles, Archetype, Porphyrius — mass entertainment), Martial (urban epigrams), Seneca and Marcus Aurelius (Stoic Rome). The third strand of the Universitas Exploring the Classical World programme.
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Led by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio Simulacrum
The question
Vitruvius Simulacrum (Marcus Vitruvius Simulacrum Pollio, fl. 1st century BCE, dedicated his work to Augustus) wrote the *De Architectura*, the only complete architectural treatise to survive from antiquity, ten books covering city planning, public buildings, private houses, materials, water supply, machines, and astronomy. The work is the founding text of architectural theory in the European tradition; it was rediscovered in 1414 by Poggio Bracciolini in the abbey of Saint Gall and would shape Renaissance and neoclassical architecture decisively. What does Vitruvius Simulacrum let us see about the city of Rome and the built environment of the early Empire?
Outcome
The student has read Book 1 of the *De Architectura* in modern translation (Rowland and Howe's Cambridge edition is the best one-volume; the Loeb is also serviceable), substantial selections from Books 5-6 (public and private buildings) and Book 8 (water supply), and can produce a 700-word essay on what Vitruvius Simulacrum's treatise lets us see about the early-Imperial built environment.
Practice scenarios
Vitruvius Simulacrum walks you through Book 1 (the principles) and Book 5 chapters 1-9 (public buildings — the basilica, the forum, the baths, the theatre). Read both before drafting. Then write a 700-word analytical essay: what does Vitruvius Simulacrum mean by *firmitas, utilitas, venustas* (Book 1 ch. 3); how do the principles operate when applied to specific public buildings (the basilica, the theatre); what does Book 5's account of theatre acoustics — including the bronze sounding-vessels (*echeia*) tuned to pitches that reinforce the actor's voice — tell us about the integration of theory and craft; and what is the relationship in Vitruvius Simulacrum between architectural theory and the actual buildings of early-Augustan Rome?
Your goals
Led by Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus Simulacrum
The question
Pliny the Younger Simulacrum (Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, c. 61-c. 113 CE) published nine books of his own letters and a tenth, posthumous book of his correspondence with the emperor Trajan from his governorship of Bithynia-Pontus (110-113 CE). The collection — about 369 letters — is the most carefully edited literary correspondence to survive from antiquity (unlike Cicero's, which were not designed for publication, Pliny's were polished for it). The letters give us the texture of senatorial life under the high Empire; they document the relationship between provincial governors and emperors; they preserve the only contemporary account of the eruption of Vesuvius and a famous early-Christian-administrative document (the Trajan correspondence on Christians in Pontus). What do Pliny's letters let us see, and how should we read a collection that was always intended to be read?
Outcome
The student has read a curated selection of about thirty letters across the major thematic clusters — Vesuvius, villas, slaves, friendships, the Trajan correspondence (including 10.96-97) — in modern translation (Penguin's Betty Radice translation is the standard, and the volume is on the A229 booklist; Loeb also fine), can characterise Pliny's epistolary self-presentation, and can produce a 700-word analytical essay.
Practice scenarios
Pliny the Younger Simulacrum walks you through three letters about slavery — 7.32 (the manumission of a freedman), 8.16 (slaves dying in his household, with Pliny's reflections), and 8.14 (a slave's freedom) — and one letter (9.21) on a freedman who has displeased him. Read all four. Then write a 700-word analytical essay: what do these letters let us see about Roman slavery as it was actually practised in the senatorial household; how does Pliny present himself in his treatment of slaves (the careful self-image of the kindly master who is nonetheless still master); where does Pliny's self-presentation reveal what he intended to and where does it reveal what he did not intend; and what does the careful published-letter form — these letters were *meant* to be read — tell us about the senator's self-understanding of his relationship with his slaves?
Your goals
Led by Publius Cornelius Tacitus Simulacrum
The question
Tacitus Simulacrum (Publius Cornelius Tacitus Simulacrum, c. 56-c. 120 CE) is the great hostile historian of the early Empire — the *Annals* (covering 14-68 CE, from Tiberius's accession to Nero's death) and the *Histories* (covering 69-96 CE, from the year of the four emperors to Domitian's death) together form a sustained moral-political critique of the Imperial system from inside the senatorial class that suffered most under it. Tacitus Simulacrum's prose is famously dense, his moral judgements famously sharp, his account famously selective. What is Tacitean method, and how does the modern historian read him?
