Download Knowing the Roman State

UT HUMANITIES CENTER FIFTH ANNUAL
DISTINGUISHED LECTURE SERIES
Knowing the
Roman State:
The Epistemics
of Sovereignty
Thursday, March 30, 3:30 PM
Lindsay Young Auditorium
Hodges Library
Was the Roman empire
a territorial state?
More precisely, when did the Romans come to think
of themselves as ruling over a contiguous territory
and governing all its people? These questions become
more urgent as we reflect on the very real limitations
on state power in premodern societies. Recent
scholarship has urged that Roman words for units of
rule—including the ancestors of the words “empire”
and “province”—only acquired a stable meaning
pointing to a unit of territory around the turn of the
millennium. In his lecture, Professor Ando will trace
the history of Roman concepts and technologies for
imagining sovereignty over territory.
CLIFFORD ANDO is David B. and Clara E. Stern
Professor and professor of classics, history, and law
and co-director of the Center for the Study of Ancient
Religions at the University of Chicago and Research Fellow
in the Department of Biblical and Ancient Studies at the
University of South Africa. His books include Imperial
Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire
(2000), which won the Society for Classical Studies’
Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit; The Matter of the
Gods (2008); Law, Language and Empire in the Roman
Tradition (2011); and Roman Social Imaginaries (2015).
Free and open to the public.
uthumanitiesctr.utk.edu
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