Thinking About Kings

Christopher Smith, Director, British School in Rome

The tradition of the Roman kings is firmly fixed in the canonical accounts of the early history of Rome. Although we know that much of the tradition must be invented, the processes by which this invention took place have seldom been analyzed in detail. Profesor Smith will look at what modern scholars have done with the tradition of the kings, and also will discuss how and when the tradition of Roman kingship came to be formed.

Christopher Smith was educated at Oxford University, and is Professor of Ancient History at the University of St Andrews. He is currently Director of the British School at Rome, a leading research centre for archaeology, art history, history and the fine arts, which has also been a centre for Canadian scholarship. His work embraces the archaeology of early Rome, and the traditions about the early city, and he is also the editor of a major new edition of the fragmentary Roman historians.

Organized by the Greek and Roman Studies, Department at Carleton University, in partnership with CIMS and the Archaeological Institute of America.