History of the Roman People

Celia E. Schultz is Professor of Classical Studies and History at the University of Michigan. She specializes in Roman religion and in the history and literature of the Roman Republic. Her most recent book is Fulvia: Playing for Power at the End of the Roman Republic (2021).Serena Connolly is Professor of Classics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her research centers on the political and social history of the Roman Empire. She recently published Learned Emperors: Science, Technology, and Power at the Roman Imperial Court (2025).Having received a B.A. in Classics from Brown University and a Ph.D. in Classics from Princeton, Allen M. Ward taught Greek, Latin, and ancient history at the University of Connecticut for 45 years. His scholarly focus was on the late Roman Republic and its collapse in civil war.

• 1. Roman history: Its geographic and human foundations; 2. Phoenicians, Greeks, and Etruscans in pre-Roman Italy; 3. Rome's Archaic Monarchy, ca. 750-ca. 500 BC; 4. Early Roman society, religion, and values; 5. From tyrant kings to oligarchic republic, 509 to 287 b.c.e.; 6. Roman Expansion in Italy, 509 to 264 b.c.e.; 7. The First Punic War, northern Italy, and Illyrian pirates, 264 to 219 b.c.e.; 8. War with Hannibal: The Second Punic War, 218 to 201 b.c.e.; 9. Roman imperialism East and West, 200 to 133 b.c.e.; 10. The transformation of Roman life, 264 to 133 b.c.e.; 11. The great cultural synthesis, 264 to 133 b.c.e.; 12. The Gracchi and the struggle over reforms, 133 to 121 b.c.e.; 13. Destructive rivalries, Marius, and the Social War, 121 to 88 b.c.e.; 14. Civil war and Sulla’s reactionary settlement, 88 to 78 b.c.e.; 15. Personal ambitions: The failure of Sulla’s optimate oligarchy, 78 to 60 b.c.e.; 16. Caesar wins and is lost, 60 to 44 b.c.e.; 17. The last years of the Republic, 44 to 30 b.c.e.; 18. Social, economic, and cultural life in the late Republic, ca. 133 to ca. 30 b.c.e.; 19. From Oligarchic Republic to Monarchic Empire, 30 b.c.e. to 14 c.e.; 20. Imperial stabilization under Augustus; 21. The impact of Augustus on Roman Imperial life and culture; 22. The first two Julio-Claudian Emperors: Tiberius and Gaius (Caligula), 14 to 41 c.e.; 23. Claudius, Nero, and the end of the Julio-Claudians, 41 to 68 c.e.; 24. The crisis of the Principate and recovery under the Flavians, 69 to 96 c.e.; 25. The five “good” emperors of the second century, 96 to 180 c.e.; 26. Culture, society, and economy in the first two centuries c.e.; 27. Conflicts and Crises under Commodus and the Severi, 180 to 235 c.e.; 28. Crises of the third century, 235 to 285 c.e.; 29. Changes in Roman life and culture during the third century; 30. Diocletian: Creating the fourth-century Empire, 285 to 305 c.e.; 31. Constantine the Great and Christianity, 306 to 337 c.e.; 32. From Constantine’s dynasty to Theodosius the Great, 337 to 395 c.e.; 33. The evolving world of Late Antiquity in the fourth century c.e.; 34. Christianity and Classical culture in the fourth century; 35. Germanic takeover in the West and Imperial survival in the East, 395 to 518 c.e.; 36. Justin, Justinian, and the impossible dream of universal Empire, 518 to 602 c.e.; 37. The transformation of the late antique Roman world, 395 to 600 c.e.; 38. The problem of Rome’s fall.