BA Ancient History / Course details

This unit enables students to develop an enhanced understanding of how Greek writers, mainly historians, represented non-Greek peoples and those, such as shepherds, who lived on the margins of the urban world. Students will read texts from the classical period to the Second Sophistic, authors, and genres. They will encounter a range of literary techniques employed to explore the customs, habits, and political organization of numerous peoples, both Greeks and non-Greeks. A focus on close reading will enable detailed scrutiny of the linguistic means by which the texts fashion meaning and articulate points of view. 

Co-requisite: CAHE30121 Advanced Greek 1 (higher is fine) 

The unit aims to:

1. To introduce students to the varieties of style, language and narrative structure in ancient Greek ethnographic and historiographical writing.

2. To enable students to develop a sense of the effects created by ethnographic writing.

3. To enable students to carry out close and comparative reading of original texts, developing technical skills acquired in earlier Greek Language course units.

The weekly lectures will explore important themes and intellectual issues in the texts under discussion, as well as introducing important scholarly debates.

The first seminar each week will be devoted to close reading of the passages of Greek texts for the week, including issues of vocabulary, diction, syntax, scansion (where relevant).

The second seminar will concentrate on wider discussion of the passages for the week, including intertextuality, rhetoric, and social and intellectual context.

Students will be given specific tasks to prepare for each seminar, including passages to be translated and analysed, as well as wider questions to be addressed.

Discussion of secondary literature will be related to the primary aim of improving students’ ability to read the texts closely. 
 

• Have increased their knowledge of the Ancient Greek grammar, syntax, and rhetorical techniques
• Connect and compare different treatments of ethnic, religious, cultural, and economic identities in different periods 

• Have increased ability to read and translate Ancient Greek
• Develop critical reflection on the literary qualities of texts and the scholarly debates surrounding them
• Be able to make a reasoned argument for a particular point of view regarding literary interpretation
• Developed a basic understanding of how technical aspects learned in Advanced Language courses can enhance interpretation
   

• Have increased ability to use library, electronic and online resources to enhance the study of Ancient Greek texts
• Engage with other members of the class in order to develop literary reading as a communal activity
   

• Attention to detail

Commentaries - 50%

Online exam - 50%

Commentaries - written feedback via Canvas within three weeks

Online exams - written feedback via Turnitin as for other exams

F. Harzog, The Mirror of Herodotus (Berkeley CA, 1988)

P. Vasunia, The Gift of the Nile: Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander (Berkeley CA, 2001).