Overview
We believe that this is the only programme in the world devoted to the myths of Rome. If you think that the Romans' creativity was restricted to roads and sewers, warfare and world conquest, that is only because one of the Romans' own myths (see Anchises' speech in Virgil Aeneid 6) has persuaded you to believe it! In fact, they had a huge range of stories whose vividness and exemplary power has appealed to artists and writers throughout the centuries.
Roman myth-making offers a fruitful field for new ideas and new research. In this programme the principal focus is the interaction of myth and history: some myths are clearly unhistorical (Aeneas, Romulus and Remus), some could conceivably be historical (Horatius at the bridge, Coriolanus), others are certainly historical but no less mythic for that (Caesar at the Rubicon, Nero and the fire of Rome). And from Botticelli and Rubens to Shakespeare and Quo Vadis? the stories the Romans told about their gods, their ancestors and themselves have lived on in a vast and complex afterlife which is still very inadequately explored.
Directors: Dr Claire Holleran and Dr Sharon Marshall
