Between Battle and Leisure: A Primer on the Roman Army
Tuesday, September 29, 5:30-7:00 pm, on Zoom
Registration is required at THIS LINK.
Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers, run by NYU. Featuring inquiry-based workshops, flexible lesson plans, and up-to-date research, Expanding the Ancient World aims to equip teachers with information and skills that they can share with their students.
This workshop explores the organization, equipment, and social life of the Roman army. Everyone knows the Roman army was a powerful military force, but did you know it did much more than fight wars? It developed the road network that tied the empire together, brought men from around the Mediterranean to defend the borders, and took Rome from a village on the banks of a modest Italian river to unrivaled mastery. Along the way, it brought fame and power to Cincinnatus, Julius Caesar, and Constantine—to name just a few! This workshop will explore the life and times of the Roman army—how it fought, what it looked like, and what its soldiers were up to when they weren’t at war. You’ll get a sense of the wealth of surviving evidence: from literature and fine sculpture to the letters soldiers wrote, the shoes they wore, and the tombstones they designed for themselves.
The presentation will provide an introduction to the study of the Roman military by providing a classroom-ready lecture on its equipment, tactics, and life outside the battlefield. We will look at different artifacts that inform us on Roman military life, trying to understand both their battlefield-usage and their ability to help us reconstruct other information about its owner, including social status and/or artistic preferences. We will also conduct two exercises, designed to get the students to think about the realities of Roman warfare as well as the soldiers’ life during peace times. The first exercise will present a siege from antiquity and walk students through a problem-solving exercise, as well as a Living Past experience, where they will be asked to imagine themselves as a Roman officer attempting to besiege an enemy city. The second exercise will present students with one of the Vindolanda inscriptions, in this specific case the first clearly identifiable female writing preserved from the ancient world (Tab.Vindol. 291). The exercise will ask students to imagine what life on the frontiers implied for the Roman soldiers and their families.
Workshop led by Alessandro Battaglia (Faculty Fellow in Roman History, NYU Department of Classics).
Participants will receive 1.5 CTLE hours.
If you have any questions regarding the Expanding the Ancient World program please email ETAW@nyu.edu.
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