Hellenism: The First 3000 Years

Over the past 3,000 years, texts written in Greek played a central role for how people in Western Eurasia understood themselves, their society, their values, and the nature of the universe. Over the same three millennia, the Greek language played a central role in a variety of political communities, including ancient Athens, the empire of Alexander, the Roman empire, Byzantium, and the modern nation state of Greece. In this course, we will trace the history of these two phenomena: the political life and fortunes of Greek speakers and the cultural life of texts written in Greek, seeking to understand the relationship between the two.