The large corpus of extant speeches from the Athenian law-courts of the 4th century BC provide us with our best set of evidence for the social, economic and even political life of ancient Greece.  Students will read speeches by orators such as Lysias, Isokrates, Demosthenes and Aischines, and explore in detail what we can learn from the individual cases being argued about Athenian society at large.  Reading from the law-court speeches themselves will be supplemented with evidence from philosophers, writers of treatises, literary sources, inscriptions, and archaeological evidence.  cases to be studied will include disputes over inheritance, marital and sexual relationships, business partnerships, and political disputes.  Students will also learn about the economic structure of agriculture, mining and trade in Athens; family structure and relationships; slavery; effects of war; and other aspects of Athenian life.

Students will:

• become familiar with an important body of written and material evidence for the history of classical Greece
  
• come to better understand the interaction between formal law, perceived social norms, social mores, and actual social behaviour in a society remote from our own
  
• become skilled in handling difficult, tendentious, and fragmentary evidence, and develop skills in close reading and analysis
  
• gain skill in working in groups and presenting material, ideas and arguments orally
  
• gain skill in analytical, argumentative and descriptive writing

One hour lecture per week for 13 weeks; two hours of tutorials/seminars per week for 12 weeks; expected out-of-class-time work is 6 hours per week

TBA