Courses

Classical Studies courses

Most students begin with CLAS-L100: Elementary Latin I (if focusing on Latin), or CLAS-G100: Elementary Greek I (if focusing on Classical Greek). If you have previous Latin or Classical Greek language experience, your language placement will depend on your: Latin Foreign Language Placement Exam; successful completion of an in-person placement test for Classical Greek; or AP credit.

We offer introductory and advanced civilization classes on Roman or Greek culture, classical mythology, classical art and archaeology, film, and more. And, all of our Classical Civilization majors complete a senior capstone, which focuses on a special topic each fall semester. Examples include: early Rome, ancient sexualities, the Trojan War, and the Athenian aristocracy.

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Highlighted courses

CLAS-L 307: Cicero

L307 will read selections from Cicero’s speeches prosecuting Verres for political corruption. In addition to grammar review and vocabular building, we will also learn about ancient rhetoric and Cicero’s deployment of it. The bronze statue depicts Aulus Metllus as an orator wearing a toga and the high boots of a Roman magistrate and making a gesture typically used by Roman speakers. The statue is cast in bronze, ca. 90-70BCE, discovered in Lake Trasimene, now in the Museo Archeologico, Florence.

CLAS-L 407: Roman Lyric and Elegy

L407 will read Horace’s Odes, a daring endeavor that sought to enshrine its author in a canon of lyric writers who had been dead for hundreds of years. We will explore the thematic diversity of this collection, which includes meditations on the brevity of life, the relationship of poetic and political power, and the trauma of the recent civil wars. 

CLAS-G 305: Greek Tragedy

In this Advanced Greek language course, we plunge together into the beautiful and brutal world of 5th-century Athenian tragedy through the plays of Euripides. Vindictive gods, resolute women, and juvenile heroes take the stage in our two primary Greek texts, Alcestis and Bacchae, and in Euripides’ other plays read in translation. 

CLAS-C 412: Art and Archaeology of the Aegean

This course traces the rise and fall of the major cultures of the pre- and proto-historic Aegean world. It explores the region’s art, architecture and archaeology beginning with the Paleolithic era and concluding with the transitional Early Iron Age period. 

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