Greece and the Ancient Near East

Catalog description

This course examines the Ancient Near East (Mesopotamia and Egypt) before tracing conditions in Greece from the late Dark Ages and Homer to the death of Alexander the Great. The course will especially investigate the rise of various city states, the role of religion and myth in constructing meaning, the rise of centralized political structures and in Greece the rise of tyranny and democracy. The origins of such modern literary and spoken genres as history, drama and rhetoric; the rise of hoplite and phalanx styles of warfare and the origins of western science and philosophy. The course will also examine the clash of cultures in the centuries of conflict between Persia and Greece.