CLAS 1P92 Roman Civilization Final Essay Guidelines What is the point of this assignment? The Final Essay is designed to demonstrate your ability to apply what you have learned to construct a coherent account that uses relevant primary sources and material evidence engage with peer-reviewed scholarship through independent research demonstrate improvements in writing technique, incorporating feedback that you received from previous assignments What do I really, really need to know? These are the basics: Value: 25% of your final course grade. Format: Word Document, Times New Roman, 12 point, double-spaced Length: 1500 to 2000 words. Late penalty: 10% per day. Following the deadline there will be a 24-hour grace period for submission on BRIGHTSPACE, to accommodate computer problems and other unforeseen crises. Submissions after this point will incur the full penalty. Bibliography: Chicago Turabian Style. See link under SAKAI/Writing Resources. AN IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT ONLINE CITATION and BILIOGRAPHY TOOLS Tools like RefX will export citations in a given format (e.g. Chicago Turabian) but YOU still need to make sure that the appearance of your Bibliography is consistent. Look at the works cited or bibliography section of any of your course readings. Do you see how the works are formatted consistently? You are expected to do the same. Resources for Classics: See http://researchguides.library.brocku.ca/CLAS What do I need to do? Write a narrative about any aspect of life in the Roman Empire using your Familia character as a reference point. That means that you can extrapolate from elements of that character's life to explore a topic in more detail (e.g. an essay about a slave could focus on Roman mass entertainment, an essay about a Roman matron could focus on the family business; an essay about a soldier could focus on the cult of Mithras). 1 Your account should make sense within the framework of Roman society and history, and it should be plausible (if you cannot find a precedent for something in your lecture notes, TRSC or DLAR it probably shouldn't be in the essay, see below). It should also have a coherent structure, and not simply be a collection of random facts. REMEMBER: Your Final Essay is NOT a write-up of what you did in seminar; it needs to focus on specific aspect/s of Roman culture. Think of your Familia character/s as if they were a case study and consider what we can learn from their lives. Incorporating Evidence: The 3-2-1+ System To support your essay you need to construct an account that applies evidence in a meaningful way. That means you need to select evidence that contributes important points of context, detail or interpretation to your narrative. The 3-2-1+ system has been devised to help you do this. Your essay MUST use • at least THREE secondary sources from TRSC Here's an example: "Although Caecilia Hilaria had a Greek name, she was actually born in Roman Britain, among the Iceni tribe of Britons. As a very small child she was sold into slavery. She did not know what her childhood name was; it was the Caecilii who named her Hilaria. This Roman habit of giving slaves Greek names was a form of deracination, cutting enslaved people off from their origins (Shumka 2021, 82). NB each chapter in TSRC is a separate essay and should be referenced as such in your bibliography (e.g. Shumka, L. 2021. “Roman Slavery.” In Themes in Roman Society and Culture, edited by M. Gibbs, M. Nikolic and P. Ripat, 73-93. Oxford: Oxford University Press.) at least TWO primary sources from DLAR. Here's an example: "My father didn't know many young men who might suit me as a husband, so he asked my 2 • uncle to find someone (Pliny the Younger, Letters 1.14)." at least ONE peer-reviewed expert source from the Brock Library found via Oxford Handbooks Online, JSTOR or Project Muse. Random webpages and Wikipedia entries are NOT eligible sources and will not be counted. PLUS ONE piece of material evidence. You may source a new item from the Material Evidence section of lessons, lecture slides, or from a museum. Please include a weblink to the item in your in the bibliography. Using the 3-2-1+ system your Final Essay requires a total minimum 7 items of supporting evidence. A 5% penalty will be applied to the final grade for each item omitted to a maximum 20%). Final Essay FAQs What period of the Roman Empire am I writing about? Your essay can be set in any time from 50-250 CE. Just make sure that of you are referencing specific historical events that they can take place within an individual's lifetime (it's physically impossible that a soldier garrisoned at Hadrian's Wall (created 122 CE) could also who witness the Great Fire of Rome (64 CE). Hang on, I was taught never to write an essay in the first person (“I”). Is this correct? This is true for pure research papers which need to present an argument/thesis