Classical Archaeology and Ancient History Reading List

Welcome Letter from CAAH Tutors

Dear upcoming CAAH fresher,

Warmest congratulations on your offer to read Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Oxford! We hope you are having a wonderful summer, and we are hugely looking forward to meeting you in October.

As you no doubt already know, in your first term at Oxford (“Michaelmas Term”, October–December) you will be taking a paper entitled Aristocracy and Democracy in the Greek World, 550–450 BC. This paper is taken by all CAAH first-years, and so is generally nicknamed “Greek Core”. The paper focusses on the momentous changes which can be seen across the Greek world, in politics, art, culture, urbanism, literacy, and many other aspects of life, in what we now call the late Archaic and early Classical periods, or roughly 550–450 BC. The “Archaic” period of Greek history conventionally runs from the mid-eighth century BC to the early fifth century, and the “Classical” period from the early fifth to the late fourth; but it’s worth remembering that, like most historical periodizations (“The Bronze Age”, “The Middle Ages”, “The Early Modern Period” etc.), “Archaic Greece” and “Classical Greece” are really just modern shorthand (no-one in antiquity carved up Greek history in quite this way). There were certainly huge differences between the Greek world of 550 BC and 450 BC, but the continuities were just as important.

You will study the paper in classes of around eight students, each taught by two tutors, one ancient historian and one classical archaeologist (though in practice most of the historians in Oxford are also archaeologists, of a kind, and vice versa). Every week you’ll have a class of around 90 minutes, for which you will be asked either to prepare a short oral presentation, or to write an essay of around 2000 words.

It would be very helpful indeed if you could do some preliminary reading before you come up to Oxford, to prepare yourself to make the most of the course.

By far the most important written source for this period is the Histories of Herodotus, written around 425 BC. Herodotus set out to enquire into why the Greeks and Persians fought one another during the Persian Wars of the early fifth century BC (the Ionian Revolt of 499–494 BC; the Marathon campaign of 490; Xerxes’ invasion of Greece in 480–478). His enquiry into the causes of the war led him far back into the sixth century BC and beyond, and his book is an extraordinary mine of information about Greek history and culture throughout our period. Do please buy your own translation of Herodotus: we recommend the Oxford World’s Classics translation by Robin Waterfield, which also has a good introduction and notes. The Histories are divided into nine “books”; please read at least Books 1, 3, and 5–6 before the start of term. If you can read all of it (you can skip Book 2) that would be great.

We’d also like you to buy James Whitley’s The Archaeology of Ancient Greece (2001), and read chapters 1 and 7–13 – an excellent, clear, well-illustrated introduction to the art and archaeology of the period. Most colleges provide freshers’ book grants, so keep the receipts and you may be able to claim back the cost of these from your college later.

If you want to read some introductory material on the history of the period (not compulsory) we would recommend Oswyn Murray’s Early Greece (second edition, 1993), chapters 1–2, 9–16, or Robin Osborne’s Greece in the Making 1200-479 BC (second edition, 2009), chapters 1 and 6–9. If you like historical fiction, Mary Renault’s The Praise Singer (1978) is a brilliant (and historically very well grounded) evocation of the late archaic Greek world.

DON’T PANIC: we are well aware that many of you will never have studied the ancient Greek world before, and may only have the haziest of senses what this paper is all about! We’ll begin the course with a couple of classes focussed on methods and approaches, in particular how to deal with ancient historical writing (Herodotus, in this case) and material evidence.

Have fun – very much looking forward to meeting you in the autumn! We will have an initial meeting for all CAAH first-years on the afternoon of Thursday of 0th week, probably at 2pm in the Classics Centre (to be confirmed nearer the time).

Roel Konijnendijk (Lincoln College)

Charlotte Spence (New College)

Marco Santini (Magdalen College)