About Classics

What is Classics?

Modern Western society and culture owes much to ancient Greece and Rome. Classics, the study of the ancient world, offers an insight into the life and thought of the Greeks and Romans, provides an understanding of their civilisation and considers the philosophical and practical problems they faced, largely through reading their literature.

Why Study Classics?

In western society we are living the cultural legacy of ancient Greece and Rome. The Classical tradition continues, as echoes of these civilisations remain deeply embedded in our modern consciousness and underpin our systems of law and government.

Study of the ancient world casts light on how we think about ourselves and our world.

Study of the ancient world casts light on how we think and organise knowledge about ourselves and our world. The concerns and ideas of the ancient civilisations still resonate within today’s artistic and technological achievements. To understand the ancient world is thus to have an advantage in the modern world.

Greek and Roman societies grappled with many of the issues which, in other guises, still confront us today. Their solutions provide reference points for analysis and debate in our own time.

A Degree in Classics

A degree in Classics will equip you for a variety of interesting and challenging careers. Classics is offered as a major for a Bachelor of Arts degree in either Classical Studies, Greek or Latin. Classics courses can provide a valuable background to most arts degrees.

Latin or Greek can be useful for studying English, Linguistics or modern languages, but they are not prerequisites for any Classical Studies course at undergraduate level.

Students majoring in Classical Studies may apply to take a 300-level summer course in Greece (also available at Honours level).

The Classics Programme at Victoria University has a small library available to all its students and a museum collection of Greek and Roman pottery, glassware, sculpture and coins. We are acquiring new acquisitions all the time!

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, La Source, 1820-1856, Paris: Musée d’Orsay

Courses Related to Classical Studies

Classics is a continuing tradition in Western society. The echoes of ancient times inform many other areas of study. Many courses taught at Victoria have direct relevance to Classical Studies. Some of these can be credited towards a Classics degree, just as certain Classics courses can be credited towards a different major — Art History or English, for example.

In the Art History programme, ARTH 217, The Renaissance, surveys 15th- and 16th-century Italian and Northern European art, which sought to revive and emulate the artistic, architectural, literary and philosophical traditions of the ancient world.

Similarly, ARTH 222, Neoclassicism to Impressionism, surveys European art from the later 18th Century to c.1900, paying particular attention to the French neoclassical movement..