CHC1030

The age of Athens

A S McDevitt

6 points
* 3 hours per week
* First semester
* Clayton

Objectives This subject aims to provide students with an overview of the history and culture of Athens in the 5th century BCE, to develop an understanding of some of the major expressions of Classical Greek culture, particularly in its literature, art and thought, and to encourage a deeper appreciation of the central continuing importance of Ancient Greece as the foundation of our own Western cultural traditions.

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 Tutorial paper (1000 words): 15%
* Essay (1500 words): 35%
* Examination (2 hours): 50%

Prescribed texts

Aeschylus Agamemnon in Aeschylus I ed. Grene and Lattimore, U Chicago P
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 P
Sophocles Antigone in Sophocles I ed. Grene and Lattimore, U Chicago P