Monmouth College archaeology lecture Sept. 24 to explore the life of 'an ordinary Roman'
Monmouth, Ill. (09/18/2025) — Four centuries ago, workers digging in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome accidentally unearthed the funerary ensemble of a second century CE Roman named Flavius Agricola. His life-sized marble portrait showed him reclining, half-naked, wine cup in hand. And his epitaph voiced his encouragement to visitors to enjoy life's pleasures - especially wine and sex - because "after death, earth and fire consume all else."
On Sept. 24, Monmouth College's Ninth Annual Thomas and Anne Sienkewicz Lecture on Roman Archaeology will dig deeper into that topic, as Wabash College classics professor Jeremy Hartnett speaks at 7:30 p.m. in the Pattee Auditorium on the lower level of the Center for Science and Business. Titled "'The Wine Was Never Lacking': A Roman Life and Death on the Margins," his lecture is free and open to the public.
"It should be a stimulating lecture based on insightful research on the life of a common Roman by a multi-award-winning scholar and teacher," said Monmouth classics professor Bob Simmons.
Hartnett, who also serves as chair of the Managing Committee of the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome, said Flavius's sentiments did not go over well with papal authorities, who hushed up the find made in 1626 and destroyed the inscription.
"But Flavius's funerary monument allows us to delve deeply into the life of an ordinary Roman - one who peered up at palaces rather than gazing out from them - and to consider his life and commemoration in death in multiple dimensions," said Hartnett. "Remarkably, Flavius's monument - after moving among Baroque palazzi, Parisian workshops and Manhattan galleries - resides in Indianapolis. These many contexts invite consideration of what Roman antiquities have meant across the ages."
A specialist in Roman archaeology and social history, Hartnett studies sites in Italy including Pompeii, Herculaneum, Ostia and Rome. In particular, he is drawn to everyday life in Roman cities, which has been at the root of both of his books. His first, The Roman Street: Urban Life and Society in Pompeii, Herculaneum and Rome, was the winner of the 2018 James Henry Breasted Prize from the American Historical Association. He also authored The Remarkable Life, Death and Afterlife of an Ordinary Roman: A Social History.
Hartnett earned his undergraduate degree in classics from Wabash, then studied at the University of Michigan, where he received a master's degree in Latin and both a master's and a doctorate degree in classical art and archaeology.
The lecture series was anonymously endowed to honor one of Monmouth's most broadly influential faculty members, Tom Sienkewicz, who retired as Minnie Billings Capron Chair of Classical Languages in 2017 after 33 years at the college. During his first year on the faculty, Sienkewicz founded the Western Illinois Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, which has hosted scores of archaeological lectures on campus. From 2012-17, he served the Classical Association of the Middle West and South as its chief executive and financial officer. His wife, Anne, has been a loyal supporter of archaeology and over the years has hosted countless speakers.
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