Instructor:
How we do know that there was a Socrates? Was there a fabled city of Troy or a Homer who wrote about it? When was Pompeii destroyed by a volcano and why is it still debated? These questions – and others! – will serve as the basis for an odyssey into the distant past. Throughout the course we will probe the fragmentary, if not often conflicting, nature of evidence from antiquity and deconstruct how scholars arrive at their conclusions. Every week we will examine a new series of topics through the lens of artifacts, paintings, and texts, each of which will help us to think critically about antiquity and how we reconstruct it.