107-441 Ethnic Identity in the Greco-Roman World

Admission to the postgraduate diploma or fourth year honours in classics or classical studies and archaeology.

This course will investigate the ancient Greeks' and Romans' understanding of their own identity. The construction of ethnicity, from the early Greek city-states to the poly-ethnic empire of the Romans, will be examined using a range of literary, iconographical and material sources. Students will draw on recent sociological and anthropological theories of ethnicity to analyse the creation and social importance of Greek and Roman self-identity. Particular attention will be given to the use of origin myths to create and explore ethnic self-identity, the strategies by which ethnic groups distinguished themselves from others, the representation of interaction among different peoples and culture, and how strict the boundaries separating different ethnicities really were in antiquity.

Written work totalling 5000 words.

A subject reader will be available.

• Heroditus, Histories. Penguin Classics.
• Virgil, Aeneid. Penguin Classics.
• Tacitus, Agricola and Germania. Penguin Classics.