Introduction to Classical Culture

• Credit value: 60 credits at Level 7
• Convenors: Professor Catharine Edwards, Professor Christy Constantakopoulou
• Assessment: two essays of 5000-5500 words (50% each)

The main aim of the module is to help you to think about a variety of kinds of ancient evidence (e.g. different kinds of literary and material evidence) and some contemporary analytical frameworks that can be used to understand it. Each week, we approach a broad theme or question by considering a case study that allows us to explore sources and methods in detail. The sessions proceed in broadly chronological order, from the archaic Mediterranean to the early Christian Empire. Themes considered will include politics and culture, religion, sex and sexuality, the writing of history, and the reception of classical culture in the modern world.

It will be helpful to do some background reading in conjunction with this course, especially if you have limited specialist knowledge of the ancient world. More detailed bibliographical guidance will be given at the beginning of term.

TEXTS

• Aeschylus, The Oresteia
• Aristotle, Politics
• Catullus, The Poems
• Cicero, On Behalf of Caelius
• Euripides, Medea
• Hesiod, Works and Days
• Homer, Odyssey/Iliad
• Horace, Odes
• Juvenal, Satires
• Livy, The Early History of Rome
• Ovid, The Erotic Poems
• Plato, Apology
• Pliny the Younger, Letters
• Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire
• Propertius, The Poems
• Sophocles, Antigone
• Tacitus, Annals
• Theokritos, Idylls
• Vergil, Georgics/Aeneid