Ancient Greece
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News and updates about the course are posted here.
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Current Announcements (2)RSS feed
Welcome to Week 10!
2 November 2025
Here it is, the big war.
Things to ponder as you explore the materials. With the Peloponnesian Wars, the Greeks are fighting each other in a massive, generation-long slog unlike anything the ancient war has seen. Why? Why are they fighting, and why does it last for decade after decade? Can we blame a particular city for this? What is this war really about?
Which leaders stand out the most to you? Are Perikles, Archidamus, Kleon, Brasidas, Nikias, Alkibiades, and the like important to the shape of this war, or are they perhaps more representative of the key issues within Sparta and Athens?
Why do you think the war turns out the way it does? Did Sparta win this war, or did Athens lose it?
Looking forward to discussing all of this with you. See you on Thursday!
Notes and reminders about the Birds essay (due Nov. 17)
2 November 2025
Here are a few reminders on the Birds essay, which is due on Monday, Nov. 17.
The starting point I’d like you to bear in mind is that this essay is about making an argument and supporting that argument with evidence—in this case, three specific moments from Birds that demonstrate and illustrate your argument concerning what Birds tells us about fifth-century Athens.
Comparing two works. For this essay you need to compare Birds to another ancient Greek work. Which one depends on which prompt you are answering. This also means that you need to carve out time to read through and consider how best to use the other work as well as a separate chunk of time to plan and write the essay.
The goal for this essay to make an argument about fifth-century Athens using just these two pieces of primary source evidence. You don’t need anything else but the two primary sources.
Structure. In your introduction, make sure you have a clear thesis statement—what you intend to show in the paper. Try to develop a concrete, specific thesis statement that lines up with and responds directly to one of the prompts.
In the main body of your essay, focus on three specific moments from Birds that support your thesis. You should have three sections, one for each moment in Birds you’re discussing. In each section, talk about the moment from Birds, then a similar or contrasting moment in your other work, then discuss what this evidence tells us. When discussing both works, be specific and concrete.
I talk about the structure in the Structure Musts video (on the Essay Musts page).
Evidence and cites. A major rule of thumb for writing about history (and for academic work in general, but especially history) is that all assertions must be supported by evidence, and all evidence must be cited. When you describe events from Birds and the other work (whether it’s in quotes, a paraphrase, or just describing specific ideas present in the story), you need to provide a citation—a footnote or parenthetical cite that gives your source (the book version of Birds and the other work you are using) plus a page number. You also need a bibliography listing the versions used of both works. For more on this, see the Evidence Musts video on the Essay musts page, and the bibliography and footnotes pages in the Citation Center on the course website.
Requirements for all papers. Make sure to fully review the requirements for all papers (on the Essay Musts page of the course website) before completing and uploading your essay. Also review the prompt for the Essay you’ve chosen to make sure you answered what it’s looking for.
Any questions at all, please come to me. I’m really looking forward to hearing your insights on Birds and what it has to tell us about fifth-century Athens.
Archive
BIrds presentation slides posted
27 October 2025
The slides for Leonela’s Birds presentation have been posted on the Slides page.
Welcome to Week 9!
25 October 2025
This week we’re exploring the city of Athens itself, and we’re also looking at the very thing we’re engaged in thanks in part to the Greeks—education, both formal and communal.
Things to ponder as you explore the materials. How do you think the Athenians thought about education and the role it played? How does sophistry—the ability to argue successfully regardless of truth or merit—become a thing in Athens, which is otherwise so devoted to the cultural ideal? Why can’t anyone agree on right and wrong?
A particularly important idea, relevant to both the cultural turbulence in Athens and the conflicts in Birds, is the debate between nomos and physis. What does this philosophical controversy relate to, and why is it so emblematic of classical Athens?
And in connection with that topic: what I most want to do is hash out what you guys think of Birds now that we’re finishing it. There are some very striking scenes toward the end, as the prospect of Cloudcuckooland becomes more absurd and further from the simple desires the ex-Athenian humans evinced at the start of the play. What is this play about? What is Aristophanes telling us by having the ideas of utopia, civilization, and divinity twist around so much? What do you think the play is telling us beyond what Aristophanes intended?
Also: a reminder to make sure you’re planning for your Birds essay as you read. Which of the three topics are you exploring? What is Birds telling us about classical Athens?
Looking forward to discussing all of this with you on Thursday. See you then!
