Suggested Paper Topics

These really are just suggestions, and in some instances very broad, vague suggestions. I’m keeping a running list of things as they occur to me, and will add to this as the mood strikes. You are entirely free to run with one of these….yet happily encouraged to devise your own topic.

1. The ‘visual’ in Velleius Paterculus – why so much evidence on the ‘visual’ and the value of ‘seeing things’?

2. Women in the Tiberian period: what can we deduce from the available evidence about the status of women in the period….is there any shift from the Augustan to the Tiberian? There are many references to ‘Tiberian women’ in Tacitus: does that merely reflect Tacitus’ interests, or does it tell us something useful about the period?

3. The meaning of ‘Augustus’ in the Tiberian period. What was the attitude of Tiberius toward his adoptive father? How does Augustus and his legacy play out in the Tiberian regime? Again, this is an important theme in Tacitus…but is that just Tacitus, or can it be argued that it reflects the historical situation?

4. Tiberian poetry: who’s writing poetry in this period? What do we know about it? Any commonalities? Is there in fact far less poetry being written in the Tiberius period than in the Augustan? Or is that simply a false impression created by what has survived (or rather not survived)? (One could take this topic in a number of directions…from simple survey of the evidence to discussion of content of what survives.)

5. Under Tiberius, what happens to the descendants of a) old Republican families and/or b) remnants of the Augustan aristocracy and/or c) descendants of Augustus? Tacitus devotes a lot of space to the fates of such people – is that just Tacitus, or does it tell us something about the period?

6. Suetonius Life of Tiberius: what do we learn about ‘Tiberian culture’ from this text? Is it in fact a useful source for the subject?

7. The epigraphic record: how do the surviving inscriptions from the period add to our sense of the characteristics of ‘Tiberian culture’ (or perhaps better, the characteristics of the Tiberian regime?)?

8. Magic, prophecy, astrology in the Tiberian period. This comes up quite a bit in the sources. Is it in fact an important aspect of the times….or merely a curiosity?

9. Exemplarity and ideology: what may we deduce from Valerius Maximus about the ethics and ideology of the Tiberian period? What does he seem to value…and what does he seem to discount or ignore? Is ValMax entirely sui generis – or do you see evidence in other sources for the period that suggest ValMax’s point of view was widely shared/admired?

10. Velleius’ Tiberius vs. Tacitus’ Germanicus. Does Velleius provide us with a useful way to ‘read’ Tacitus’ Germanicus?

11. Literary censorship under Tiberius: how seriously should we take, e.g., the suggestion that Tib. actively repressed literary activity? What is the evidence for it…and is it credible? Was Tiberius responsible for an atmosphere of fear and anxiety that might account for the apparent dearth of first rate literary production?

12. Paul Zanker famously elucidated The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus. What ‘images’ are associated with Tiberius? Is there any coherence to them…any suggestion of a conscious and deliberate plan, such as one senses for the Augustan period? This entails looking at the material, and especially artistic/iconographic (monuments, statues, coins, etc.), evidence from the period.

Here, too, one could go in many different directions or approach it from various angles. E.g.: statues figure pretty prominently in Tacitus' Tiberian narrative...but how? what are statues 'good for', if you follow Tacitus' lead on this?

13. Cassius Dio: how different is his picture of life under Tiberius from that presented by Tacitus?

14. Phaedrus: how does familiarity with the other sources (particularly the historical sources) affect how one reads Phaedrus’ fables? In what ways might you qualify or expand on Henderson’s readings of the ‘Roman’ tales?

15. Seneca the Elder: one essentially Tiberian author we have neglected, largely because his most important, extant texts (the Contrversiae and Suasoriae) were by common consent written and published after Tiberius’ death, is Seneca the Elder. But these are very interesting texts (as you will have discerned from reading Bloomer on ValMax), and clearly contribute to/are the product of ‘Tiberian culture’. Paper topic: how and in what way? What do they add to our understanding of the period?

16. Tiberian historians: we’ve read Velleius…but there were lots of other historians writing under Tiberius. Who were they? What did they write? What do they have in common…and what sets them apart from one another? Why is history (evidently) so important in this period?

17. Censorship in the Tiberian period. What is the evidence for it? how widespread? does it seem to increase over time? What sorts of things are censored...what sorts of things are not?

18. If one takes the view that Valerius Maximus intends to set the moral or ethical bar for the citizens of Tiberian Rome -- and perhaps for Tiberius himself -- then what characters from the period (the evidence for this is primarily but not exclusively Tacitus) live up to or fall short of that bar? Focusing on Tiberius himself (and on just a few key 'values' ValMax promotes) is one way to go with this.