Readings (books to buy in bold:

General introduction to Ancient Civilization is The Penguin Encyclopedia of Ancient Civilizations (1980), edited by Arthur Cotterell, articles on specific cultures and topics by often authoritative scholars. If you need a narrative to catch up on what happened, get hold of Michael Cook, A Brief History of the Human Race, Norton 2003 (from Amazon.com or wherever); or J.M Roberts’ longer Penguin History of the World; or forage on the Internet for timelines etc. (you could start at http://ancienthistory.about.com/)

For the Persian Empire our text is Herodotus, History (“Inquiry” is a better translation than his literal title, since History hadn’t become a specialized subject in his time which was 480s-430s BCE). Lots of translations available, Carolyn Dewald’s notes and outlines book by book in the Oxford Word’s Classics ed. make that valuable; J. Romm’s abridgment from Hackett, On the War for Greek Freedom won’t work because it lacks a lot of the ethnographic material we need.

For the Hellenistic world: Barbara Fowler's anthology of Hellenistic Poetry (Univ. of Wisconsin Press 1990). Other things you could look at are Michel Chauveau, Egypt in the Age of Cleopatra, Cornell 2000 and the readings in Stanley Burstein, ed., The Hellenistic Age, Cambridge 1985.

For Late Antiquity: Peter Brown's venerable The World of Late Antiquity (Norton 1973); look also at G. Bowersock et al. edd., Late Antiquity, a Guide, Harvard 2001 and Michael Maas, Readings in Late Antiquity, Routledge 2001.

Work to hand in:

You will learn in this course in proportion to the thought (energy and time) you invest. Two generations ago, students at good colleges spent about 50 hours a week on coursework, but since the 1980s that has been cut in half (except for lab science). Block 8 may be particularly distracting, but

I urge people to write as they read and think: it helps discover things. If you write at a computer you can circulate the writing to a class folder I’ll set up in the Outlook system: Public Folders-Academic Departments-Classics-Cramer-Multicultures. Three times during the block, get me something to grade—e-mail me an elaborated posting from the folder or write a new essay: it could be research, it could be text analysis. More on this later in the week.

The Honor System applies to all work: if you quote other people’s work, give them credit in parenthetical citations, footnotes etc. If it comes off the Web, learn how to cite that properly: the CC Writing Center has a Resources page that directs you to http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/cgos/idx_basic.html.

Schedule:

Week 1, April 24-28 is Achaemenid Week: read Herodotus (if you’ve read him before, fill in on Egypt and Scythia, books 2 and 4, and look outside—Pierre Briant and other good writers. Background in pp. 9-154 of the Penguin Encyclopedia.)

• For Tuesday--Herodotus book 1 (with Dewald's outline and notes); think also about

Achaemenid material: pp. 146-154 of the Penguin Encyclopedia. Pierre Briant's Web site. Also his 2001 statement on where Achaemenid studies are.

• For Wednesday--Herodotus book 2

• For Thursday--Herodotus book 4

• For Friday--how it turns out (selections from 5-9; 

• Other Greek texts as indicated: Aeschylus's Persians (472; on the Web; review of a recent production); good Biblical resources on the Web, for instance Torrey Seland's site.

Week 2, May 1-5 is Hellenistic Week: read the Penguin Encyclopedia on Ptolemaic Egypt (p. 46ff, but leaf back) and Western Asia after Alexander (p. 154 ff., likewise with background); the poetry anthology for Theocritus (pastoral), Callimachus (hymns and epigrams) and Apollonius (epic); and explore beyond in religion, literature, science, geography. Stanley Burstein also has an essay, written for the AHA, on "The Hellenistic Period in World History".

Schedule: Monday: historical background, basic concepts of Hellenism, (proto-)Orientalism, Assimilation. Read the encyclopedia stuff and also

• Plutarch "Life of Alexander" (cached so as to get you to the big battle at Gaugamela at MIT); other material at Fordham.

Tuesday-Friday :

• Material from the Fordham Ancient History Sourcebook on the Hellenistic World.

• Jewish texts: Biblical (Daniel again, Luke’s Gospel) and philosophical (Philo of Alexandria)

• Material from Western Asia to be determined (suggestions—Ai Khanum finds, demolished Afghanistan sculptures; Persian materials from Shahnameh)

• selections from Theocritus, Apollonius' Argonautica, Callimachus.

• Some stuff on Cleopatra: Horace's poem written on the occasion of her death.

Week 3, May 8-12 is Late Antiquity Week: read Brown and whatever documents you search out. A Web starting place is Jim O'Donnell's Worlds of Late Antiquity page.

• Roman texts to be determined (suggestions—Apuleius' Metamorphoses and Apology, Augustine, Daphnis and Chloe, Pervigilium Veneris)

• You could add some thinking about the ethnography of the Roman Empire even earlier than our period. Julius Caesar conquered Gaul in 58-52 BCE, and wrote a couple of ethnographies, based on Greek sources, to explain to Romans what he was doing.

  • The Gauls are described in book 1 ad initium and in book 6, chapters 11-20.
  • The Germans are described in book 4 ad init.and in book 6, ch. 21-28.

  And Tacitus late in the First Century wrote ethnography of the Britons (in his life of Agricola) and of the Germans in the monograph of that title.

• Of Christian texts, the North Africans could turn out the most interesting: in addition to the Apuleius and Augustine mentioned above, the Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity (in Latin at the Latin Library, and polemics of Tertullian.

• German texts to be determined (suggestions—Jordanes’ History of the Goths (translated by CC Pres. Charles Mierow), Nibelungennot, Gothic Gospels): see the source collection at Fordham.

• Iranian texts to be determined (suggestions—Shahnameh again)

• Slavic texts to be determined (suggestions—Bible translation)

• Islam: NITLE's Arab World project; Paul Halsall's Internet Sourcebook at Fordham. A photocopy of Muhammad's ordinance for Medina is available (5/10/06) at Armstrong 130.

Week 4, May 15-17 is Finishing Up Week: your last paper could be longer than the previous ones and you could finish, and report on, some research.