Why this Course?
Aeschylus updates Homer for post-(Persian) War generation » Athenian democratic reforms » Jerusalem Temple rebuilt » Rome struggles with Carthage » Alexander conquers Persia » Judah Maccabee resists Hellenization in Israel » Pompey marches East » Antony/Cleopatra double suicide ends Macedonian rule in Egypt » Jesus crucified in Judaea but the ‘Nazarene Sect’ spreads rapidly » Hadrian rebrands Jerusalem as a model Hellenistic polis » Christian Canon develops around ‘Christo-centric’ reading of Tanakh » Rabbi Judah compiles Mishna (rabbinic oral traditions) in written form » Constantine privileges Christianity » Julian's attempt to revive paganism fails » Augustine writes City of God in response to Gothic sack of Rome » Last Roman emperor of the West deposed » Go to ➥ Timeline
- THE MODERN WORLD'S continuing fascination with ancient Greece and Rome is evident in a spate of recent books by both academics and populist writers ranging from the eminent Oxford historian Bryan Ward-Perkins to Monty Python’s Terry Jones, while popular films like Gladiator, Alexander, Troy, 300, Agora, and most recently the film adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth, have continued a long tradition of such sword-and-sandal epics dating back to the classic silent film Nero. Or the Fall of Rome (1909).
- All these works share a common notion that reflecting on the past—specifically, that distant Greco-Roman past whose culture and ideas rapidly diffused throughout the ancient Mediterranean world during the classical age—will inform the present, and perhaps even shed light on the future. Many of these books and films also share one glaring omission—a failure to integrate ancient Hebrew cultural contributions into their framework of classical history. Persians and Jews both get short shrift in typical coverage given to the classical world(s) of antiquity, but only two great schools of thought emerged during the Greek ascendency that followed Alexander’s conquest of the Persian empire—one associated with Moses, the other inspired by the Muses.
- This course is neither an in-depth study nor exhaustive survey, but an inquiry-driven exploration of the philosophic history of the period. Students follow the development of Jewish and Hellenistic thought to see how their increasingly violent confrontation, and ultimate appropriation of one another—amid a Roman empire in eclipse and tenuously experimenting with its new Christian identity—laid the foundation for the World to come.
A COURSE DESIGNED FOR 1st or 2nd year undergraduates that revisits Western culture's classical roots, the study of which—according to Simon Goldhill—has been systematically uprooted from required curricula in modern educational systems of the West. Blending online commenting (primary texts) with face-to-face weekly seminar discussions that ‘turn every document into a conversation,’ this Course invites diverse students from multiple international cohorts on an inquiry-driven journey of collaborative discovery, while soliciting responses to the defining question — “What does it mean to be Free?”
READINGS: - Underlying pedagogy of Course Structure, Overview of Course Content | Request passwords at moc.sdlrowlacissalc|ofni#moc.sdlrowlacissalc|ofni
