Introduction to the Ancient Greek World
Channel: The Center for Hellenic Studies
Date: 2021-05-20

This course charts the outlines of what we now call ancient Greece, with its multitude of places, ways of life, and historical changes. We will survey the major transformations of that world, its foundational events, real and imagined, its great wars, and its most important social institutions and cultural traditions. We will also study everyday features, such as food and dress, to uncover the complex systems of signs to which they belonged. We will work with a wide variety of primary sources, both texts and images, and will learn about the challenges of interpreting them, assisted by selected items of scholarship. We will explore how the ancient Greeks perceived the world and themselves in it, and will attempt to listen to the voices of women and slaves that are often muted in our primary sources. Learning about the insights and the blind spots of that civilization, about its mysteries and its drama, may ultimately also help us to know more about ourselves.