Oxford Ancient History Faculty Seminar Hilary Term 2023 Tuesdays 4pm at the Ioannou Centre, 66 St Giles
Ancient North Africa: Histories, Cities, and Landscapes
Week 5 (14 February) Sam Agbamu (University of Reading)
Landscapes of Enmity: Rome, Africa, and the Places in Between
In a 1943 essay on Rome and Africa, the Italian archaeologist Pietro Romanelli suggested that ‘Rome and Africa cannot ignore each other, they cannot but meet in the sea in which one and the other bathe […] a relationship has, from birth, been inevitable’. I will examine this suggestion by considering how Latin literature’s conceptualisations of the geography of Italy, Africa, and the places in-between have contributed to explanations of Rome’s relationship with the continent to the south of the Mediterranean, from the Punic Wars, up until the colonisation of African territory by Mussolini’s new Roman Empire.
Organisers:
Jo Quinn (josephine.quinn@classics.ox.ac.uk), Niccolò Mugnai, Monica Hellström, Tim Smith
