Classics

This course introduces students to the full range of the material and visual culture of the ancient world in Rome from the Republican period to late Antiquity. The course includes a study of the built environment, from the major urban and imperial monuments to the forts and farms of the frontiers, the images housed in public buildings, houses and tombs, as well as portable objects, and the material residues of daily life and ritual. Students in this option undertake the spring term of the yearlong course Art & Archaeology of Greece & Rome.

The course encourages students to trace the development and dissemination of Greek culture in Athens and other Greek city states in the period from the Peloponnesian War to the formation of the Hellenistic Kingdoms. The course also explores the rise of Macedon, the reign of Alexander the Great and its aftermath, to the period of the rise of Rome. The course is structured around the essential integration of diverse materials, ranging from the study of archaeological sites, key aspects of the development of Greek art and architecture, important historical events, notions of historiography, and major literary works in drama, poetry, and rhetoric.

This course teaches the history of the ancient world across three continents and 1800 years. It shows how the classical world of Greece and Rome developed alongside the civilizations of the Near East and beyond. It explores the evidence on which the history of the period is based, and introduces students to the most recent interpretations of the past. The course follows the rise of Rome first in Italy and then in the Mediterranean and northwards as far as Britain, also exploring its cultural impact in different parts of the Empire.

The course covers the political and social history of Rome down to Augustus, together with the material culture, monuments, art, literature and thought of the Romans during this period. Lectures cover topics such as early Rome, the conquest of Italy and the Mediterranean, Roman myth and religion, the city of Rome, Roman poetry and drama, the fall of the republic and the Augustan revolution.

This course explores the ancient Greek world through its material culture, covering a time span from the collapse of Mycenaean palatial cultures through to the Classical period. The approach is thematic and topics may include state (polis) formation, colonization and cultural interaction in the Mediterranean, the development of Greek sanctuaries, the archaeology of the Greek countryside, the social and political roles of art and architecture in Archaic and Classical Athens, gender and sexuality, death and society, and archaeology and modern politics.

On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate sound geographical knowledge of the Greek world
• Apply visual and spatial skills to the analysis of artefacts, architectural plans and other archaeological diagrams.
• Demonstrate knowledge of primary sources (archaeological, artistic, textual) relevant to the module topics.
• Evaluate the major theoretical approaches, debates and scholarship relevant to the module topics.
• Discuss the above, both orally and in written form, in a clear and scholarly manner.
• Work effectively in small groups.

This course examines issues of gender and sexuality in either the Greek or the Roman world. Students study contrastive portrayals of women and men, ideals of masculinity and femininity, sexual norms and codes, theories about the male and female body, views on marriage, rape, adultery and prostitution, and the relation between art and ‘real life’: what we may deduce from texts and visual sources about the gender roles men and women were expected to play within family and state.

This course explores some of the most dynamic literary and artistic achievements of archaic and classical Greek culture. Using a twin focus on myth and on ideas of community, the course ranges across Homeric epic, Athenian tragedy, Aristophanic comedy, and the writings of intellectuals; it studies the relationship between texts and images in the expression of cultural values; and it examines a series of major themes in Greek views of identity, morality, politics and religion.