HIST 3183 - Classical World

3 credits

[Meets the Core Curriculum Writing Practice Requirement] This course examines the concept of the citizen in the ancient Mediterranean. Relying upon ancient political philosophers, politicians, and poets, it traces the development of the concept of public polity over tribalism in Greece, transitions to Republican Rome where the concept res publica develops alongside the Senate, and finishes in Imperial Rome, where the citizen remains the cornerstone of the Roman polity, despite the autocratic imperial overlay. The course ends with discussions of how Christian notions of the body politic and body mystic nuanced the pagan notion of citizenship.