Teaching Delivery: This module is taught in 20 weekly lectures. 

Content: This module analyses the transformation of the Roman political system from Republic to Principate under Caesar Augustus with reference to the ancient sources and the ways in which scholars have sought to understand them. There will be a strong focus on cultural history, and we will examine such themes as political propaganda, imperialism, memory, religion, and social history, as displayed in a wide variety of sources including urban architecture and monuments, coins, inscriptions, and literary texts from poetry to biography. We will also examine how later ages drew on the Augustan period in creating discourses of power. The students will be expected to read up on particular problems and themes, and to discuss these in seminar-type classes; assessment will be by guided research (2 x 4000 word essays, one each term; no final exam).

Skills: At the end of the modules students should:
1. have engaged with texts, images, and theories that allow them to reflect on questions of social and cultural development and ideology;
2. have a good understanding of how the history and culture of a crucial period in the history of Rome is constructed and understood,
3. have a sound knowledge of the relevant primary and secondary bibliography;
4. have developed their understanding of the methodological problems relevant to the field;
5. be able to deploy appropriate evidence and test arguments in oral discussion and written analysis;
6. be able to deploy evidence and argument effectively in written presentation.

Preparatory reading: Start with any couple of these. Karl Galinsky, Augustan Culture: An Interpretive Introduction, Princeton 1996; Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution, Oxford 1939; Josiah Osgood, Kit Morrell, and Kathryn Welch, eds., The Alternative Augustan Age, Oxford 2019; Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, Ann Arbor 1989; Barbara Levick, Augustus: Image and Substance, London 2010; Werner Eck, The Age of Augustus (2nd edition), Oxford 2007. Primary Sources: Suetonius, Divus Augustus (any edition); Alison Cooley, Res Gestae Divi Augusti, Text, Translation and Commentary, Cambridge 2009. Reception: Penelope J. Goodman, ed., Afterlives of Augustus. AD 14-2014, Cambridge 2018. Auguste (exhibition catalogue, Paris 2014; ISBN 978-2-7118-6173-6).