Rome grew from a tiny community of small hill villages near the River Tiber in central Italy to one of the most powerful empires the world has seen. The Romans themselves believed that their great city was founded in the middle of the eighth century BCE. By the middle of the second century CE, Rome had a population of 1.5 million; Alexandria, in Egypt, 500,000; and Londinium, in Briton, 30,000. Not counting locally recruited forces, this vast empire was subjugated and policed with only around twenty-five legions, or the equivalent of only three and a half times the entire police force of New York City.How was this possible? Military power, colonial organization, superior technology, a well-organized infrastructure, and a cohesive economic system. These elements of Roman genius are well known, but it was the very idea of Rome that proved so persuasive and this Roman ideal was born from mythology.
Lecture 1 Mythological Rome
Lecture 2 The Making of Myth: How the Romans Recorded Their Mythology
Lecture 3 Greek Myths and the Romans: Cacus, Hercules, and the Greeks in Italy
Lecture 4 Arcadian Fantasies: The Fathers of the Founders
Lecture 5 Trojan Ancestors: The Myth of Aeneas
Lecture 6 Romulus and Remus
Lecture 7 The Seven Kings of Rome
Lecture 8 Etruscan Kings in Rome: Myth or History?
Lecture 9 Myths of the Republic
Lecture 10 Myths of Roman Expansion
Lecture 11 Virgil and The Aeneid (Part One)
Lecture 12 The Aeneid (Part Two)
Lecture 13 Ovid
Lecture 14 The Survival of Classical Myth