SATA Rome 2000, 2002

The Liberal Arts Tradition

CC SATA Rome students on the John Cabot University terrazzo

Program Description

As Director of the SATA Rome 2000 and 2002 programs, Professor Robert E. Proctor invited students to make connections between ancient, medieval, Renaissance and modern Rome, the liberal arts tradition, and their own heritage as Americans.

Students learned to understand and appreciate the liberal arts tradition of education by taking them to its birthplace. There, in the lived experience of the art, architecture and history of the city of Rome, they were invited to ponder some of the shaping ideals of Western civilization, especially its concepts of truth and beauty, wisdom and virtue, action and contemplation.

The liberal arts tradition of education begain in the life and writing of Roman statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) The artes liberales grew out of Cicero's efforts to appropriate Greek culture and learning in order to enrich personal and civic life in the Roman republic. The second major text in the Roman creation of a tradition of general learning is the treatise On Architecture by Cicero's near contemporary, Vitruvius.

SATA Rome 2000, 2002 Courses

During SATA Rome 2000 and 2002, he taught SATA 101: Roman Origins of the Liberal Arts Tradition, a study of the origins of the liberal arts in republican Rome and their transformation in the Renaissance. Texts include: Cicero: For Archias the Poet, First and Second Speech Against Catiline; First and Second Philippics, On Duties, Tusculan Disputations, Book 5; Robert E. Proctor, Defining the Humanities; Charles L. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, and Carl L. Richard, The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome and the American Enlightenment.

Professor Proctor also taught Italian 401: Dante.

Day Trip and Multi-Day Excursions for SATA Rome 2000, 2002

Professor Proctor took SATA Rome students on a three-day excursion to Florence where they experienced firsthand the subject of Proctor's book: the birth of the humanities in Renaissance Florence, when Petrarch and his followers, the early humanists, attempted to recover the culture of ancient Rome. It was at this point that the liberal arts tradition was transformed by the birth of the modern humanities, synonymous with classical education, the kind of education our Founders received. From Florence, the Renaissance moved to Venice and then to Rome, where it reached its apotheosis.

The group also made two-day trips to Assisi, the home of St. Francis, the nearby hilltown of Perugia; and to Tarquinia, Tuscania and Viterbo, the land of the mysterious Etruscans, which included a visit to the "Terme dei Papi," the famous Roman mineral baths much frequented by the popes and even by Michelangelo during the Renaissance.