4.2 Cultural Identity
How was cultural identity expressed in the diverse and multiform contexts of the Greek and the Roman world? And how far can the understanding of ancient cultural identity help our understanding of cultural identity in the global contemporary world?
EPQ Suggested Questions
In your EPQ essay you may want to discuss the following questions:
- How did notions of otherness and diversity affect the way Greeks and Romans represented non-Greek and non-Roman people?
Sources: Roman views of non Roman people
- Tacitus, Germania (on the Germans)
- Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman Antiquities, 31 (on the Goths)
Material culture
- Silver denarius of Lucius Hostilius Saserna with Vercingetorix (?) (open 4.2 Coin of L. Hostilius Saserna Male pdf)
- Gravestone of Titus Calidius Severus (open 4.2 Gravestone pdf)
- Woman funerary portrait from Noricum (open 4.2 Woman gravestone Noricum pdf)
- Mummy of Artemidorus (open 4.2 Mummy of Artemidorus pdf)
References
References – Roman cultural identity
- Boatwright, M.T., 2012. Peoples of the Roman world. Cambridge University Press.
- Gruen, E.S., 2010. Rethinking the other in antiquity. Princeton University Press.
- Hingley, R., 2005. Globalizing Roman culture: unity, diversity and empire. Routledge.
- Mattingly, D.J., 2013. Imperialism, power, and identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire. Princeton University Press.
- Peachin, M. ed., 2011. The Oxford handbook of social relations in the Roman world. Oxford Handbooks in Classics.
References – Ancient writers
- Arafat, K.W., 2004. Pausanias' Greece: ancient artists and Roman rulers. Cambridge University Press.
- Champion, C. B. (2004). Cultural politics in Polybius’s Histories (Vol. 41). University of California Press.
- Goldhill, S. ed., 2001. Being Greek under Rome: cultural identity, the second sophistic and the development of empire. Cambridge University Press.
- Habicht, C., 1998. Pausanias guide to ancient Greece (Vol. 50). University of California Press.
Online resources
- Transformation. Website discussing the Emergence of a Common Culture in the Northern Provinces of the Roman Empire from Britain to the Black Sea up to 212 AD (open link)
- Online Coins of the Roman empire (open link)
- Archaeology Data Service (open link)
- Clothing and Identity - new perspectives on textiles in the Roman Empire (open link)
- Perseus digital library (open link)
- The Grove Art Online (open link)