Classics

This course investigates Roman politics through the lens of classical political theory, applying ideas about liberty, citizenship, equality, and form of government to the real political practices of the Romans of the first century BC. The course commences with a survey of the everyday political environment of first-century Rome, which provides the context for an in-depth analysis of republican ideology. The course then explores the political thought of influential ancient authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero, before examining the ways in which the image of the Roman Republic and its associated political ideology have been constructed and applied in political theory across the centuries, tracing their metamorphosis in the writings of Machiavelli, 17th-century English republicans, the defenders of the American constitution, and the French Enlightenment.

To write a letter – whether a formal, public composition or a private letter to a friend – is to create an image, consciously or unconsciously, of oneself as writer and of ones relationship with the letter’s recipient. In this sense, Roman letter-writing can be seen as a partial equivalent of interaction via social media in our contemporary world. This course explores aspects of self-presentation through published and unpublished letters and other media of communication surviving from the Roman world. Students read the correspondence of two major literary figures – Cicero and Seneca – alongside rare examples of written exchanges from ordinary people in Roman Antiquity.

This course provides an introduction to the study of Antiquity by focusing on the mythological discourses of the ancient Near East and Greece, and on the rise of the European city-state in Classical Greece. All texts are studied in translation. The course divides into two complementary streams: (1) Mythology and the origins of western literature, with lectures focused on ancient mythology, especially the concept of the pantheon of gods and the hero as a figure poised between men and gods, concentrating on literary and artistic evidence for the study of ancient society and thought. (2) Politics, culture, and society in the Ancient City, surveying the history and culture of Ancient Greece, in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, a period of dynamic political and cultural innovation. The course covers topics including the rise (and fall) of the Athenian democracy, gender and sexuality, Greeks and barbarians, and the spectacular rise of the kingdom of Macedon. Students are introduced to original sources for Greek history.

Hundreds of myths and sagas survive from medieval Ireland. Many of these display intricate narrative techniques and structures, and their contents often reflect contemporary ideologies as well as inherited mythological motifs. In this course, students focus on one specific long narrative from the early Middle Ages and conduct a thorough and critical analysis of the text. No knowledge of Old Irish is required, as students read the story in full in English translation, but throughout the course key Irish terms and concepts are examined and their significance explained. 

This course introduces students into the riches of the Greek literary tradition. It is for students coming to university without any background knowledge of ancient literature and offers a chronologically laid out, broad survey of periods, genres and best known authors of Greek literature and thought. Although the broad conceptual categories of “socio-cultural context” and generic expectations define the overall intellectual tone of this course, extracts from the texts are woven into lectures to whet the students' appetite to continue with further reading of their own. No previous knowledge of ancient Greek/Latin literature and philosophy is assumed and all texts underpinning the teaching of this course can be studied in English translation.

Ancient Greek is the original language of ancient Greek historians, writers, and philosophers such as Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, and Aristotle, as well as the language of the New Testament. This course studies the basics of ancient Greek.

To understand Greek thought and Christianity, the two roots of Western culture, it is essential to read the ancient Greek classics and the New Testament.  Understanding a language cannot be separated from understanding the social context in which it is used.  This course then studies ancient Greek while studying the basic framework of ancient Greek politics, economics, and philosophical thought. 

As many vocabulary words in modern Western languages ​​are derived from Greek, understanding Greek language equates to understanding modern Western languages, including English.

This course introduces students to the material and visual culture of the ancient world from the second millennium BC to late antiquity. Semester 1 focuses on the Greek world. Students will study the built environment - from the great urban monuments to everyday domestic units (including temples, "homes" for the gods). Students explore the art and iconography of the ancient world alongside the material residues of daily life and ritual. Students are introduced to the different perspectives and methods of both archaeologists and art historians in interpreting material remains and visual images. The course combines close study of individual pieces of evidence with an evaluation of how they illuminate the societies, cultures, institutions, and economies of classical antiquity. The course draws heavily from the extraordinary collections in London, particularly the British Museum.

The "hero" is one of the central, if particularly diverse and changeable concepts that define and structure private identities and public patterns of authority in the ancient Greco-Roman world and beyond, right up to the present. In this course, students examine and interrogate the idea of the hero through the lens of ancient epic, exploring Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as well as Virgil’s Aeneid in search of what heroism might mean, then and now.

This course explores the Roman world through the material culture of this vast and varied empire. It covers the full geographical extent of the Roman Empire examining subjects such as transport, technology and communication, urbanization and rural settlement, the economy and resources, religion and ritual. Regional case studies of Ostia and Portus, the Eastern Empire, and North Africa will all be included and allow an examination of how local communities were able to express their own regional identities.

The course introduces students to the history, changing fortunes, monuments, and artistic output of Constantinople, successor to Rome and the largest city of the medieval world. This is achieved through the examination of the city’s fabric, of individual monuments with their decoration, and of primary texts which shed light on important questions, with particular emphasis on the transformation of the city from Late Antiquity through the so-called dark ages and into the medieval period (4th - 15th century).