MONASH UNIVERSITY FACULTY HANDBOOKS

Arts Undergraduate Handbook 1996

Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996

CHC1030

The age of Athens

J R Ellis

Synopsis One of the most influential social revolutions in Western history took place in Athens in the fifth century BCE. The principles, real and imagined, of its new democracy and the image of its most famous leader Perikles continue, two and a half millenia later, to inspire political ideals and reform. The surviving products of that remarkable time - the literature, art, architecture, historiography and thought - as well as its institutions and practices are still capable of evoking admiration and imitation in our own time, as they did in later antiquity and during the Renaissance. The subject examines the character and operation of the democracy as it was in the later fifth and the fourth centuries BCE together with a representative selection of works of literature which this society produced.

Assessment Written (2500 words): 55% + Examination (2 hours): 45%

Prescribed texts

• Selected texts Dept of Greek, Roman and Egyptian Studies, Monash U
• Aeschylus Agamemnon in Aeschylus I ed. Grene and Lattimore, U. Chicago Press
• Aristophanes The Birds and other Plays Penguin
• Aristophanes Frogs, in The Wasps, The Poet and the Women, The Frogs Penguin
• Euripides Hippolytus and Medea in Euripides I ed. Grene and Lattimore, U. Chicago Press
• Sophocles Antigone in Sophocles I ed. Grene and Lattimore, U Chicago P