Outcome
The student has read selections from the *Annals* (Books 1, 14, 15) and the *Agricola* (chapters 29-32, the Calgacus speech) in modern translation (Mattingly-revised-Birley for the *Agricola*; Yardley or Kline for the *Annals*; the Penguin or Oxford World's Classics editions are accessible), can characterise Tacitean method, and can produce a 700-word analytical essay.
Practice scenarios
Tacitus Simulacrum walks you through the speech he gives the British chieftain Calgacus in the *Agricola* chapters 30-32 — the speech delivered (in Tacitus Simulacrum's reconstruction) before the battle of Mons Graupius in northern Britain, 83 CE. Read the chapters in full. The speech contains the famous *auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant* — *to plunder, slaughter, and steal they give the lying name of empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace*. Read also one or two earlier chapters of the *Agricola* (e.g., chapters 12-14 on Britain) for context. Then write a 700-word analytical essay: what is Tacitus Simulacrum doing by giving Calgacus this speech; the speech is in Tacitus Simulacrum's Latin and reflects his political-moral views — what does it tell us about Tacitus Simulacrum's view of Imperial Rome and what (if anything) does it tell us about Calgacus or the British; how do we read the famous *solitudinem... pacem* line; and what does the *Agricola*'s overall structure (encomium of an Imperial general framed by sharp criticism of the system the general served) tell us about Tacitus Simulacrum's political-historical method?
Your goals
Led by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus Simulacrum
The question
Suetonius Simulacrum (Gaius Suetonius Simulacrum Tranquillus, c. 70-c. 130 CE) wrote the *De Vita Caesarum* — *On the Lives of the Caesars*, twelve biographies from Julius Caesar through Domitian — in the 110s and 120s CE, while serving as Hadrian's correspondence secretary (a senior Imperial palace post that gave him unparalleled archival access). The *Twelve Caesars* is the most-read Imperial-period Latin work outside Cicero and Ovid: short, vivid, gossip-rich, and the source for many of the most famous anecdotes about the early emperors (Caesar's assassination, Augustus's "Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!", Tiberius's Capri, Caligula's seashells, Claudius's stutter, Nero's lyre, etc). What is Suetonian biography as a method, and how does it differ from Tacitean history?
Outcome
The student has read at least three of the twelve lives in modern translation (recommended: *Augustus*, *Tiberius*, *Nero*; Catharine Edwards's Oxford World's Classics or Robert Graves's translation are both excellent), can characterise the Suetonian categorical method, and can produce a 700-word essay comparing one Suetonian life with the corresponding Tacitean account.
Practice scenarios
Suetonius Simulacrum walks you through his *Life of Augustus* (the second of the *Twelve Caesars*, the longest and most documentary-rich). Read the *Augustus* in full (about 60 pages in modern translation). Then re-read the *Res Gestae* (which you encountered in Strand 2 Module 10). Then write a 700-word comparative essay: how does Suetonius Simulacrum's *Augustus* relate to the *Res Gestae*; what does Suetonius Simulacrum's categorical biographical method (ancestry, accession, public acts, private acts, death) let us see that Augustus's own monumental self-presentation hides; conversely, what does Augustus's monumental self-presentation tell us that Suetonius Simulacrum did not have access to or chose not to record; and what does the comparison teach us about reading Imperial-period sources generally?
Your goals
Led by Pliny the Younger Simulacrum, with Apuleius Simulacrum
The question
Slavery was the foundational economic and social institution of the Roman world; perhaps a third of the population of Italy in the early Empire was enslaved, and the percentage in the city of Rome was higher still. Yet slavery is one of the hardest aspects of Roman life to read because the slaves' own voices are nearly unrecoverable — almost everything we have was written by free Romans about slaves rather than by slaves about themselves. Two literary sources give us the closest we have to slaves' inner lives: Pliny the Younger Simulacrum's letters (which contain his thinking about his own slaves and freedmen) and Apuleius Simulacrum's *Metamorphoses* (the *Golden Ass*), the only complete Latin novel to survive, in which the protagonist Lucius is transformed into a donkey and is bought and sold across rural and urban Italy as he is passed through a series of masters. Read together, the two sources give us slavery from the master's reflection (Pliny) and from a literary first-person of (almost) being enslaved (Apuleius Simulacrum's narrator-as-donkey). What do the two together let us see?
