BA History - Study Abroad Module II (HIST0136)

This course investigates all aspects of war in its social and cultural context in archaic and classical Greece - from the causes of conflict, via the question...

Cultures of War in Ancient Greece (HIST0094)

This course investigates all aspects of war in its social and cultural context in archaic and classical Greece - from the causes of conflict, via the question of how to train, raise, maintain, and control citizen and mercenary armies, to the range of forms of warfare from ritual clashes to campaigns of annihilation. In particular, the course tackles some of the myths current in modern scholarship: the notions that war was the 'normal' state of international relations in Greece; that the citizen army was an essentially 'middle-class' body; that warfare was restricted to a game-like competition in the archaic period but underwent a major cultural shift to become a destructive 'total' conflict in the classical period; that the Athenian navy drove the development of radical democracy; and that the 'mercenary explosion' of the fourth century was a result of economic and political crisis in the Greek city-states and marked another fundamental change in military culture. How the Greeks fought has been much-debated in recent research, and this too will be the subject of detailed study. A crucial aim of the course is to provide an understanding of how Greek warfare was shaped by the social, economic, and cultural constraints of its time, how it developed, and why wars were so common in ancient Greece. A second aim of the course is to provide students with the knowledge and skills to tackle this challenge, by enabling them to study the sources as coherent narratives while analysing their implications for any and all aspects of Greek war, society and culture.

A 10,000 word essay (the &#039;dissertation&#039;) to be handed in at the beginning of the Summer term. Students define a research project with the help and...

BA Dissertation in History of Art (HART0118)