Foto del docente

Alessandro Cristofori

Associate Professor

Department of History and Cultures

Academic discipline: L-ANT/03 Roman History

Research

Keywords: Roman History Roman Social History Roman Economic History Roman Administrative History Roman Italy Roman Epigraphy Colonization in Roman Italy Local Administration in the Roman World Digital tools for Ancient History Comparative history: the Roman Empire and the Han Empire Contacts between the Roman Empire and the Han Empire

My research interests focused first on the political and social history of Roman Africa, with my Ph.D. dissertation La provincia romana d'Africa ed i suoi amministratori in età repubblicana, and several articles, among which I remember L'Africa arx omnium provinciarum in età tardorepubblicana, «Simblos. Scritti di Storia Antica», a cura di G. Geraci – L. Criscuolo – C. Salvaterra, Bologna 1995, pp. 75-128.

Another subject I have been dealing with quite intensively in the past, in relation to a postgraduate scholarship I had obtained at the University of Bologna, was that of the presence of Egyptians and Alexandrinians in the Roman world, studied under the profile of personal and social status. Among the publications in this research area I will cite e.g. the article L'individuazione di Egiziani ed Alessandrini nella documentazione epigrafica dell'Italia romana, «L'Egitto in Italia dall'Antichità al Medioevo. Atti del III Congresso Internazionale Italo-Egiziano. Roma, CNR - Pompei, 13-19 novembre 1995», a cura di N. Bonacasa – M.C. Naro – E.C. Portale - A. Tullio, Roma 1998, pp. 79-94.

Since 1995, I have been involved on several occasions with digital tools for teaching and research in Ancient History, starting with the experience of Rassegna degli strumenti informatici per lo studio dell’Antchità Classica, which I started to edit since July of that year. This interest continues today, as evidenced by publications such as Il mondo antico, «Il web e gli studi storici. Guida critica all’uso della rete», a cura di R. Minuti, Roma 2015, pp. 149-183 and Le fonti per la storia antica nel web, «La storia antica. Metodi e fonti per lo studio», a cura di G. Poma, Bologna 2016, pp. 309-324. As for didactics, this interest is reflected in the wide space that I give to the digital tools in the Seminars for writing a research in the field of Ancient History, seminars that I regularly take in my courses.

Today, however, my focus is mainly on the social and administrative history of Roman Italy (reflecting also in the teaching Social History of the Ancient World and of Roman Administrative History), in three distinct lines:

  • My main concern is on the history of labour and of the workers in the Roman world, through literary sources and epigraphic documentation, with particular attention to the role that the work could have in building a personal identity; this research line found a first realization in the monograph Non arma virumque. Le occupazioni nell'epigrafia del Piceno, Bologna 20044 and continues today, also through participation in the activities of the Società Italiana di Storia del Lavoro (SISLav) and of the SISLav Group of Rural History; I recently participated in the drafting of an important collective work on the subject, Storia del lavoro in Italia. L’età romana. Liberi, semiliberi e schiavi in una società premoderna, a cura di A. Marcone, Roma 2016, with two chapters dedicated to the evidence for labour history in the Roman world (pp. 35-76), and to work and social identity, pp. 149-174; among the papers in preparation when these notes were updated, a contribution devoted to the social role of physicians in Martial’s Epigrams.
  • A second research libe is that of colonization and, more generally, of the movements of the population, especially in southern Italy: in this regard I remember the articles I motivi della colonizzazione romana in Magna Grecia agli inizi del II sec. a.C., «Fenici e Italici, Cartagine e la Magna Grecia. Popoli a contatto, culture a confronto. Atti del convegno internazionale. Cosenza, 27-28 maggio 2008», a cura di M. Intrieri – S. Ribichini, II, Pisa – Roma 2011, pp. 111-137 and L’esercito come fattore della mobilità personale dai Bruttii e verso i Bruttii in età romana, «La Calabria nel Mediterraneo. Flussi di persone, idee e risorse», a cura di G. De Sensi Sestito, Soveria Mannelli 2013, pp. 133-175.
  • A third and most recent research line is rather on the local administration of the cities of the Roman world; in this research topic I have written a paper on Political management of public works in the Roman city: La gestione politica delle opere pubbliche nella città romana: i curatores operum publicorum, «Spazi pubblici e dimensione politica nella città romana : funzioni, strutture, utilizzazione – Espaces publics et dimension politique dans la ville romaine: fonctions, aménagements, utilisations», a cura di C. Franceschelli – P.L. Dall’Aglio – L. Lamoine, Bologna 2017, pp. 75-102.

I remain always very interested in the problems of didactics of Roman History, understood in its disciplinary sense of political and military history (especially in relation to the teaching of the course of Roman history I hold for first level degree). In this regard, I remember my collaboration in the companion of G. Geraci – A. Marcone, Storia romana (first edition Firenze 2002; since then repeatedly reedited, with corrections and updates); to the sourcebook G. Geraci – A. Marcone, Fonti per la storia romana, Firenze 2006; finally to the recent G. Geraci – A. Marcone, Storia romana. Editio maior, Firenze 2017; in these volumes I have wrote the section on the history of the Republican age, from the origins to the Gracchi.

In relation to didactics too (and specifically in relation to the teaching of History of the Roman Empire that I hold for II level degrees) I became interested in the relations between the Roman Empire and the ancient Chinese Empire, in particular under the Han Dynasty, both in the perspective of World History (the actual contacts between the two Empires and the mutual knowledge they had) and in a comparative perspective (analogies and differences in the administrative and institutional structures of the two empires).