Rise and Fall of Ancient Greek Civilizat

This lecture course provides a high-order introduction to the study of the ancient Mediterranean through the prism of ancient Greece, broadly construed as comprising Greek-speaking communities in the eastern and western Mediterranean, Egypt, and North Africa, from 600BCE to 100CE. The timeframe transects the end of the Archaic, the Classical Period, the Hellenization of Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean, and the advent of the Roman empire. 

Extensive geographic and temporal frames seek to work beyond conventional regional divisions (Athens, Ptolemaic Egypt, Macedonia) and periodizations (Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic) in which the ancient world is often studied. Instead, after a two-week, introductory overview of the emergence of Greece-speaking civilizations in the Mediterranean, students will be asked to analyze bodies of ancient evidence that attest to the workings of ancient institutions and practices across time and space; at the same time, students will be asked to analyze specific regions (Attica, Laconia, Ionia, Alexandria) as they emerged, became independently prominent, and were subsequently integrated into successive state forms and empires. 

Our approach to ancient Greece will be synthetic and interdisciplinary. By combining literary analysis, history, archaeology, and philosophy, this course seeks to develop a holistic understanding of ancient Greece culture. Students will read, for instance, works of dramatic plays by Sophocles and erotic poems of Sappho (in translation), whilst simultaneously exploring ancient monuments and the archaeological and art historical record; will study historiographers Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius and at the same time be asked to read works of ancient science and medicine attributed to Hippocrates and by Galen; they will study works of ancient philosophy by Plato and Aristotle in juxtaposition sigh fragmentary inscriptions discovered in the Near East, Egyptian papyri, and other forms of documentary evidence. Topics include: women, gender, and sexuality; emergence of the polis (city-state), state formation, empire; democracy, monarchy, oligarchy; Athens, Sparta, and the Peloponnesian war; philosophy and literature; science and medicine; the symposium; the family; city, country-side, resource extraction; ancient technology, warfare, environment.

Why study the ancient Greeks at all ? The answers to this question have varied, and part of the point of this course will be to think about our