The Jerome Lectures are one of the most prestigious international lecture series for the presentation of new work on Roman history and culture and are presented at both the American Academy in Rome and the University of Michigan. In 2014, the forty-second year of the lectures, the eminent historian Aldo Schiavone of the Scuola Normale Superiore will discuss equality in the ancient and modern worlds.

The idea of equality is one of the constituent features of Western identity. Bound up within it in an almost inextricable fashion are the legacy of the classical world and modern thought, the ancient polis and industrial society. The aim of the lectures is to outline a genealogy of this character, beginning with two elements that made its birth possible: the invention of politics and democracy by the Greeks, and the invention of law by the Romans. These were the two paradigms that enabled the modern construction of equality through the great revolutions of the eighteenth century in America and France. And it is from them that we must begin if we wish to ask ourselves what the future of this decisive experience will be.

Schiavone is professor of Roman law at the Scuola Normale Superiore. He has served as rettore of the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane in Florence, head of faculty in the school of jurisprudence at the Università di Firenze, and director of the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci. Schiavone has been visiting faculty member at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the Collège de France, and in the United States, has been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has published widely in the field of Roman law as well as on Roman history and Italian cultural history and criticism. He was the coeditor of the canonical Storia di Roma series and the author of many monographs including Ius. L'invenzione del diritto in Occidente/The Invention of Law in the West, La storia spezzata. Roma antica e occidente moderno/The End of the Past: Ancient Rome and the Modern West and most recently, Spartacus.

Thomas Spencer Jerome (1864–1914) was an American lawyer and lover of Roman history who lived on Capri from 1899 until his death. In his will he endowed a series of lectures to be jointly administered by the University of Michigan and the American Academy in Rome, and delivered at both institutions. The revised lectures are typically published by the University of Michigan Press.

Monday, February 24, 2014

6pm, Villa Aurelia
Lecture I
L'invenzione greca della democrazia (in italiano)

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

6pm, AAR Lecture Room
Lecture II
The Roman Invention of Law (in English)

Introduction: Elio Lo Cascio, Università di Roma "La Sapienza"

Friday, February 28, 2014

11:00am, AAR Lecture Room
Seminar Discussion
Slavery in the First Book of Aristotle’s “Politics”/Schiavitú nel primo libro di “La Politica” de Aristotele
To participate, please contact Kim Bowes at kimberly.bowes [at] aarome.org (kimberly[dot]bowes[at]aarome[dot]org)

Monday, March 3, 2014

6pm, AAR Lecture Room
Lecture III
Economy and Inequality (in English)

Introduction: Andrea Giardina, Scuola Normale Superiore

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

6pm, AAR Lecture Room
Lecture IV
Il mondo globale: nuovi problemi e vecchie risposte (in italiano)