Unit name | Classical Greece |
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Unit code | CLAS22380 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | I/5 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
Unit director | Professor. D'Costa |
Open unit status | Open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Department of Classics & Ancient History |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
Later generations looked back to fifth-century Athens as the high point of classical Greece. The radical democracy was at its most confident and Athens’ power in the Mediterranean was at its peak. This course looks at Athens in a period of cultural, intellectual and political ferment. Central themes include the radical democracy, its tensions and its critics; the nature and development of Athenian ‘imperialism’; Athenian drama, its contemporary context and its use for the historian; the Periclean building programme; Athenian public ideology and propaganda; and intellectual developments of the time (sophism, medicine, ‘history’), particularly in their relation to Thucydides. We shall use the rich array of sources bequeathed by the period – epigraphy, art and architecture, political ‘pamphlets’, tragedy, comedy and prose accounts of the past. We shall contrast the situation in Athens with that in other cities and look briefly at the sequel of the fourth century BC.
On successful completion of this unit, students should:
Lectures and Seminars.
Set Text:
(available in e-version through the Library catalogue)
Reading List: