Dr. Mary-Evelyn Farrior, Columbia University
Presented by the Graduate Collective for Ancient Studies. In-person attendance at East Basement Seminar Room, James B. Duke House (1 East 78th Street, New York, NY 10075). Free and open to public, but advance registration is required.
Abstract
“Nine Greek inscriptions found in the area of the Sacra Via attest to the existence of spaces, referred to as stationes, organized by eastern provincial cities in Rome. The inscriptions reveal how individual men and women from the provinces negotiated imperial support and funded these stationes on the Sacra Via in the early third century CE for the benefit of their home city. I argue that the stationes of Rome, unlike those of Ostia or Puteoli to which they are often compared, reveal the importance of physical representation and the display of civic identity in Rome, at the very center of imperial power and decision-making, during a period of intense civic competition for imperial titles. I examine the stationes alongside other Severan era interventions on the Sacra Via, as well as their position near the Colosseum and the Temple of Venus and Roma, in order to understand the transformation of the area in the second and third centuries. The built environment of the Sacra Via shows how the provinces – the periphery of the empire – were able to physically shape the very center of Rome in the imperial period.”