Presented as part of the HRC Seminar Series

In recent years, Hollywood has released a number of bigbudget films set in antiquity, yet cinema has been fascinated with the ancient world and with Roman history in particular ever since it emerged as a new technology more than one hundred years ago. Within a few months of the first public shows of moving images held in 1896, Nero was brought onto the screen trying out poisons on his slaves. The vast majority of these films remain largely forgotten although they still survive in archives across the world, some of them in multiple prints designed for different types of audience. They range from historical and religious epics, adaptations to screen of theatre, opera and the novel, to comedies, animated cartoons, and travelogues. The persistent presence of ancient Rome in early cinema compels us to ask: why did so modern a medium have so strong an interest in antiquity right from its start? What did ancient Rome do for cinema? And what did cinema do for ancient Rome?

Maria Wyke (University College London) is Chair and Professor of Latin at University College London. She has written extensively on Roman love poetry, on the reception of Julius Caesar, and on ancient Rome in cinema (Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema and History, 1997; ed., with P. Michelakis, The Ancient World in Silent Cinema, 2013).

The Humanities Research Centre was established in 1972 as a national and international centre for excellence in the Humanities and a catalyst for innovative Humanities scholarship and research within the Australian National University. The HRC interprets the "Humanities" generously, recognising that new methods of theoretical enquiry have done much to break down the traditional distinction between the humanities and the interpretive social sciences; recognising, too, the importance of establishing dialogue between the humanities and the natural and technological sciences, and the creative arts.