Quizzes #4 and #5 grades and markups posted
21 October 2025
The grades and markups for Quizzes #4 and #5 are posted on the My Grades page on the course website.
I recommend spending a moment to take a look at the Quiz Notes for these quizzes, which are live on the Quiz Notes page and on the Print/PDF page, and are also included in the quiz markups.
Welcome to Week 8!
19 October 2025
This week we’re exploring the wild ferment that is classical Athenian culture, spanning everything from political innovation to theater and visual art to oratory, philosophy, and natural science. Where does this explosion of cultural expression come from? What drives the Athenians not only to develop new forms like tragedy and comedy, but make them absolutely central to their culture? What is all of this about, to the Athenians?
Not only is all of this cultural combustion happening at the same time during the fifth century, but it’s happening alongside the worst wars in Greek history. Is there a connection? How do the extremes of war relate to the pursuit of extreme cultural expression?
As historians (and in this course we are all historians) we should naturally pay close attention to the “invention” of historical writing, attributed both to Herodotos and to Thukydides. How different are they in terms of method and intent? Are their approaches conflicting or complementary, do you think? What do you recognize in the way they write about the past, compared to how we do it now?
This week we’re also shifting from our Reader excerpts to the exploration of an entire play, Aristophanes’s comedy Birds. It’s ribald, a biting Athenian comedy that’s also meant to be experienced as a spectacle. How do the two lads from Athens introduce us to that city’s culture? What kind of perspective do the other characters, like the Hoopoe, have? What elements do you see in this first part that signpost what Aristophanes is trying to accomplish here?
Looking forward to discussing all of this with you. See you Thursday!
Readings in Birds
19 October 2025
I’ve had a few questions about readings in Birds, so here’s an email to help clarify things. The syllabus says to read this play in two halves, but what does that mean?
Unlike modern plays, ancient Greek plays aren’t divided into acts. Instead, there are generally six segments. These are called prologue, parodos (chorus entry), agon (debate/problem), parabasis (chorus’s commentary), episodes (results of the problem), and exodos (conclusion). These are not usually marked in modern translations, but you can feel the shift in the kind of action, whether it's character dialog vs. chorus, etc.
Since there is only one act, and many different printed versions of the play with different page numbering, we use line numbers to mark off where they start and end.
For Birds, one way of breaking this down is: prologue (lines 1-208); parados (lines 209-433); agon (lines 434-675); parabasis (lines 676-800); episodes (801-1057); second parabasis (1058-1117); second episodes (1118-1705); and exodus (1706-1765).
Roughly halfway through would take us to the beginning of the episodes, so we can break at line 800, after the chorus section that ends with the fourth-wall-breaking speech about how useful wings would be when at the theater. The end of this speech mentions Diitrephes (first a captain, then a colonel, then, in the Penguin edition, “and look at him now—Lord High Admiral of the Hobby-Horse Marines!”). If you don't have line numbers in your edition, look for the chorus/chorus leader section almost halfway through the play that ends with that bit.
The second half can then start with the episodes section, where the chorus stops speaking and the action starts again. Look for where Peisthetaeros and Euelpides re-enter the stage, each wearing a large set of wings and teasing each other about how silly they look wearing them (Peisthetaeros tells Euelpides he looks like a goose, etc.).
Bottom line: this week, we’ll do the first half, with all the setup. Next week will be the second half, with all the consequences.
Welcome to Week 7!
12 October 2025
This week we’re continuing our discussion of the Persian Wars and the long shadow they cast over the story of Hellas.
Things to ponder as you explore the materials. There are a lot of what-ifs about the Persian Wars and the aftermath. In the end the Greeks worked together to fight off the Persians, so why was Hellas so divided afterwards? Did the Persian Wars bring about the friction of the following years, or was it there the whole time? And when it comes to their relations with the rest of the Greeks, why did the Spartans and the Athenians turn into such jerks? Was the Delian League a racket to increase Athenian power or a real effort to advance a shared Greek culture and economy? (Or both?)
Also this week we get a chance to delve deeper into Athenian cultural expression in the fifth century. This is a time of great military, social, and political turbulence for Athens, and also the period of its greatest creative innovations. What’s the connection between the two phenomena? Why is Athens, in particular, a greenhouse of extreme cultural expression?
Looking forward to discussing all this with you. See you Thursday!