in objective terms. But this is a narrative essay, which means you have more leeway and can use whichever voice feels best to you, either the first (“I/we”), second ("you/you") or third ("he/she/they”). Is there an example I can look at? Yes, see the PDF file “Final Essay Example" on SAKAI/Writing Resources. This short excerpt is based on a real essay that gained a good grade. I have included comments to highlight some of the elements that contribute to producing a good quality essay. I'm a woman/slave and nothing ever happened to women/slaves. I don't have anything to write about. Roman society was arranged to put Roman men front and center but that does not mean that women and slaves lived passive lives. Lecture material and course 3 readings provide plenty of evidence that shows us ways in which the lives of women and slaves went far beyond silently bearing children and sweeping floors. I kept dying and have been three different slaves in Familia!! What should I do?!? You can either focus on one character that claims the experience of those other characters, or you can write about different several characters. What do you mean when you say the essay "should be plausible"? It means that you should be able to point to evidence that similar things happened to others in your situation. Let's look at some possible examples: "I'm a slave, but with my education and training I gain my freedom and become a millionaire! This essay will focus on freedpeople in the Roman economy. " Yes, that's plausible. There is direct evidence for this (e.g. Trimalchio, see Petronius, Satyricon 75-76 [DLAR# 135]). "Servia was a Roman matron who petitioned the Emperor to pardon her husband and saved him from being thrown to the lions!" That's slightly less plausible, but there is evidence that a Roman woman could directly petition the authorities with success (the Laudatio Turiae specifically states that Turia did it, see Lecture 4.1). We don't have specific evidence that it worked in the case of someone being thrown to the lions, but at least there was a system in place that could allow it to happen. "I'm a slave. I trained as a gladiator, joined the army, was promoted to general, and then fought my way to becoming Emperor!" Ah, no. There is no precedent for that ever happening, and if you've been paying attention to lecture and doing the reading you know that there is no path that would allow that to happen. It doesn't matter how well you write, this essay will receive a poor grade because it ignores historical evidence. "I'm a time-travelling vampire..." Stop right there. I want to include a letter/epitaph as part my essay, is that ok? Yes, you've lots of examples to work with in DLAR. Can I mention other members of my familia? 4 Yes, you can. They can be witnesses or participants to the topic studied in the essay (e.g. a Roman girl may not have children herself but she can witness an older female relative's experience of childbirth.) I find working with material evidence really difficult. Can I reuse an object from one of my Object Lessons? No, because you have already received credit for that assignment. I'm looking at my Familia notes but can't think what to write! HELP!! If you can't decide on an aspect of life in the Roman Empire for your essay, it can help to ask yourself some questions about your character/s: 1. When exactly are you living? Have any specific historical events had an impact on your life? (See TRSC p. 24 for a broad timeline and DLAR pp. 1-6 for a short summary of key events). 2. Have you spent all your life in the city of Rome? Or have you travelled to other places in the empire? Why? (See interior cover of TRSC for a useful map). 3. Do you have any particular thoughts or feelings about Rome's imperial expansion, or do you think you are largely unaffected by it? 4. What kind of education or professional training have you received? How do you interact with the wider Roman economy? 5. Who are your closest relationships? Why are they important to you? Have you lost anyone close to you? With what result? 6. How well have you lived up to society's expectations? Do you conform to the model of a good citizen, wife, or slave? If not, why not? 7. Are there any aspects of religion or belief are especially important to you? 8. Have you ever been in trouble with authority? Why? What was the result? 9. What are your goals and dreams? What are your chances of achieving them? 10. How do you prefer to spend your leisure time? Why does it appeal to you? Once you have asked yourself these questions, consider which of these appeal to you as a topic to explore in more detail. Note that you don't have to confine yourself to seminar readings to find ideas for answers to these questions, you can use all of DLAR and TRSC. We look forward to reading your essays! 5 KTVS January 2024/n

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