Technology:

Lectures will be given live and also made available on Echo360. Visual materials used in lectures will be made available as PDF files on iLearn. Brief bibliographies, lists of people, places and technical terms will be made available for each lecture as PDF files on iLearn.

Tutorials will be held for Internal students; for External students there will be regular postings on iLearn and discussion on the Online Forum.

Lectures and Tutorials:

Lecture times: Tuesday 4pm, W5AT1; Wednesday 2pm, E7BT4

Tutorial times: Wednesday 10am, C5A232; Wednesday 12pm, W6B325, Wednesday 1pm, W6B325, Thursday 1pm, W6B320, Thursday 2pm, C4A320.

Changes since the last offering of this Unit:

The Unit was last offered in Semester 2, 2011. Since then the number of Short Papers has been reduced to one, and the balance of assessment altered to reflect this change (see Assessment Tasks).

Books you will need.

The three prescribed books for the Unit are

(1) Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander, the Penguin translation of A. de Selincourt;

(2) M.M. Austin, The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest, 2nd edition, Cambridge, 2006,

(3) G. Shipley, The Greek World after Alexander, Routledge, 2000.

The early tutorials will be based on Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander, and documents from M.M. Austin, The Hellenistic World. Students will need to begin working through Arrian at once. Later tutorials will be largely based on documents from Austin. This book is essential, and is supplemented by documents provided in the Tutorial Materials section, below.

Tutorial discussion will focus around the detailed examination of particular documents. All but three of these come from either Austin or Arrian. The others will be provided in the main Unit booklet. Students will need to work through the documents in detail before coming to the Tutorial, and in many cases do some wider reading as well. There is little point coming to the Tutorial without doing this reading. Our aim will be to explore issues raised by the documents in as much detail as possible.

If you are interested, further ancient sources can easily be purchased in Penguin translations; both Plutarch's Life of Alexander (in The Age of Alexander, trans. I. Scott-Kilvert) and Quintus Curtius Rufus, The History of Alexander (trans. J. Yardley) are available.

The other book recommended (but not required) is A.B. Bosworth's Conquest and Empire, (in my view) the best modern work on Alexander; if you are particularly interested in Alexander, it is the one to buy. All these should be available in the Co-op.

Other Material:

A PDF file of introductory material, Unit requirements, Weekly schedule, Tutorial questions and a full Unit Bibliography will be made available on iLearn. There is no need to print it out; in most cases only 2-3 pages per week will be needed in class.

Week 1, beginning Monday July 29th.

Lecture 1: Alexander the Great: his career and achievements.

Lecture 2: Alexander's motives: propaganda, mythology, wanderlust and logistics.

Tutorial:   Course structure and requirements. General discussion.

Week 2, beginning Monday August 5th.

Lecture 3: Three major interpretations of Alexander.

Lecture 4: Alexander the God?

Tutorial:    Austin 3 (Austin 4) and Arrian I.11 (compare briefly Arrian 7.8-9). Why did Alexander set out to invade Persian territory?

Week 3, beginning Monday August 12th.

Lecture 5: Alexander's Death, his Will and ‘Last Plans’.

Lecture 6: The succession crisis and the Diadochoi.

Tutorial:    Austin 3, 5, 6: Alexander's treatment of the cities.

Week 4, beginning Monday August 19th.

Lecture 7: The rise of Monarchy.

Lecture 8: Monarchy and Religion: the ruler cult.

Tutorial:   Austin 12: the Persian habit of prostration (proskynesis).

Week 5, beginning Monday August 26th.

Lecture 9:   The new institutions of the Hellenistic kings and the decline of democracy

Lecture 10: The Seleucid Kings

Tutorial:      Austin 17: The Marriages at Susa.

Week 6, beginning Monday September 2nd.

Lecture 11: The Ptolemies

Lecture 12: The Antigonids

Tutorial:     Austin 18: The ‘mutiny’ and banquet at Opis.

Week 7, beginning Monday September 9th.

Lecture 13: The Hellenistic Polis (1).

Lecture 14: The Hellenistic Polis (2)

Tutorial:     Documents on Kingship (Documents provided, and Austin 70 and 233).

BREAK

External On Campus Session, Saturday September 14th.

Week 8, beginning Monday September 30th.

N.B. Major Essays due.

Lecture 15: Hellenistic Art.

Lecture 16: Hellenistic Philosophy and Political Protest

Tutorial:     There is no tutorial this week.

Week 9, beginning Monday October 7th.

Lecture 17: The Hellenisation Process (1).

Lecture 18: The Hellenisation Process (2).

Tutorial:     Austin 144, 145, 146: Health and miraculous cures.

Week 10, beginning Monday October 14th.

Lecture 19: Anti-Hellenic Reaction in Egypt.

Lecture 20: Rome and the Greek States (1).

Tutorial:     Austin 208, 209: Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’.

Week 11, beginning Monday October 21st.

Lecture 21: Anti-Hellenic Reaction in Palestine.

Lecture 22: Rome and the Greek States (2).

Tutorial:     Egyptian nationalism: The ‘Potter's Oracle’ (provided).

Week 12, beginning Monday October 28th.

Lecture 23: Rome and the Greek states (3).

Lecture 24: Judaism, Hellenistic and other.

Tutorial:     Hellenised Judaism (Documents provided).

Week 13, beginning Monday November 4th.

Lecture 24: Hellenistic Religion.

Lecture 25: Hellenistic Religion, continued. Unit Summary.

Tutorial:     Austin 84: Flamininus and the ‘Freedom of the Greeks’.

The Examination Period begins on Monday November 11th. The date of the examination has not yet been set.

Extensions:

All deadlines are firm unless an extension has been requested before the due date. A penalty for lateness will apply unless a doctor's certificate is supplied. No written work (except the final short paper) will be accepted for assessment after the end of Week 13. 2% of credit will be deducted per day for assignments handed in late without an extension. If an assessment task is more than two (2) weeks late, and there is no special consideration, students will need the permission of the Unit convenor before submitting that task. Tasks more than two weeks late, without special consideration, will be marked on a Pass/Fail basis. 5% of credit will be deducted for assignments that exceed the word length by 10% or more. Assignments handed in early will not be marked and returned before the due date.

Always retain a copy of completed tasks in case of loss.

Completing the Unit

To compete the unit satisfactorily, students must listen to the lectures and reflect on them, do the set weekly reading(s), and participate in the online discussion in a manner which demonstrates they have done these things. They must submit all items of assessment, and hand in work which is formatted in accordance with Department of Ancient History guidelines, spell-checked, written in good English, and demonstrating both an understanding of the material in the lectures and readings, and independent reflection on the subject of the assessment.