Required texts:
M = Robert Morkot, The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece (1996) Assignments are to the maps, charts and illustrations. Reading the text is encouraged, but optional.
P = Sarah Pomeroy, Stanley Burstein, Walter Donlan, and Jennifer Roberts, Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History (Oxford: 1999)
SN = S. Spyridakis and B. Nystrom, Ancient Greece: Documentary Perspectives (1997 edition)
Daily quizzes on assigned readings; quizzes count a third of semester grade.
Writing requirement (a sixth of semester grade): Either a research paper (at least ten pages), or two three-page essays on two topics in Greek history that interest you. Essays due Oct. 23 and Nov. 27 (but welcomed on Nov. 17, just before fall break!). Research papers due Nov. 27. Graduate students must write a substantial research paper.
Exams count for half of semester grade. Hour exams on Sept. 25 and Nov. 6. If you don't take the exam on the date scheduled you can take a makeup, but will be docked two thirds of a q.p. Final exam, two hours, is cumulative.
Aug. 30: Introduction
Sept. 1: Greece and the Aegean, through the neolithic period (7000-3000 BC) (P 1-6; map quiz, based on handout and maps in P and M)
Sept. 4: The beginnings of civilization in the Near East, and the Early Bronze Age in the Aegean (3000-2100 BC) (P 6-9; M 8-9, and 23)
Sept. 6: Minoan Crete (P 9-18; M 13, 15, 22, 23, 24-25, 28)
Sept. 8:The Shaft Graves at Mycenae, and the coming of the Greek language to Greece (P 18-22; M 17 and 26-27)
Sept. 11: Mycenaean Greece (P 22-34; M 28-29, 36-37, and 134)
Sept. 13: The catastrophe ca. 1200 BC: the "Trojan War" and the sacking of the palaces (P 34- 40; M 30-31, 33 and 34-35)
Sept. 15: The earlier Dark Age: migrations, and the Greek dialects (P 41-50; M 23, 41, 46, 47)
Sept. 18: The eighth-century renaissance; the alphabet, Homer, and the Homeric poems (P 50-53 and 60-63
Sept. 20: Society and religion in Dark Age Greece (P 63-66)
Sept. 22: The eighth-century renaissance: material changes (P 71-81)
Sept. 25: EXAMINATION
Sept. 27: Carthage, and the opening of the central Mediterranean
Sept. 29: The first Greek cities (P 82-95; M 48-49, 50-51, and 55)
Oct. 2: The aristocratic city-states (P 95-103)
Oct. 4: Hoplite warfare and the tyrants (P 103-109; SN 2-3, 192-94, and 222)
Oct. 6: Sparta: eunomia and the growth of Spartan power (P 131-38 and 149-157; M 80-81)
Oct. 9: Spartan society (P 138-148; SN 188-91 and 228-30)
Oct. 11: Aristocratic Athens, to Solon's reform (P 159-69; SN 8-9; M 58-59)
Oct. 13: Peisistratos and Kleisthenes (P 169-78; SN 10-11)
Oct. 16: Archaic Greek society: art, architecture, poetry (P 109-121)
Oct. 18: Rationalism, philosophy, and religion (P 121-24; SN 161-64, 180-81, 184)
Oct. 20: Persia, to the accession of Darius (P 178-180; M 70-71)
Oct. 23: Darius, the Ionian Revolt, and the Battle of Marathon (P 180-188; M 65, 67, 74-75, and 78-79)
Oct. 25: Xerxes' invasion of Greece (P 189-199; H 7.5-19 and 7.198-239; M 76-77)
Oct. 27: The rise of Athens, to 461 BC (P 201-211)
Oct. 30: The Athenian Empire and the Periclean democracy (P 211-219; M 95)
Nov. 1: Drama, poetry and art, to ca. 445 BC (P 219-233; SN 258-68, 288-89, 314)
Nov. 3: Economy and society in Periclean Athens (P 233-45 and 274-85; SN 89-91, 243-45; M 87, 89)
Nov. 6: EXAMINATION
Nov. 8: The outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (P 246-255; SN 212; M 97)
Nov. 10: The "Archidamian" war (P 287-303)
Nov. 13: The Sicilian adventure and the fall of Athens (P 303-319; M 98-99)
Nov. 15: The intellectual and moral revolution in late fifth-century Athens (P 255-74)
Nov. 17: Aftermath of the war; the death of Sokrates (P 319-328; SN 107-09, 115-18, 173-75)
Fall break, Nov. 18-26
Nov. 27: Sparta's hegemony, to the Battle of Leuktra in 371 BC (P 330-341)
Nov. 29: Plato, Aristotle, and the philosophical schools (P 353-68; SN 110-14, 141-42, 145-47)
Dec. 1: Thebes (P 341, again, and 341-353 [these pages are about Athens]; M 101; SN 213-14)
Dec. 4: The rise of Macedon (P 371-386; M 102-03 and 106-07)
Dec. 6: The triumph and death of Philip, and the early years of Alexander (P 386-401)
Dec. 8: The conquests of Alexander the Great (P 401-426; M 120-23)
Dec. 11: The world after Alexander (SN 143-44, 148-51)
FINAL EXAMINATION: Monday, December 18, 9:00 a.m.