How did the Greeks and Romans construct a map of the world they lived in?  How did people in antiquity imagine the world, or their own neighbourhood?  When they travelled, what sort of mental map did they use?  This course will range from the practicalities and purposes of travel in the ancient world to the intellectual frameworks of geographers.  How did travellers communicate their knowledge of the world to each other and to the audience of armchair travellers?  And how did the knowledge gained by travellers inform the work of geographers?  Students will read a range of ancient sources in translation, including Herodotos, Strabo, Pausanias and Ptolemy, as well as less well-known writers, and be invited to plan their own travels in the ancient world.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will: 

1. Become familiar with an important body of written and material evidence for the history of classical Greece and Rome.
2. Come to better understand the development of geographical ideas and knowledge in antiquity; and gain insights into the practicalities and social attitudes governing travel and mobility in the ancient world.
3. Become skilled in handling difficult, tendentious, and fragmentary evidence, and develop skills in close reading and analysis.
4. Gain skill in working in groups and presenting material, ideas and arguments orally.
5. Gain skill in analytical, argumentative and descriptive writing.

Tutorial participation (10%) [LO 1, 2, 3, 4]

In-class exercises (10%) [LO 1, 2, 4]

Group presentation and written notes (2 pp) (10%) [LO 1, 2, 3, 4]

Essay (2,000 words) (30%) [LO 1, 2, 3, 5]

The course consists of one 1–hour lecture, one 2–hour tutorial, and seven hours of associated study time per week.

12 units of first year Arts courses.

12 units of first year Arts courses.

ANCH1013, ANCH1014

Please check on Wattle or with the Course Convenor.

S.B. Pomeroy, S.M. Burstein, W. Donlan and J.T. Roberts, Ancient Greece: a political, social, and cultural history (3rd ed.: New York, Oxford University Press, 2011)