A Prose-Poem Written After Watching the Story of Timgad

[RonPrice]

GROWING ALONG THE EDGES

 

I first came across Roman history in the winter of 1960/61, if I recall correctly after the passing of nearly fifty years. I was then in grade 11. The subject continued to cross my path in 1963/64 in the first year of a B.A. program in a history course, half of which was devoted to ancient history from 14 A.D. to 476 A.D. It was not until twenty-five years later, in 1989, that I came to focus on Rome again, this time as a lecturer at a technical college in Australia, but this time not on the Empire but on the Republic from 133 B.C. to 14 A.D. I taught this course three times to students hoping to get into university in Western Australia.

 

During the three decades 1964 to 1994 I had reason to read about Roman history in the context of social science courses I taught to other groups of students already at what in Australia were then called colleges of advanced education, now universities. I also read about ancient Rome as part of my more general and personal, leisure and pleasure reading in authors like: Arnold Toynbee, Edward Gibbon and Robert Nisbet among a host of others. In the years 1999 to 2005, I retired from FT, PT and volunteer teaching and during this time I began to organize the notes I had accumulated on this subject.

 

Now in 2008 I take a broad and non-specialist interest in this part of history, ancient Roman history, among other aspects of history and among others subjects in the social sciences and humanities. As I am about to enter the middle years(65-75) of late adulthood(60-80) and old age(80++), if I last that long, ancient Roman history has come to occupy a solid place in my study, in my small library here in George Town Tasmania, Australia