Funerary Spectacle: Applied Digital Humanities in the Roman Forum

Funerary Spectacle: Applied Digital Humanities in the Roman Forum presents "close" and "distant" readings of the three-act funeral of Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus, who died in 160 BCE. Unique in its highly visual and computational approach, it combines three-dimensional reconstructions of the Roman Forum with traditional philological evidence to reconstruct various possibilities of what might have been seen and manipulated during the procession, eulogy, and gladiatorial games held to commemorate the death of Paullus. This study of one event reveals more broadly how the built environment functioned as a dynamic stage for aristocratic self-representation, both posing new questions and offering new solutions to long-standing debates regarding the visibility and logistics of Middle Republican spectacle.

Christopher Johanson is Associate Professor of Classics and Digital Humanities at UCLA and is Faculty Director of Innovative Applications and Creativity Activity at UCLA DataX. He also directs RomeLab.