Greek and roman history

The first part of the course will focus on Greek history and begin by examining a number of preliminary questions such as the geographical context of Greek history, periodization, the different types of sources and their use, the origins and development of Greek historiography. The course will then move to the archaic Greek world and consider overarching themes such as the Dark Ages and the rise of the polis in the Mediterranean context, colonization, tyrants and legislators, the origins of alphabetic writing, political institutions (with special attention to Sparta and Athens), Greece and the Near-Eastern world, the Persian wars.
The following lectures will be devoted to Classical Greece and to an analysis of the most significant political phenomena: Athenian democracy and society, the Delian league and Athenian imperialism, the Peloponnesian war, tyranny in Sicily and the Western world, interstate relations (from Athens' defeat against Sparta to the battle of Mantinea, including the King's Peace and the Second Athenian League) and the failure of the model of the hegemonial polis, the rise of Macedon and Alexander's conquest of the Persian empire.
The final section will revolve around Alexander's successors, Hellenism and the Hellenistic monarchies down to the coming of Rome and the development of Roman rule over the oikoumene.

The second part of the course will be devoted to the study of the Roman History and start with an introduction to the ancient evidence - literary, epigraphical and archaeological sources - which are normally employed for the reconstruction of the history of Rome. Special attention will be paid to historiographical traditions, which will be outlined by references to the most important ancient historians. Thereafter, following a brief excursus devoted to the mythical origins of Rome, the course will treat the monarchic age of Rome, by focusing on the most relevant facts and figures of that period.
We will then move on to the early republican period, to outline the nature of the clash between the two main components of the civitas, the patrician and the plebeian, and the expansion of Rome in Italy and in the Mediterranean context.
The course will afterwards deal with the delicate period that led to the crisis of the republican system and the establishment, following a long series of civil wars, of the principate as a new form of government.
The last lessons will be devoted to outline the development of the principate, the consolidation of the Roman power on the Mediterranean world, and its subsequent crisis and changes in the 3rd century AD.