Good subject - I had a lot of respect for the lecturer, who had to cover c.2000 years of history in a 12-week lecture schedule. As well as giving an historical survey, James and Louise introduce you to many areas of current academic debate, which is really helpful for those majoring in Ancient History. My advice for people taking this in future: try to do all the readings, if you can (not just the one or two that are essential for the tutorial discussion). There are a lot of them, but the exam (which is a long-release take-home exam) is based pretty much entirely on the readings, and I ended up with a lot of articles/book-chapters to catch up on during Stuvac.

Great elective unit - not too heavy in content or readings. Lecturer is great speaker and lectures were enjoyable, and I would recommend getting Louise Price as your tutor as her light-hearted jokes and cheery attitude always brightened my week. Doesn't focus entirely on events and people, but deals with wider cultural and ideological growth as well. Does require some commitment in independently researching certain terminology and ideas that you may not understand, but nothing overly strenuous. Final exam was not stressful, and other assessments very flexible with due dates to suit your needs.

Awesome course! Super interesting and engaging with great lectures and tutors to help you understand the course concepts

Make sure that you are interested not only in the historical/battle and wars of the expansion of the Roman Empire, but also the political and social changes within Rome from its birth until it's downfall. I found this course to be a bit different from what i was expecting, but not wholly bad, just a bit bland for those who have little to no interest in the political and social actors of Rome. This course focuses primarily on broad, subjective topics such as 'what makes a good emperor in the eyes of the Roman people', and 'what is the role of freedmen and women within Rome'. It is more a reflection on your perspective/insights on what YOU think about the society of Rome given ideas the lecturer expresses in lectures and analyses further in tutorial time with primary sources such as Ovid, Cicero, Polybius, etc.

Lecturers are really passionate about this subject, the assessments are quite straightforward and not that difficult. I found the second half of lectures to be more interesting though, once we got out of talking about all the events of the wars and on to actual people.