STORIA DELLA SICILIA ANTICA

Academic Year 2019/2020 - 1° Year
Teaching Staff: Cristina SORACI
Credit Value: 6
Scientific field: L-ANT/03 - ROMAN HISTORY
Taught classes: 36 hours
Term / Semester:

Learning Objectives

The course, unique in the Italian academic panorama, aims to offer students a complete picture, as possible, of the salient moments in the history of ancient Sicily, encouraging a correct approach to the use of literary, epigraphic and numismatic sources. At the same time, tools will be provided for the study and processing of historical data. Among the objectives expected, and pursued through interactive lessons, in-progress tests and guided tours, there is the development of critical and judgement skills in the field of historical processes; the teaching also proposes to promote the communication skills of acquired concepts, through short oral simulations carried out during the lessons.


Course Structure

Frontal and interactive lessons in Italian; some topics, however, will be treated in English, others in French.

Guided visits to sites of particular tourist interest are also planned


Detailed Course Content

Fonts about the history of ancient Sicily; greek settlements in Sicily; Sicilian tyrants; the democratical interlude; Dionysius the Elder and his successors; Timoleon in Sicily; Agathocles’ reign; Sicily during the Punic wars; the first Roman province; Sicily as Rome’s granary; Sicily in the second century B.C.; Verres’ gouvernment; Sicily in the first century B.C.; Sextus Pompey, Octavian and Sicily; Sicily in the Augustan age; Roman emperors and Sicily; Sicilian latifundia under the Roman empire; Sicily from the fourth to the sixth century A.D.


Textbook Information

General course: Sicily from the Archaic age to the Roman age

L. Braccesi- G. Millino, La Sicilia greca, Carocci, Roma 20103.

C. Soraci, La Sicilia romana, Roma 2016.


Students may choose to study, as an alternative to a part of the texts indicated above, one or more of the following papers in French or English:

E. Zambon, From Agathocles to Hieron II: the birth and development of basileia in Hellenistic Sicily, in S. Lewis (ed.), Ancient tyranny, Edinburgh 2006, pp. 77-92 (replacing the pages 169-191 of Braccesi-Millino's text);

S. Pittia, J. Dubouloz, La Sicile romaine, de la disparition du royaume de Hiéron II à la réorganisation augustéenne des provinces, «Pallas», 80, 2009, pp. 85-125 (replacing the pages 44-71 of Soraci's text);

R.J.A. Wilson, Roman villas in Sicily, in A. Marzano e G. Métraux (eds.), The Roman villa in the Mediterranean basin. Late Republic to Late Antiquity, Cambridge 2018, pp. 195-219 (ireplacing the pages 140-145 of Soraci's text).


Erasmus or worker students or second cycle degree’s students who chose this course may arrange alternative programs with the teacher.