Umbra Adds New Roman Civilization Course
This semester veteran professor and classical scholar Giampiero Bevagna will introduce a new course in Roman Civilization.
Umbra’s newest course, Roman Civilization, could be called “Pompeii On Fifty Denarii A Day,” jokes Giampiero Bevagna, a professor at Umbra since the program’s inception. The course, though, is a serious one, an intense look at the civilization created by Rome through the lens of Pompeii.
Buried by an eruption of the nearby Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. and accidentally rediscovered in 1748, Pompeii provides an near-ideal point of study for archeaologists who want to reconstruct Roman daily life under the Empire.
Bevagna, who graduated with honors from the University of Perugia and has done field work all over central and southern Italy, rededicated himself to the subject last summer to prepare for the new class. Students, in addition to lectures and library research, will have the opportunity to visit both Pompeii and another nearby site buried in the same eruption, Herculaneum, as part of a class trip in February.