Reagire alla «fuga dall’Impero»: storia romana e scienze sociali

The essay focuses on the need to adopt new perspectives for the study of Roman history in all its epochs, including Late Antiquity, in order to recover the full complexity of religious visions, cultural codes and perspectives that look to the future and present of Europe. In the face of a renewed and growing interest in the history of imperial Rome, as well as in its decline - the “paradigm of every downfall” -, scientific knowledge needs tools and keys (e.g. anthropology) that highlight the best that Roman culture has left us: intercultural dialogue, religious tolerance, openness to the Other. The history of the Roman Empire thus becomes an intellectual experience (also for specialists), in which the outdatedness and overcoming of certain nineteenth-century assumptions, first and foremost the primacy of Hellenistic-Roman culture, will be clear, despite the sterile polemics of the spokesmen of the cancel culture.