ANCIENT GREEK HISTORY

This lecture course is part of the Bachelor's Degree Programme in History (corso di Laurea in Storia).
It allows students to acquire the basic historical notions concerning:
- knowledge of the main lines of ancient Greek history from the birth of the polis to Alexander the Great;
- knowledge of chronological and geographical contexts;
- the awareness of the links between cause and effect and of the most significant topics of the 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;
- the main lines of the Greek classical and hellenistic historiography.

At the end of the course the student:
- has a good knowledge of the main events, themes and figures of Greek history, also in the light of 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 text);
- 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 with complex information autonomously, by making critical interaction of manuals, 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 Roman conquest of Greece.
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; Cleisthenes reform.
The classical period: Persian wars; the Pentekontaetia; Athenian empire and democracy; the Peloponnesian War; the fourth century and the age of hegemonies; the Macedonians and Philip. The hellenistic period: Alexander the Great and the beginning of the Hellenistic age. Diadochi and Epigoni. The birth of the Hellenistic kingdoms; the evolution of the individual kingdoms; federal states; the Greek West; the profiling of Rome. Society, Economy and Culture in Hellenistic Age. Topics and figures of Classic and Hellenistic Historiography.

Monographic topic:
War, Peace, and human Responsibility: readings from Thucydides.

1) Lecture notes with ppt examined during the course (available on-line on the Moodle platform).
2) M. Corsaro - L. Gallo, Storia greca, Milano Le Monnier (new edition) 2021 or M. Bettalli – A.L. D’Agata – A. Magnetto, Storia greca, Carocci, new edition, Roma 2021.
3) Introduzione alla storiografia greca, a cura di M. Bettalli (new edition), Carocci, Roma 2021.
4) Thucydides, Le Storie (i Book, Italian translation), and U. Fantasia, La guerra del Peloponneso, Carocci, Roma 2012.
5) Thucydides, Epitafio di Pericle per i caduti del primo anno di guerra, ed. by O. Longo, Marsilio, Venezia 2001; Thucydides, Il dialogo dei Melii e degli Ateniesi, ed. by L. Canfora, Marsilio, Venezia, 1991.

As optional further reading, it is recommended for the Hellenistic age :
O. Coloru, Il regno del più forte, Napoli, Salerno 2022.

Students will take the exam in a single written test of 11 questions at the end of the course (the initial question relates to chronology and geography; the remaining questions are about a specific institutional aspect, a commentary on a text of a major Greek historian or of an inscription in translation). The test questions are worth 3 points each for a total of 33 = 30 cum laude.

Lectures. The teaching uses materials loaded on the Moodle University platform that are made available to students before the lectures and which are discussed and commented in the classroom.

Italian

ATTENTION:
The course is dedicated to students (with surnames starting from A to L) who have in their syllabus the course of Greek History FT0252 (12 CFU) for all Bachelor's Degree Programmes.

written

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Poverty and inequalities" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development