Classics

We are accustomed to encountering ‘the sceptic’ as a hypothetical adversary to overcome. The ancient world, however, presents us with a rich variety of philosophers who lived their scepticism – advancing it as a viable and attractive way of life, and developing detailed systems and defences of their positions. Others attacked such sceptics and their scepticisms, and a lively debate raged. In this course, students explore these varieties of sceptical and anti-sceptical thought in the Pre-Socratic philosophers Xenophanes and Democritus, the towering Classical figures of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the Hellenistic schools of Academic and Pyrrhonian scepticism and, finally, in the anti-sceptical treatises of Augustine and Al-Ghazali.

Chariot racing, gladiatorial combat, athletic performance, often violent, as well as the theatre and other forms of popular entertainment played a major part as spectacles in the lives of the citizens of the Roman empire throughout antiquity. By virtue of their close connections with other central areas of ancient life, including religious belief and practice, economic organization, political power and patronage, or the construction of political and/or ethnic identity, the forms taken by entertainment in any region or period are very revealing of contemporary concerns and values. This course explore the ancient evidence for Roman entertainment and spectacle from the Republic to late Antiquity, including a wide range of archaeological evidence, including art, architecture and inscriptions, as well as texts. It investigates ancient attitudes to spectacles as well as the responses of modern scholars to an aspect of Roman culture which has caused difficulties for advocates of the Classical world as epitomizing civilized values. 

This course examines key concepts and values of the Western world that are still operating in our everyday life as individuals and members of a community-- political, social, and otherwise. It explores long-lived terms from their birth in the Greco-Roman world, their original meaning and function, and how we perceive them today.