Health and Medicine in Antiquity
- Too busy to be ill?
Professor Helen King
Dept of Classics, University of Reading

When early twentieth century medical historians tried to reconstruct the earliest period of Roman medicine, they suggested that constant war kept the Romans fit. Can we go further in exploring the relationships between Rome and her conquered peoples?

Exhibition: Life in Roman Britain
From the BRLSI Collections (view photo page).

The Roman Empire as experienced in the province of Britannia: Government, society, industry, lives and beliefs of Romans and Britons living under a military dictatorship.

I know my rights…
- but what laws were there in Roman Bath?
Professor Derek Roebuck
Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Roman Bath lasted five centuries, but legal records are scarce. Yet, with scholarship and some conjecture, we can imagine how civil and criminal law touched people’s lives, and might have affected grievances such as between a British farmer and a retired Roman wishing to build a house on land acquired from him; and some other troublesome predicaments.

The Battle of Mount Badon
- Arthur’s last & greatest victory

Michael Davis
BRLSI member

Britain was the most militarised part of a highly militarised Roman Empire. With Arthur’s great victory near Bath it became the most successful ex-colony, during the Empire's break-up, in resisting the barbarian hordes. With the later Battle of Dyrham came inexorably the Celtic Twilight, and for two centuries Bath was deserted.

Wednesday 13 October

Vergil: the Aeneid

Tony Pitman
Classics Teacher

Vergil’s Latin epic of 29-19 BC drew stylistic elements from Homer’s Iliad, written just after the fall of Troy c1880 BC, where Aeneas also first appeared. The poet John Dryden, celebrated for his 1690 translation of Vergil into English verse, understanding its connection with the Greeks and with the Emperor Augustus, Vergil’s contemporary, saw the Aeneid as the glorification of Rome. Was he right?

Living with Latin
- The feel of Roman culture

Dr Nicholas Ostler
Philologer

Colony so Fertile: John Wood and the recovery of the Roman Empire

Professor Richard Hingley
University of Durham

The Perception of Self
- Freedom and Slavery in Roman Bath
Stephen Clews
B&NES Heritage Services

How did the people of Bath nearly 2000 years ago see their position in life? From their monuments and inscriptions, we can see something of these people and the society they lived in. Evidence from classical sources, and from other locations, brings some colour to the story told by dry bones and stones.

Calleva Atrebatum: The beginning of town life in Britain

Professor Michael Fulford
University of Reading

Long term excavation of the Roman town at Silchester in Hampshire is throwing important new light on its pre-Roman origins, and its development over the first two generations or so after the Roman conquest of southern Britain after AD 43.

AD 410 - The Sack of Rome: Was it the end for Roman Britain?

Sam Moorhead
British Museum

When Alaric and his Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, just how great was the catastrophe? Were its effects more psychological than physical? What were the real motives of the late Roman emperors, the Senate and the barbarians? Was this infamous year really so pivotal in Roman and British history?

Roman Ripples: Drapery in fashion through the ages

Rosemary Harden
Curator, Bath Museum of Fashion

From those slender muslin dresses fashionable in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century to the intricately draped garments by today's designers - such as John Galliano and Sophia Kokosalaki - designers and makers of fashion in modern times have been inspired by the statues and sculptures of classical Rome and Greece.

Edward Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’

Dr Brian Young
University of Oxford

Dr Young’s reappraisal of Gibbon’s historical masterpiece will provide a fitting conclusion to this Roman series.