Classics

This course introduces students to the Greek and Latin literary tradition. It is for students without any background knowledge of ancient literature and offers a chronologically laid out, broad survey of periods, genres, and best known authors of Greek and Roman literature. Although the broad conceptual categories of “socio-cultural context” and generic expectations define the overall intellectual tone of this course, judiciously chosen extracts from the texts themselves (all in English translation) are strategically woven into lectures. Major thematic stops of this course include early Greek epic and lyric poetry; fifth-century Athenian drama; classical historiography; fourth century oratory; Plato and Aristotle; Hellenistic poetry; imperial Greek literature; the literature of early and late Republican Rome; highlights from Augustan literature; Stoicism and Epicureanism in Roman literature and thought; early imperial literature and historiography; the Roman satirical tradition; and the literature of the Late Empire.

This course is an exploration of the history of Greek and Roman ideas, which formed the modern world. In the first half of the sessions focuses on Greek ideas like democracy, philosophy, hospitality, fair play, athletics, drama, eros and love and how these ideas have been generated through specific Greek cultural systems or artistic modes of representation (literature, painting, sculpture, theatre). How were these ideas born and what is their influence in the modern world? How does Greek literature relate to these ideas? And more generally, what is the relationship between these ideas and the Greek life and thought? In the second half of the sessions, students examine Roman ideas, and the course focuses on ideas like fame, liberty, virtue, justice, epicureanism, stoicism, citizenship, republicanism, imperialism, public order, and how they have been generated through specific Roman cultural systems or artistic modes of representation (literature, painting, sculpture, theatre). The sessions then examine the relevance of these ideas to modern politics and society.

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.