Syllabus
Week 1: No Class (teaching begins on Tuesday Oct 4)
Week 2: Introduction & Why History? (CT & CR)
Week 3: Bronze Age Greece: Minoans & Mycenaeans
Week 4: The Polis and the Alphabet
Week 5: Sanctuaries & Colonies
Week 6: READING WEEK
Week 7: Tyrants & Sparta
Week 8: Archaic Athens & Democracy
Week 9: Athens & Persia
Week 10: The Peloponnesian War
Term 1 Seminars
Week 4: Assessment Preparation Session
Week 8: Historiography Exercise
Spring term 2021: Roman history
Week 01: What should the history of the Roman Republic look like?
Week 02: Material vs Myth: Writing the history of early Rome
Week 03: Who’s who in the Roman world? An introduction to prosopography (this lecture focuses on preparation for the assessment, including gobbet writing)
Week 04: The Republic: Society and government
Week 05: Rome and the Hellenistic World: Roman expansion and its causes
Week 6: Roman Republican coinage + Roman history from objects
Week 7: The effects of war: the Gracchi and changing Roman culture
Week 08: Marius, Sulla and the Social War
Week 09: When does the Republic fall and the Empire begin? Pompey and Caesar.
Week 10: Topic set by student vote in Week 3 of Term 2
Summer term 2021
Week 01: Essay writing workshop!
Week 02: How things make history: Classical Greek coinage
Week 03: How things make history: Roman concrete
Assessment:
For students doing the module as a 30 CAT option: Article Review (20%) in term 1, Prosopographical Exercise (20%) in term 2, Essay (50%) in term 3, Attendance (10%).
For students doing CX 116-15 (Introduction to Greek History): Article Review (40%), Essay (50%), Attendance (10%)
For students doing CX 117-15 (Introduction to Roman History): Prosopographical Exercise (40%), Essay (50%), Attendance (10%).