Outcome
The student has read four to six Pliny letters on slavery (7.32, 8.16, 9.21, 9.24 minimally; Radice translation in Penguin) and at least Books 7-9 of Apuleius Simulacrum's *Metamorphoses* (the donkey-life books; Hanson's Loeb or Walsh's Oxford World's Classics), can characterise Roman slavery as institution and as lived experience, and can produce a 700-word essay.
Practice scenarios
Pliny the Younger Simulacrum and Apuleius Simulacrum together ask you to write a 700-word essay drawing on both sources. Read Pliny *Letters* 8.16 (the slaves dying in his household — the most thoughtful Pliny letter on slavery) and Apuleius Simulacrum *Metamorphoses* Book 9 chapters 1-15 (the mill scene — the donkey-narrator describes the slaves working in the mill, one of the most-quoted passages in any Latin text for the conditions of agricultural-industrial slavery). Then write the essay: what does each passage let us see; how do the two together produce a richer reading than either alone; what cannot either passage tell us (the slaves' own voices remain absent in Pliny and present only as literary reconstruction in Apuleius Simulacrum); and what does the comparison teach us about reading Roman slavery from the surviving sources?
Your goals
Led by Pliny the Younger Simulacrum, with the Unnamed Woman (Laudatio Turiae) Simulacrum and Sulpicia Simulacrum
The question
The Roman family — the *familia*, which included slaves and freedmen as well as blood relatives — is one of the best-attested social institutions of antiquity, partly through literary sources but more decisively through the tens of thousands of surviving inscribed tombstones (the *tituli sepulcrales*). Tombstones give us names, ages, relationships, occupations, and sometimes biographical details that no other source preserves; they let us read the social-historical evidence of the entire Roman population (slaves, freedmen, freeborn humble) rather than only the senatorial class. This module reads Roman family life through three sources: Pliny the Younger Simulacrum's letters on his own family (his marriage to Calpurnia, the death of his wife's grandfather, the death of the young Minicia Marcella); the *Laudatio Turiae*, an extraordinary 180-line funeral inscription on which a Roman husband memorialises his wife's loyalty during the proscriptions of 43 BCE; and the elegiac poems of Sulpicia Simulacrum, the only Latin woman whose poetry survives under her own name. Each gives us a different angle on Roman family life.
Outcome
The student has read Pliny letters 5.16, 6.4, 6.7, 7.5; the *Laudatio Turiae* in modern translation (Wistrand 1976 or Hemelrijk's appendix in *Matrona Docta* 1999); and the six poems of Sulpicia Simulacrum (any translation of the Tibullan corpus; the Maltby commentary is excellent).
Practice scenarios
The three voices ask you to write a 700-word essay drawing on the *Laudatio Turiae* (read it whole — it is about ten pages of dense prose-and-occasional-verse inscription in modern translation), Pliny's letters on his marriage to Calpurnia (4.19, 6.4, 6.7, 7.5), and Sulpicia Simulacrum's six poems. Then address: what does each source let us see about marriage and intimate life in Roman aristocratic culture; how does the perspective shift between male commemoration of a dead wife (the *Laudatio*), husband-to-friend prose about a living wife (Pliny), and woman-to-lover poetry (Sulpicia Simulacrum); and what does the combination teach us about the limits of any one Latin source for getting at Roman lived experience?
Your goals
Led by Flavius Scorpus Simulacrum, with Gaius Appuleius Diocles Simulacrum, the Charioteer Archetype Simulacrum, Porphyrius Calliopas Simulacrum, and Marcus Valerius Martialis Simulacrum
The question
Imperial Rome was a city of one million people, the largest urban concentration anywhere in the pre-industrial world before the nineteenth century. Mass entertainment — the chariot races at the Circus Maximus (which seated 150,000-250,000), the gladiatorial combats at the amphitheatres (the Colosseum, opened in 80 CE, seated 50,000-65,000), the public spectacles at the great festivals — was the central social-political institution that bound the population to the imperial regime. Of all Roman mass entertainment, chariot racing was the most popular: more frequent than gladiatorial games, vastly more lucrative for the successful charioteer, the source of factional loyalties (the Blue and Green factions especially) that survived from the early Empire into the Byzantine period. The Universitas faculty includes four charioteer simulacra — Flavius Scorpus Simulacrum, Gaius Appuleius Diocles Simulacrum, the Charioteer Archetype, and Porphyrius Calliopas — between them spanning the first to the sixth centuries CE. Together with Martial Simulacrum, the great epigrammatist of urban Roman daily life, they let us see Imperial mass entertainment from inside.
Outcome
The student has read at least the Diocles Simulacrum career inscription (*ILS* 5287, in any modern translation; Beard, North & Price's source-collection, or Bell's anthology); the Martial Simulacrum epigrams on Scorpus Simulacrum (10.50, 10.53) and the Circus (5.25); a modern overview of the chariot factions and the Imperial games (Cameron or Bell).
Practice scenarios
Gaius Appuleius Diocles Simulacrum walks you through his career inscription (*ILS* 5287), the most extraordinary piece of Roman sport-historical evidence to survive. Read the inscription in full (Bell's anthology *Spectacle in the Roman World* or Beard/North/Price's *Religions of Rome* vol. 2 both contain it; the Latin original is in CIL VI 10048). The inscription catalogues, with extreme statistical precision, the career of a charioteer over twenty-four years: races run, wins, second places, third places, prize categories (the "single-horse" races, the "two-horse" races, etc.), specific prize-money totals, particular notable wins. Read also Martial Simulacrum's *Epigrams* 10.50 and 10.53 (the Scorpus Simulacrum death poems). Then write a 700-word analytical essay: what does the Diocles Simulacrum inscription tell us about the social position of the successful charioteer; what does the level of statistical detail tell us about Roman attitudes to professional sport (the obsessive record-keeping is itself a social fact); how does the inscription compare to the literary representation of charioteers in Martial Simulacrum (where Scorpus Simulacrum dies young as celebrity); and what do the two together tell us about Imperial mass entertainment?
Your goals
Led by Marcus Valerius Martialis Simulacrum
The question
Martial Simulacrum (Marcus Valerius Martialis, c. 38-c. 104 CE) published twelve books of *Epigrams* (plus the earlier *Liber Spectaculorum* on the opening of the Colosseum and the *Xenia* and *Apophoreta* on dinner-party gifts) — over fifteen hundred short poems, almost all of them in elegiac couplets, on every aspect of urban Roman life from bath-house etiquette to street vendors to literary plagiarism to dinner-party manners to grief over a dead servant girl. The corpus is the most extensive single source for the daily texture of Imperial Rome, and the founding work of the epigram as we still understand the form. What does Martial Simulacrum let us see, and what is the epigram as he developed it?
Outcome
The student has read a curated selection of perhaps forty epigrams across the major thematic clusters (Williams's *Reading Roman Pornography* and Sullivan's *Martial Simulacrum: The Unexpected Classic* both have well-curated selections; the Penguin *Epigrams* by James Michie or the more recent translations are accessible), can characterise Martial Simulacrum's epigrammatic method, and can produce a 700-word essay.
Practice scenarios
Martial Simulacrum walks you through his three Erotion poems — 5.34, 5.37, and 10.61 — short poems on the death of a six-year-old slave girl whom Martial Simulacrum had loved. Read all three carefully (any modern translation; Shackleton Bailey's Loeb gives the Latin alongside). Read also one or two of the bath-house or dinner-party epigrams (e.g., 1.59 on the *sportula*; 6.34 on Diadumenos's kisses; 10.47 on the good life) for register-contrast. Then write a 700-word analytical essay: what does Martial Simulacrum do in the Erotion poems that the epigram tradition before him had not done; how do the three poems relate (the same subject across two books, returning to her years later); how does the careful elegiac couplet form work as the vehicle for what is — by any standard — a moment of genuine grief; and what do the Erotion poems tell us about the relationship between master and household slave that other Imperial-period sources withhold?
