What was Italy like before the Roman Empire? Who were the peoples that shaped the peninsula's history? This course examines the art and archaeology of the first millennium BCE, focusing on the diverse cultures and civilizations that inhabited Italy, each defined by its own traditions and innovations. Through the study of daily life, religion, and material culture, we will uncover the interconnected and ever-changing dynamics of this fascinating and complex world.

Art in late antiquity has often been characterized as an art in decline, but this judgment is relative, relying on standards formulated for art of other periods. Challenging this assumption, we will examine the distinct and powerful transformations within the visual culture of the period between the third and sixth centuries AD. This period witnesses the mutation of the institutions of the Roman Empire into those of the Christian Byzantine Empire. The fundamental change in religious identity that was the basis for this development directly impacted the art from that era that will be the focus of this course.

Antioch was unique among the great cities of the classical world for its position at the crossroads between the Mediterranean and Asia. Students in this course will get exclusive access to the archives and artifacts from Princeton's mostly unpublished Antioch excavations of the 1930s. The focus of the 2025 course will be the Atrium House, a building discovered at the end of the first year, which produced exceptional mosaics. We will also explore the history of the destruction and rebuilding of Antioch in the wake of its many earthquakes, the most recent being in 2023.

This seminar explores art and architecture in the Roman provinces. We consider different types of artifacts and buildings from different regions of the Empire, taking in a broad sweep of Roman material culture beyond the celebrated monuments of the imperial heartland. In doing so, we assess the usefulness of frameworks such as Romanization, hybridity, resistance, and globalization for characterizing cultural production and display in provincial contexts. Course meetings combine thematic overviews with student presentations of case studies. Some meetings also include hands-on study of objects in the Princeton University Art Museum.

"What is a Classic?" asks what goes into the making of a classic text. It focuses on four, monumental poems from the ancient Mediterranean and Near East: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and Ovid's Metamorphoses, which are discussed through comparison across traditions. Students will consider possible definitions and constituents of a classic, while also reflecting on the processes of chance, valorization, and exclusion that go into the formation of a canon. Topics will include transmission, commentary, translation, religion, race, colonization, empire, and world literature.

An introduction to ancient Greco-Roman mythology in its cultural context and in relationship to broader human concerns (e.g., creation, mortality and immortality, sex and gender, time, change, love, and death). The course offers a who's who of the ancient Greco-Roman imaginative world; considers its relations with other ancient Mediterranean cultures and its transformations over time; and delves into the main ancient sources for well-known myths. We will also consider modern adaptations of ancient myths.

The Roman Empire was expansive, stretching from the straits of Gibraltar to the Persian Gulf. Its capital was the largest, most densely populated city in the Mediterranean, if not the world, and not surpassed in population until the 19th century. This course offers an overview of the Roman imperial period from the assassination of Julius Caesar to the death of the emperor Constantine, who legalized Christianity - a period of about 400 years. We will learn about various aspects of this multicultural empire, from political intrigues and conquests to city-living, dining, technology and engineering, sex, entertainment, economy, and religions.

This course will examine the origins, evolution and organization of the democratic system in Athens, and address some of the most controversial questions about the topic: To what extent was Athens democratic? What were the links between Athenian democracy and its aggressive imperialism? What are the similarities and differences between ancient and modern ideas of democracy?

This course aims to explore the relationship between republican political culture in ancient Rome and the traditional religious system, up to the death of Julius Caesar (44 BC). Traditional Roman religion is often said to be "embedded" in ancient culture in general and in the political system in a more specific way. We will examine to what extent this is the case and what it might mean for us in our interpretations. The seminar will explore religion and politics, both as separate phenomena (at least in our own terms), and as closely interconnected spheres in the network of cultural practices that shaped the Roman community.

This course explores the ideas of sex, sexuality and gender in ancient Greek and Roman literature to better understand how these worked in the social, cultural and political spheres of antiquity. We will analyze the primary literary and material evidence we have for sexuality and gender in Greece and Rome, and survey the modern scholarly approaches to those same texts. Topics will include: interactions between the sexes (courtship, extramarital desire, sex and marriage); same-sex desire and homosociality; the status of women and men in terms of social function, age and religious activity; and transgressive actions.

This course will introduce concentrators to the study of classical antiquity. Students will become acquainted with different fields of study within the Department, including literature, ancient history, linguistics, and the long reception of antiquity in the middle ages and modernity in order to acquire an understanding of the history of the discipline and its place in the twenty-first century. Sessions will involve guest visits from members of the faculty. Particular attention will be paid to acquiring the skills necessary to pursue independent research for the spring Junior Paper.

