History of Greece, to Alexander the Great
August, 2004
Robert Drews, 320A Furman Hall Tel: 3:4115 E-mail: robert.drews@vanderbilt.edu
Office hours: 10 to 12 and 2 to 3 MWF, and from 9 to 12 on Tuesdays and Thursdays
Required texts:
D = Nancy Demand, A History of Ancient Greece (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996)
SN = S. Spyridakis and B. Nystrom, Ancient Greece: Documentary Perspectives (Dubuque:
Kendall-Hunt, 1997 [2nd edition])
H = Herodotus, The Histories, translated by Aubrey de Selincourt (London: Penguin, 1996).
Reading assignments refer to book and chapter numbers, not page numbers.
Daily quiz on the assigned readings; quizzes count a third of semester grade.
Writing requirement (a sixth of the semester grade): Undergraduates write two three-page essays. Essay on early Greece due Oct. 8, second essay due Nov. 19. Graduate students must write a substantial research paper (due Dec. 3).
Hour exams on Sept. 27 and Nov. 3. If you don't take the exam on the date scheduled you will be given a makeup, but will be docked two thirds of a q.p. Final exam (two hours) is cumulative.
Semester Schedule
Aug. 25: Introduction
Aug. 27: Greece and the Aegean; the neolithic period in Anatolia and Greece (D 1-15; map quiz)
Aug. 30: The beginnings of metallurgy, civilization, and the gods in the Near East (D 15-19)
Sept. 1: What we know about "Minoan" civilization (D 24-41)
Sept. 3: Theories and misconceptions about "Minoan" civilization (D 41-54)
Sept. 6: Indo-European and Indo-Europeans (D 19-21)
Sept. 8: The Shaft Graves at Mycenae, and the coming of the Greek language to Greece (D 55-61)
Sept. 10: Mycenaean Greece (D 61-71)
Sept. 13: The catastrophe at the end of the Bronze Age: evidence and theories (D 72-78)
Sept. 15: The "Trojan War" and the end of the Mycenaean palaces
Sept. 17: Dark Age migrations, and the Greek dialects, 1200-800 BC (D 78-84)
Sept. 20: Greek society and religion in the Dark Age (D 85-93; SN 156-62, 176-77, and 180)
Sept. 22: The Aegean “renaissance” in the eighth century BC: Phoenicians, the alphabet, and the
Homeric poems (D 94-98)
Sept. 24: The first Greek cities (D 99-110)
Sept. 27: EXAMINATION
Sept. 29: Midas of Phrygia, Kimmerian raiders, and hoplite warfare
Oct. 1: The Greek tyrants (D 110-17; SN 2-3, 192-93 and 222; H 5.92 [Bk 5, Paragraph 92])
Oct. 4: Archaic Sparta (D 118-139; SN 30-37 and 228-230)
Oct. 6: Aristocratic Athens, to Solon’s reform (D 140-49; SN 8-9)
Oct. 8: Peisistratid tyranny and Kleisthenes’ demokratia (D 149-64; H 1.59-64, 5.55-56 and
5.62-65; SN 10-11)
Oct. 11: Archaic Ionia and Sicily; Archaic Greek society, art and religion
Oct. 13: The Ionian enlightenment (D 176-181; SN 163-64, 167-168)
Oct. 15: Lydia, Media and Persia, to the accession of Darius (D 165-76; H 1.46-130)
(Fall break, Oct. 18)
Oct. 20: The Persian Wars, to the Battle of Marathon (D 182-88; H. 6. 102-124)
Oct. 22: Xerxes’ invasion of Greece (D 188-200; H 7.5-19 and 7.198-239; SN 204-05; 210-11)
Oct. 25: Greece, Sicily and Anatolia, 479-461 BC (D 201-09)
Oct 27: Athenian democracy and imperialism (D 209-12 and 222-24)
Oct 29: Public and private life in Periklean Athens (D 212-19 and 228-46; SN 236-37)
Nov. 1: Poetry, fluent literacy, and the sophists (D 219-22; SN 258-68, 288-89, 308-09)
Nov. 3: EXAMINATION
Nov. 5: The Peloponnesian War, to 415 BC (D 247-57; SN 52-58)
Nov. 8: The “Sicilian War” and the fall of Athens (D 258-67; SN 59-66)
Nov. 10: The religious and moral crisis in late fifth-century Greece; the death of Sokrates ( SN
110-18)
Nov. 12: Xenophon’s Anabasis; the Spartan hegemony to 387 BC (D 268-middle of 273)
Nov. 15: The turn of Thebes (D 273-275; SN 213-14)
Nov. 17: Plato, Aristotle, the schools, and superstition (SN 119-125; 145-47, and 173-175)
Nov. 19: Dionysios of Syracuse; fourth-century society and assumptions about society (D 275-
84; SN 89-91; 238-45)
(Thanksgiving holiday)
Nov. 29: Macedon, to Philip’s first triumph over Athens ((D 285-92; SN 250)
Dec. 1: Philip’s conquest of the city-states, and his assassination (D 292-305; SN 71-79)
Dec. 3: Alexander, to Issus (D 306-17)
Dec. 6: Alexander the Great (D 317-30 SN 217-21)
Dec. 8: The world after Alexander (D 330-335 SN 143-44, and 290-95)
