| Unit name | Literary Sources for Greek and Roman History |
|---|---|
| Unit code | CLAS12320 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | C/4 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Hitch |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of Classics & Ancient History |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
Greek and Roman literary sources were the major source for ancient history until the study of archaeology, epigraphy and other non-literary sources developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This unit is designed to provide students with knowledge of some of the more important literary sources for the history of the Greco-Roman world, and to introduce students to different ways of analysing these texts as part of their own historical research. We begin by studying extracts from some of the major Greek and Roman historians and thinking about their social context and the literary conventions within which they worked: what follows for our evaluation of their accounts of history? We will then explore a number of other kinds of literary text to ask how they can function in our own historical accounts and how they compare to more straightforwardly historical writing from the ancient world.
