This course will focus on the history of the Greeks from the Late Bronze Age to the rise of Alexander the great, or from about 1500 BC to 336 BC.  The Late Bronze Age was a time when Mycenaean kings in the Greek peninsula built great palaces and fortresses, and when the fabulous Minoan civilization of Crete was at its height.  Both the Mycenaeans and the Minoans dispatched traders to Egypt, to Asia Minor and the city states of Syria Palestine; at the end of this period, at least some Greeks appear to have been involved in piractical raids throughout the eastern Mediterranean, some of which may have given rise to the legends of the Trojan War.  After a period of material decline lasting from around 1100-900 BC, the Greeks recovered literacy and launched their brilliant careers as explorers, scientists, philosophers, statesmen, and artists.  The achievements of Classic Greece still reverberate throughout the West and profoundly influenced the Islamic East as well.

In this course, we will examine this history, with special attention to the material remains of the ancient Greece discovered by archaeologists and to the Greeks’ own views of their history, embodied in the work of two of the most important ancient Greek historians, Herodotus and Thucydides. We will also discuss the basic problem of writing and understanding ancient history: where “facts” about the ancient past come from, how these facts can be tested, and how they can be used to construct historical narratives.

Biers, William R.
1996 The Archaeology of Greece (Second Edition) (Cornell University Press: Ithaca, NY)

Pomeroy, S.B. et al.
1999 Ancient Greece, A Political, Social, and Cultural History (Oxford University Press: New York and Oxford)

Herodotus, The History (Translated by Davide Grene, University of Chicago Press: Chicago & London, 1987)

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (Translated by Rex Warner, Penguin Classics, 1972)

Other reading assignments will be handed out as xeroxes; since there a large number of resources for the study of classical history on the web, I will also supply URLs for reading assignments when applicable.

Web sites of interest:

	Perseus Project site: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu
	Ancient History Sourcebook: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/asbook.html
	Cyprus-American Archaeological Research Institute: http://www.caari.org

NOTE: unless otherwise noted, reading assignments should be DONE ON OR BEFORE the day they appear on the syllabus!  Items marked "recommended" on the syllabus are REQUIRED for graduate students. Items marked "skim" on the syllabus should be read IN DETAIL by graduate students.  Undergraduates should be familiar enough with this material so that they can go back to it and read in detail those areas which may be pertinent to exam questions.