The senior thesis (498-499) is a year-long project in which students complete a substantial piece of scholarship under the supervision of a faculty member. The fall course (498) structures the first stages of this research in accordance with department milestones: 1) a 1000-word prospectus with bibliography, due before Fall Recess, followed by an informal oral defense, and 2) a chapter draft (ca. 15 pages) due at the end of scheduled classes. Students will be guided towards these goals by regular meetings with their faculty adviser. Written work will be evaluated solely as evidence of progress towards completion of the thesis.

An introduction to the major genres of Latin Literature and to the main scholarly issues involved in their study. Also offers intensive practice in reading Latin.

This course offers a multidisciplinary introduction to one of the finest and most influential of all Greek tragedies. We discuss its major themes, its historical and literary context, and investigate how it might have been understood by its original Athenian audience. We also consider examples of the play's modern poetic reception (reading Jean Anouilh's Antigone and Athol Fugard's The Island) and of its influence on gender studies and political theory. Select passages of Greek are translated in class that have particular thematic and interpretative importance and that illustrate Sophocles' poetic technique and literary art.

Texts that survive on stone, bronze, or terracotta provide one of the best and most direct sources for Roman history and culture. Such texts survive in large quantities and new discoveries are made every year. This course offers an introduction to Roman epigraphy, the study of non-literary ancient texts, by familiarizing students with a wide variety of writing preserved from Antiquity.

A collaborative workshop to practice scholarly writing at the dissertation level and beyond, providing guidance on planning and completing the dissertation and on other aspects of becoming a professional scholar and teacher, such as writing a journal article, composing effective syllabi for different kinds of courses, and turning the dissertation into a book (with the opportunity to talk to an editor from a university press).

This course will focus on the history of the later Roman Empire, a period which historians often refer to as "Late Antiquity." We will begin our class in pagan Rome at the start of the third century and end it in Baghdad in the ninth century: in between these two points, the Mediterranean world experienced a series of cultural and political revolutions whose reverberations can still be felt today. We will witness civil wars, barbarian invasions, the triumph of Christianity over paganism, the fall of the Western Empire, the rise of Islam, the Greco-Arabic translation movement and much more.

What does it mean to trace a 3000-year history of Hellenism? This course takes a critical approach by examining the construction of narratives of identity, belonging, and continuity from antiquity through Byzantine and Ottoman periods to today. We explore the grounds on which claims to Greekness have been based-from language and culture to religion, race, and territory-while considering how these claims play into distinctions like east-west and civilization-barbarism. Our critical inquiry into the 3000-year history of Hellenism allows us to contend with the political and intellectual stakes of the very premise that such a history could exist.

This course explores how the sounds, words, and grammar of languages change through time, and how to reconstruct languages of the past. There is a particular emphasis on applying the comparative method and principles of internal reconstruction, which allow us to uncover regular changes in a language's history, determine which languages developed from a common source, and reconstruct that original language. Other topics include how to propose language family trees (including recent computational models), and how unrelated languages influence each other. Strong focus on analyzing language data from many different parts of the world.

A study of the fundamental questions of political theory as framed in the context of the institutions and writings of ancient Greek and Roman thinkers, from the classical period into late antiquity and the spread of Christianity in Rome. We will canvass the meaning of justice in Plato's "Republic", the definition of the citizen in Aristotle's "Politics", Cicero's reflections on the purpose of a commonwealth, and Augustine's challenge to those reflections and to the primacy of political life at all in light of divine purposes. Through these classic texts, we explore basic questions of constitutional ethics and politics.

This course will examine the history, contemporary reality, and likely future of higher education, especially in the United States but also abroad. We will consider the changing and often conflicting ideals and aspirations of parents, students, instructors, and administrators from classical Rome to Christian institutions in the European Middle Ages to American athletic powerhouses today, seeking answers to fundamental practical, economic, and political questions that provoke vigorous contemporary debate.

A study of fundamental questions of political theory framed in the context of the institutions and writings of ancient Greek and Roman thinkers, from the classical period into late antiquity and the spread of Christianity. Topics include the meaning of justice in Plato's Republic, the definition of the citizen in Aristotle's Politics, Cicero's reflections on the purpose of a commonwealth, and Augustine's challenge to those reflections and to the primacy of political life at all in light of divine purposes. We consider both the primary texts and secondary literature debates to equip students with a working mastery of this tradition.