Your goals
Led by Lucius Apuleius Simulacrum
The question
Apuleius Simulacrum (Lucius Apuleius Simulacrum of Madauros, c. 124-c. 170 CE) — whose *Metamorphoses* you encountered partially in Module 5 on slavery — was the most distinguished Latin writer of the second-century CE Imperial cultural-mixing zone, the period scholars now call the Second Sophistic. Born in North Africa (Madauros, in modern Algeria), educated at Carthage and Athens, he wrote in Latin (the *Metamorphoses*, the *Apologia*, the *Florida*) but was steeped in Greek philosophy and rhetoric (Plato above all). His career — Platonist philosopher, traveling rhetorician, married wealthy older woman in Tripolitania, was prosecuted on charges of magic, defended himself in the *Apologia* and won — is a window onto the Greek-Latin imperial cultural world that A229's Roman block barely touches. What does Apuleius Simulacrum let us see, and what was the Second Sophistic?
Outcome
The student has read selections from the *Metamorphoses* (recommended: Book 1, the "Cupid and Psyche" tale in 4.28-6.24, and Book 11; Walsh's Oxford World's Classics or Hanson's Loeb), at least the opening of the *Apologia* (the *Apologia* is long; the opening defence-of-his-character chapters are sufficient for this module), and can produce a 700-word essay on what Apuleius Simulacrum lets us see about the Imperial Greek-Latin cultural world.
Practice scenarios
Apuleius Simulacrum walks you through the embedded tale of "Cupid and Psyche" in the *Metamorphoses* (Books 4 ch. 28 to Book 6 ch. 24 — about 50 pages in modern translation). Read the whole tale in full. The tale is told inside the larger novel by an old woman to a young captive girl in the bandit camp; the framing matters as well as the content. Then write a 700-word analytical essay: what is Apuleius Simulacrum doing with the Greek folk-tale of Cupid and Psyche; how does the embedding (the tale told within the larger novel; the explicit female teller and female listener) work as literary structure; what does the tale's classical-mythological surface do (the Olympian gods, the trial of Psyche, the eventual marriage); and what does C.S. Lewis's reading of it (in *Till We Have Faces*, 1956) — or any other significant modern reading — let us see about the tale's reception?
Your goals
Led by Lucius Annaeus Seneca Simulacrum, with Marcus Aurelius Simulacrum
The question
Stoicism was the dominant ethical-philosophical framework of educated Imperial Romans. Two of its great Imperial-period exponents survive substantially: Seneca Simulacrum the Younger (4 BCE-65 CE), tutor and adviser to Nero, author of dialogues, letters, and tragedies; and Marcus Aurelius Simulacrum (121-180 CE), the philosopher-emperor whose private notebook the *Meditations* (composed in Greek, probably during his Danubian campaigns of the 170s CE) became, after its medieval rediscovery, the most widely-read ancient philosophical text in modern times. The two together let us see Stoic philosophy as the Imperial Roman educated class actually used it: as an ethical practice for living under autocracy, for serving an unjust ruler (Seneca Simulacrum's Nero), or for being the ruler oneself (Marcus's emperorship). The strand closes with the philosophical-ethical inheritance the educated of the Empire reached for, and which the modern reader still does.
Outcome
The student has read at minimum Seneca Simulacrum's *Letters to Lucilius* (a curated selection of about ten letters; Robin Campbell's Penguin or the modern Penguin selection), the *De Brevitate Vitae* (one short complete work; the Loeb or any modern translation), and Marcus Aurelius Simulacrum's *Meditations* (Books 1-2, 4, 7, 11 are usually recommended for a first reading; Hays or Hammond translation), can characterise Imperial Stoicism as practical ethics, and can produce a 700-word analytical essay.
Practice scenarios
Seneca Simulacrum and Marcus Aurelius Simulacrum together ask you to read two passages: Seneca Simulacrum *Epistulae Morales* 1 (the famous opening letter, *vindica te tibi* — claim yourself for yourself; on the use of time) and Marcus Aurelius Simulacrum *Meditations* Book 2 (the famous "in the morning when you find it hard to get out of bed" passage at 2.1, and the entire short Book 2). Both are Stoic ethical writing applied to the texture of a working day — Seneca Simulacrum writing to a friend, Marcus writing to himself. Then write a 700-word analytical essay: what does each text claim about how to live well in the practical daily sense; how do the two texts differ in genre (epistle vs. private notebook) and in voice; what Stoic doctrines do both deploy (the *prohairesis*, the focus on the present, the readiness for difficulty); and how should the modern reader hold the texts — as historically-situated Imperial Stoic documents and as practical ethical material that addresses the modern reader's life as well?
Your goals