InBoRC – The Intermediate Bodies of the Roman Cities: Sociability and Agency of Non-Elite Population in the Roman West (Late Republic - 3rd c. AD)

NRRP – Mission 4 “Education and Research” – Component 2 “From Research to Business” – Investiment 1.2 “Funding project presented by young researchers”

Areas:

Roman History; Latin Epigraphy; Social History of the Ancient World

Abstract:  

InBOrC wants to design a more plural and complex image of the Roman city to integrate and go beyond the classical vision based on the élite and characterized by a top-down approach. As such, it focuses on the social, economic and political impact of middling groups in the city from the Late Republic to the 3rd c. AD. In order to do that the research is based on the study of the intermediate bodies of the cities – social aggregational cores intermediate between the family and the city – which are our best indicator of the civic action of this stratum of population. Since these groups are attested almost exclusively in epigraphic sources, the project wants to analyze the inscriptions through a sociological and historical approach that outlines the sociability and agency of the intermediate bodies in the cities of the Roman West with particular attention to its best documented areas: Italy, Southern Gaul and North Africa. However, InBoRC is not geographically strictly limited, but it is nourished by punctual parallels coming from the epigraphical documentation of Asia Minor and Syria.

Project duration:

December 2022 – December 2024

Principal Investigator:

Simone Ciambelli

Budget:

EUR 150,000.00

Level II ERC sectors **: SH6_5 Ancient history