7.1 Cities

What is a city? And how does it work? Modern European cities are often the result of subsequent transformations of Greek and Roman settlements and their original layout has shaped the way we still live in and use them today. For example, the nature of central urban areas as specialized spaces dedicated to political, religious or sometimes commercial activities developed in the Classical world and remain almost unchanged in many European modern cities.

How far then can our understanding of how cities developed and worked in the Classical work help our understanding of cities in a contemporary context?

EPQ Suggested Questions

In your EPQ project you may want to focus on one of the following questions:

How did cities developed and were designed in Greek and Roman antiquity? And how far has their urban planning affected the way we live today? For example, you can choose one or more cities established in the Greek or Roman period and look at their transformations over the centuries.
How far has the notion of city changed through the centuries? You can develop one of the following topics:
- Living in the city: private and public spaces in the city
- making the city work: the city and its infrastructures
- defining space in a city: centre, periphery and suburbium

Material culture

Here is a list of ancient cities that have been thoroughly investigated or have survived virtually unchanged from antiquity. They can all offer us evidence for an understanding of the nature of Greek and Roman cities, how they looked like, how they worked and why they were established or developed as they did.

Athens (Greece) offers a good example of the relationship between public and private space and between city and periphery. Check for the following areas: The Acropolis, the Agora, the Kerameikos cemetery and Piraeus.
Greek colonial settlements in Magna Graecia and Sicily offer an excellent example of how the Greek notion of isonomia (equality of political rights) may reflect in the way a Greek colonial settlement was designed and planned.
Pompeii (Italy) is a remarkable and well-preserved example of a city that underwent a series of transformations in its urban layout over the centuries, from and Oscan settlement, later influenced by the presence of Greek settlers in the region, to a Roman colony. It also offers remarkable evidence for an understanding of how ancient Roman cities worked (their infrastructures, the relationship between city and countryside, and so on)
Ostia (Italy) was a Roman colony not far from Rome, at the mouth of river Tiber. It is incredibly well preserved and offer an understanding of the nature and design of a Roman city at a later stage than Pompeii, from the 2^nd century AD to Late Antiquity. Check the website https://www.ostia-antica.org/ that will help you navigate through the ancient city.
Thamugadi (Timgad, Algeria) is a Roman colony founded by the emperor Trajan. Its remarkable state of conservation helps to understand the role of the Roman army in shaping Roman colonial settlements during the Empire.

References

Alston, R., 2002. The City in Roman and Byzantine Egypt. Routledge.
Boardman, J., 1980. The Greeks overseas: their early colonies and trade. London: Thames and Hudson.
Camp, J.M., 2001. The archaeology of Athens. Yale University Press.
Cerchiaia, L. 2002, The Greek Cities of Magna Graecia and Sicily. (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum.
Cooley, A.E. and Cooley, M.G.L., 2013. Pompeii and Herculaneum: a sourcebook. Routledge.
Cooley, A.E. and Cooley, M.G.L., 2013. Pompeii and Herculaneum: a sourcebook. Routledge.
Crouch, D.P., 1993. Water management in ancient Greek cities. Oxford University Press.
Dolansky, F. and Raucci, S., 2018. Rome: a sourcebook on the ancient city. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Goodman, P., 2006. The Roman city and its periphery: from Rome to Gaul. Routledge.
Grig, L. and Kelly, G. eds., 2012. Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in late antiquity. Oxford University Press.
Habicht, C., 1998. Pausanias guide to ancient Greece (Vol. 50). Univ of California Press
Hermansen, G., 1981. Ostia: aspects of Roman city life. University of Alberta.
Holloway, Ross. 1991. The Archaeology of Ancient Sicily. London: Routledge.
Hutton, W., 2005. Describing Greece: Landscape and literature in the Periegesis of Pausanias. Cambridge University Press.
Laurence, R., 2010. Roman Pompeii: space and society. Routledge.
Laurence, R., 2010. Roman Pompeii: space and society. Routledge.
Laurence, R., Cleary, S.E. and Sears, G., 2011. The City in the Roman West, c. 250 BC–c. AD 250. Cambridge University Press.
Mattingly, D.J., 2013. Imperialism, power, and identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire. Princeton University Press.
Murray O. (ed.) 2003, The Greek City: From Homer to Alexander, Clarendon Paperbacks.
Owens, E.J., 2018. The city in the Greek and Roman world. Routledge.
Parkins, H. ed., 2005. Roman urbanism: beyond the consumer city. Routledge.
Pitts, M. and Versluys, M.J. eds., 2014. Globalisation and the Roman world: world history, connectivity and material culture. Cambridge University Press.
Rich, J. ed., 2002. The city in late antiquity. Routledge.
Russell, A., 2016. The politics of public space in republican Rome. Cambridge University Press.
Sears, G., 2011. The Cities of Roman Africa. History Press.

Online resources

Perseus digital library: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/
The Grove Art Online: http://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/