ANCIENT GREEK HISTORY I

This course allows students to acquire the basic historical notions concerning:
- knowledge of the main events of ancient Greek history from the birth of the polis to the end of the fourth century BCE;
- knowledge of chronological and geographical contexts;
- awareness of the links between cause and effect and of the most significant topics of ancient Greek history with a closer focus on the social and cultural development of the Greeks;
- knowledge of the methodology of historical research, with particular emphasis on the analysis and interpretation of written sources and other historical evidences;
- awareness of the principal authors of Greek classical and hellenistic historiography.

At the end of the course the student:
- acquires a good knowledge of the main events, themes and figures of Greek history, also considering wider historical contexts;
- possesses the precise spatial and temporal coordinates in which to frame historical phenomena and figures;
- knows how to apply the fundamental categories of interpretation of Greek history through the critical analysis of literary and documentary sources read in translation (but with constant reference to the original texts);
- is aware of the specificity (and therefore of the limits and possible ambiguities) of the documentation available for the reconstruction of Greek history; therefore knows how to accept and understand the existence, and the validity, of different reconstructive hypotheses regarding some important thematic issues;
- is able to communicate the contents learned in a concise oral and written form using the technical terminology of the discipline;
- is able to apply the methodological tools learned to specific case studies selected for their exemplarity.

Students must have a good command of the Italian language, both in terms of oral comprehension and written production.
It is also expected that they will be able to deal autonomously with complex information, by making critical interaction of handbooks, lesson contents, knowledge of ancient literary and documentary texts, and individual readings of modern essays.
Students must also know how to orientate themselves in the geography of the Mediterranean, benefiting, if necessary, from a historical atlas.

Outlines of Greek history from the birth of the polis to the end of the fourth century BCE.
General tools, basic methodology for the critical analysis of different types of historical sources. The archaic period: the birth of the polis; alphabetic writing; colonization; archaic legislators; archaic Sparta; Athens and Solon; tyrannies; the reforms of Cleisthenes. The classical period: Persian wars and Herodotus; the Pentekontaetia; the Athenian empire and democracy; Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War; the fourth century and the age of hegemonies; Xenophon of Athens; the Macedonians and Philip II; Isocrates, Ephors and Theopompus. The Hellenistic age: Alexander the Great and the Orient; Alexander's successors and the creation of the Hellenistic kingdoms.

1) Lecture notes and ancient texts (in translation) examined during the module and available online on moodle.
2) M. Bettalli, A.L. D’Agata, A. Magnetto, Storia greca, Carocci, Roma 2021 (also previous editions), chapters 7-25.
3) M. Bettalli (a cura di), Introduzione alla storiografia greca, Carocci, Roma 2021, chapters 1-7.
4) L. Canfora, Prima lezione di storia greca, Roma-Bari, Editori Laterza, 2000.

Written examination. The examination is by means of a test consisting of open-ended questions (except the first one which concerns geographical and chronological knowledge).

Lectures. The teaching involves materials uploaded on the Moodle University platform that are made available to the students before each lecture and which are discussed and commented in the classroom.

Italian

written