Leptis Magna & Cyrene: Cities of the sands ONLINE VIA ZOOM
Leptis Magna & Cyrene: Cities of the sands ONLINE VIA ZOOM
Lecturer: Dr Paul Roberts
In this lecture we look at two of the mightiest cities of Roman Africa, both today in the troubled country of Libya. They were lost under the sands for centuries but now have been brought to light once more. To the east lies Cyrene, founded by Greek colonists, while to the west is Leptis Magna, first built by Phoenicians – the ancestors of Hannibal – spreading out from their capital at Carthage.
Both cities have a very distinctive atmosphere. Spiritual Cyrene has a stupendous setting, on top of a great mountain, and is filled with sacred Greek temples and precincts. Mighty Leptis Magna, the birthplace of the Emperor Septimius Severus, became a mini Rome with its imperial forum, basilica, stadium and arena.
Dr Paul Roberts is the Sackler Keeper of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University. From 1994 to 2014 he was Senior Roman Curator in the Department of Greece and Rome at the British Museum, where he was the driving force behind the major exhibition Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum. At the Ashmolean he worked on an exhibition for 2016 Storms, War and Shipwrecks: Sicily and the Sea- telling the history of Sicily through shipwreck finds around the island.
He studied at the Universities of Cambridge, Sheffield and Oxford and lived in Italy for several years, in Milan, Rome and Naples. He has excavated in Britain, Greece, Libya, Turkey and in particular Italy, where he directs excavations in the Sabine hills near Rome. His research focuses on the day-to-day lives of ordinary people in the Greek and Roman worlds. He has accompanied tours to Sicily, the Bay of Naples and Rome and has written books on Roman daily life, Roman Emperors, mummy portraits and Roman glass.