MA Classics and Ancient History

This course is an examination of Caesar’s military career and the wars he fought against both external and internal opponents. It examines the nature of Caesar’s army and his generalship from both tactical and strategic perspectives. It also looks at how we know about Caesar’s wars. The course is driven through a close, critical reading of Caesar’s own texts and comparing them with both the other literary sources available to us and our extant archaeological remains.

• To examine the wars described in Caesar’s writings and the ways in which they are presented by those writings
• To introduce students to relevant literary and archaeological data concerning the campaigns covered in the Caesarian corpus
• To enable students to locate key information concerning the wars and texts studied
• To enable students to assess critically the various forms of evidence available to them.
• To develop students’ skills of written expression and production of coherent arguments at a level appropriate to work that will form part of the final assessment
• To develop students’ skills of oral expression

At the end of the course students will:

• Be familiar with the Caesarian Corpus of writing and its authors
• Have an understanding of the nature Roman Army and the waging of war in the late 1^st century BC
• Have a firm understanding of the evolution and outcomes of Caesar’s Wars.
• Be familiar with techniques of interpreting ancient texts.

By the end of the course students will:

• Be able to construct a coherent argument both in written and oral forms.

• Be able to identify and locate relevant information in a range of sources
• Be able to engage critically and analytically with this information
• Be able to present the results of their research in an appropriate fashion, with detailed and accurate references to sources and modern published scholarship.

By the end of the course students will be able to:

• Construct a cogent and complex argument in written and oral form
• Manage time effectively

 By the end of this course students will be able to:

• construct and defend cogent arguments in written and oral form
• pose relevant questions about complex issues
• locate and synthesise relevant information from primary and secondary sources
• locate relevant material from electronic resources
• assimilate and summarise large quantities of evidence
• manage time
• engage in critical discussion.

K Raaflaub & R Strassler (ed.s) The Landmark Caesar

T Rice Holmes, Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul

K Welsh, Caesar as Artful Reporter

R Maguire (tr) Napoleon’s Commentaries on Julius Caesar

JFC Fuller, Julius Caesar: Man, Soldier, and Tyrant

A Fitzpatrick and C Haselgrove, Julius Caesar’s Battle for Gaul: New Archaeological Perspectives

C Meier, Caesar

H Pratt Judson, Caesar’s Army

14 hours seminar work (7 sessions)

3 hours of coursework support and supervision,

3 hours of dedicated Office hour time