Test #4 / Final Flashcards
What does the Roman regulation of mourning activity (Shelton pg 94) demonstrate to us about their attitude toward gender? How is this related to sumptuary laws?
It doesn’t specify how long to morn a wife (as if only women need to be told to stop mourning and get back to having children)
Similar to sumptuary laws it was restricting what women could do and legislating morality
How did life expectancy affect families and relationships between parents/children? What was the aristocratic funeral like? What was the importance of the young man’s funeral oration? What was special about the procession of ancient nobles, and how was it like a living family tree?
Life expectancies especially for children were short so a parent could expect them to likely die untill they were older so parents were likely not to get too attached at a young age.
An aristocratic funeral especially if they accomplished alot in their life might include a procession through the city and include a public eulogy of their accomplishments
they may also include their family members wax maxs
What were the funeral clubs and who could be in them?
Funeral clubs were clubs where people shared the costs of a funeral by monthly fees but where also social clubs where one could go to socialize
What was the Laudatio Turiae? What happened in the story given in the Laudatio Turiae?
really long funeral narration/inscription about wife very emotional shows importance of women standing up for husband and family also shows women roles in Roman society
also shows his own importance and his through accomplishments through his wife’s story
What do you think some of the purposes were of those inscriptions on milestones (examples in Shelton) describing construction work?
they were important to showing who gets the credit / prestige for the accomplishment and they also remind the locals of the importance of Roman in terms of the economic benefit
also duty of rich people to do that stuff = eurgetism
What were Roman aqueducts like?
Roman aqueducts brought clean water to the city via a very gradual grade so as to not erode the structure there were rules about building near them and stuff
What was the Cloaca Maxima, and what was historically important about it?
The cloaca maxima was a drainage system in ancient Rome (that one dude had to sail a boat through it apparently)
What were Roman toilets like?
Toilets - long bench with no pivacy it was common to use a communal sponge for cleaning public toilets were not common most used a chamber pot
What were Roman roads like?
Roman roads were well constructed (latter by legions) they were primarily military in purpose making it easier for the legions to get from place to place but also connected the empire and showed the importance of the people making the roads
via appia is an important Roman road the first pace road
If you asked an ancient Roman and a modern American, “What is Shakespeare’s Macbeth about?”, how will the two responses differ from one another, and why?
The Romans did not emphasize the importance of symbolic meaning so they would know it was about a king in scottland although they did notice value judgements
however they were not into hermeneutic which is looking at deeper meaning the desire for power and its corruption etc.
Draw connections between the following 4 things: Propertius poem 2.7; Epicurean moral philosophy; Vergil’s Aeneid; the marriage legislation of Augustus
They are all related to duty and marriage.
Poem - about lover / mistress
Epicurean - about forsaking duty for pleasure
aneid - give up love (dido) for duty
Marriage legislation - duty in marriage
What did W.V. Harris have to say about ancient Roman literacy rates, and how did this conflict with the earlier understanding—and what were the stakes, for scholars?
He said that the rates were lower for the Romans than many other let on with optimistic predictions
for scholarship this means that the literature may not have been / be as representative of Roman society as a whole as was previously thought
What were the famous libraries in Rome? Who wrote Roman literature? What were the audiences, and the performance contexts, for Roman literature?
Palatine library built by Augustus
The rich people anyone technically but overwhelmingly the rich
most people experienced literature through theater or oration few from books which were expensive
What was the nature of the physical copies of Roman literature? Who were the literary patrons and how did that relationship affect the literature itself?
they were very expensive
literary patrons funded the work the writer wrote it mostly for prestige (no intellectual property)
the literature would not usually be critical of patron but neither was the patron censoring the work to fit their desires
What was the general Roman attitude toward the purpose of literature? How did Roman writers deal with their predecessors in Greek literature?
literature was supposed to be both pleasurable and useful
they viewed Greek literature as being better than theirs and they would frequently allude to Greek literature ot show how knowledgeable they were
