CLAS45430: Crisis and Recovery. The Roman Empire During the Long Third Century CE

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• To introduce students to the history of the Roman Empire and its momentous transformations during the long third century CE from the Severan Dynasty to the end of the Tetrarchy.
• To provide students with the academic tools necessary to access and critically evaluate Latin and Greek epigraphic, documentary, archaeological, legal, and literary sources for their own research in fields such as Roman religious, military, economic, and administrative history and imperial culture.
• To develop an awareness of the different challenges the Roman Empire faced during the third century CE and the ways in which it adapted and transformed as a result of it.
• To enable students to recognise and assess in a critical fashion the narratives of crisis, decline, recovery, and transformation used by modern scholars to describe and evaluate this period.
• To bridge the divide between the Roman imperial and late antique period, exploring the dynamics of change, transformation, and continuity that connect both.

• In the third century CE, the Roman Empire faced enemies both within and without: While in the West Barbarian raids became more frequent and successful and in the East the new, powerful Sassanid Empire threatened the borders, Rome itself was torn apart by a long sequence of devastating civil wars. Economic stagnation, hyper-inflation, and brewing religious conflicts further contributed to a grim picture of crisis. The pillars of statehood were under threat; or so scholars have traditionally believed. While the actual extent of the crisis remains a matter of contention among modern historians, the host of far-reaching reforms that fundamentally altered the appearance and workings of the Roman Empire at the turn of the fourth century CE bear witness to the contemporary longing for lost stability and prosperity. Begun already by Aurelianus, this reform work culminated under the highly innovative experiment of the Tetrarchy and should lay the foundations for the world of late antiquity.
• Due to the lack of extensive narrative histories for this period, a host of other source material must be consulted: documentary sources, inscriptions, legal codes, shipwrecks, amphoras and seals, art, architecture, panegyric speeches, martyr stories, and coins all offer individual pieces to the bigger mosaic of the history of the third and early fourth century CE. However, each type of source material also bears methodological peculiarities that must be considered. Mastering the diverse source material allows to assess and intervene in the debates within a deeply divided scholarly landscape regarding the various aspects of crisis and recovery during the long third century CE.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Detailed knowledge of a selection of Latin and Greek primary sources (in translation) on the history of the Roman Empire from the Severan Dynasty to the end of the Tetrarchy.
• Knowledge of a range of current scholarship on various aspects of the crisis and recovery of the Roman Empire during the long third century CE.
• A critical understanding of the realities and the perception ancient and modern of instability and change within Roman society.
• Awareness of academic conversations on issues pertaining to crisis management and collective trauma.

Subject-specific Skills:

• An ability to access and to make an informed use of a variety of Greek and Latin sources for independent research in diverse fields.
• An ability to use, in critical fashion, a diverse range of primary sources, including archaeological, documentary, epigraphic, numismatic, historiographical, and literary material pertaining to the Roman Empire of the third and early fourth century CE.
• An ability to use and to engage with scholarship on the third-century Roman Empire and the Tetrarchy.
• An ability to engage with relevant academic conversations in fields such as crisis management and collective trauma.

Key Skills:

• The ability to assess and make use of a range of ancient sources of diverse nature and in different languages.
• The ability to collaborate with your peers in seminar presentations and discussions.
• The capacity to produce tight, well-evidenced, clearly expressed, and original arguments in both oral and in written form.
• The capacity to produce independent and convincing interpretations of a diverse body of ancient sources and informed by modern academic scholarship.

• Teaching takes place by fortnightly seminars organised around specific research questions and sources.
• The fortnightly seminars are two-hour long sessions to allow and encourage significant preparation and detailed discussion.
• Formative assessment consists of a short essay (2,000 words) and an introductory presentation, usually on the topic of one of the seminars.
• Summative assessment consists of a max. 5,000-word essay on a topic of each students own choosing, which should normally be different from the formative essay.

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