Though separated by nearly one hundred years from each other, Julius Caesar and the epic poet Lucan each left moving literary commemorations of Rome’s civil wars which attempt to capture in words the devastation which discord brings to a community. This talk focuses on one particular group of civil warriors: the average Roman soldier, rarely named, largely forgotten by history. Through a close reading of the texts of Caesar and Lucan focused on the average soldier, Lauren Ginsberg will address wider themes of complicity in civil violence and its commemoration, competing voices in the sphere of cultural memory, the drive towards amnesia over a dark political past, and the strident voices who deny us amnesia or palliation of the same.

Ginsberg is the Andrew Heiskell Post-Doctoral Rome Prize Fellow in Ancient Studies and assistant professor of classics at the University of Cincinnati.

The event will be held in English.