Classics

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).

In this course, students look closely at one point in the very distant past and at the early origins of Western civilization, at Homer and the Greeks, at ancient Greek language and culture, at its strange and yet (as we shall see!) familiar words, its structure and its thought. Homer and the ancient Greeks are part of our world, our language, our thought, and our lives. If you are studying chemistry or English, history, economics, or maths, and want to know why the past, Greek, and the Greek culture matter, this Trinity Elective is the course for you.

The course is dedicated to the comparison with current themes of the history of women, such as: participation in political and social life, inclusion and exclusion, the role of women in the family, education, and violence against women. Group work and group readings are planned in class to debate different viewpoints. The course investigates the history of women as a fundamental aspect of Ancient History, with special reference to the roman period, with the awareness of the specificities of the female condition in each period and of the transformations carried out over the period under consideration. Issues connected with ancient source analysis do not require knowledge of Greek and Latin, since a translation in Italian is always be provided. A basic knowledge of classical languages is however recommended. The course discusses topics including: gender history and some of the main aspects relevant for classical studies: work, culture, religion, and marriage; the condition of women from the Roman Republic to the Early Imperial period; the legal status of women; women's wealth; the (public?) space of women in roman imperial courts; stereotypes in womens’ stories: the need to identify interpretative categories, structures, and models through the analysis of historical and historiographical sources; inclusion and exclusion: women and work, case study: work at home, work outside; and case studies: women, body and sex, and abortion and the violence on women (from Lucrezia to Metoo).

This course focuses on the Roman Empire from the first to early third centuries AD. In this period the hegemony of the city of Rome grew, spreading over almost two million square miles: a vast territory encompassing almost all of modern Europe and also North Africa, Egypt, and the Near East. This course traces the evolution of this political unit and explores the consequences for those who lived under its control. In what ways did the inhabitants of the empire become "Roman"? What were the benefits and drawbacks of inclusion? How did the systems of governance work? What held things together, both practically and ideologically? Students also discuss shifts in modern approaches, from the glorification of the Roman state to more critical post-colonial approaches to imperial rule.