From as early as the Bronze Age, ancient cities sent out hundreds of colonies, an important legacy preserved in literature and other historical sources. This course asks students to explore colonization in the ancient Mediterranean as a focal point to consider the relationship between history and literature, one of the fundamental considerations of historical research of the ancient world. The course will focus on Greece and/or Rome and may also include discussions of Egypt, the cities of the Levant and/or the Near East. Readings may include epic poetry and drama such as Homer’s Odyssey, Euripides’ Trojan Women, and  Vergil’s Aeneid, as well as the work of ancient historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides may be supplemented with inscriptions and archaeology. Students will also be asked  to engage with scholarly articles that may focus on literature, history, and/or archaeology.

Colonization was linked to a contact between diverse populations, cultural syncretism, resource extraction, and the displacement of populations. The legacy of this diverse array of historical processes plays a major role in the literature produced by ancient Mediterranean societies and in the historical record that they left behind. This course asks students to explore these interrelated concepts across the cultures and to use them as a focal point to consider the relationship between history and literature. The study of the ancient world is one in which the lines between literary and historical accounts blur and overlap. The ability to critically analyse a variety of source types in conversation is one of the key skills that students must acquire in order to study the history of the ancient Mediterranean.

This class will focus on the Greek east. Throughout the course, the students are introduced to the colonization practices of Egypt and the Near East in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of Greek colonization practices in their multi-cultural Mediterranean background. The course spans from the archaic period to the Hellenistic and a last class on Rome uses the Aeneid as a lens into the legacy of Greek literature and history of colonization in the west. Although it does not delve into Roman history, students will be prepared to spend a last week on the Aeneid due to previous studies of the Odyssey and the history of the Greek colonization of Sicily and Magna Graecia.

Schedule

Week 1: Introduction and theory

Class One:

Introduction to the course

Review of the syllabus

Class Two:

The Eastern Mediterranean: Peoples on the move from the Bronze Age to Alexander

Readings:

Malkin, I.” Postcolonial Concepts and Ancient Greek Colonization” Modern Language Quarterly 65:3 (September 2004): 341–64.

Week 2: What is Ancient Colonization?

Class 1: Archaic Greek Colonization

Readings:

Antonaccio, C. “Colonization: Greece on the Move: 900-480 BCE” In Cambridge Companion to Archaic Greece: 201-224

Class 2: East and West

Readings:

Burstein, S.M. “The Greek Cities of the Black Sea” In A Companion to the Classical Greek World, 2006:137-152

Lomas, K. “Beyond Magna Graecia: Greeks and Non-Greeks in France, Spain and Italy” In A Companion to the Classical Greek World, 2006:174-196d

Week 3: Delphi

Class 1:

Readings:

Malkin, I. “Delphoi and the founding of social order in archaic Greece” In Mètis, vol. 4, n°1, 1989: 129-153

Class 2:

Readings:

-Doughty, C. The Poetics of Colonization: From text to city in Archaic Greece, Chapter 1-2

Week 4: Founders and Nostoi

Class 1:

Readings:

Doughty, C. The Poetics of Colonization: From text to city in Archaic Greece, Chapter 3-4

 Foundation Decree of Cyrene

Class Two:   

Readings:

Hall, J. “Foundation Stories” In An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas, Volume Two. Brill 2008: 383-246.

Week 5: Sicily

Short Response Paper Due

Class One: Magna Graecia and Sicily

Readings:

Funke, P. “Western Greece (Magna Graecia)” In A Companion to the Classical Greek World, 2006: 154-173.

Class Two: Sicily

Readings:

Malkin, I. Returns of Odysseus. Introduction and Chapter 1.

Homer, Odyssey, Book 9

Week 6: The Near East

Class One: Reframing the Narrative

Readings: Assyria

Rollinger, R. “The Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond: The Relations between the Worlds of the “Greek” and “Non-Greek Civilizations” In A Companion to the Classical Greek World, 2006: 197-226.

Ragner, K. “Mass Deportations” here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/sargon/essentials/governors/massdeportation/

Taylor, J. “The Standard Inscription” here:

https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/nimrud/livesofobjects/standardinscription/index.html

Ashirnasirpal’s “Standard Inscription”  here: https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/riao/Q004455

Psalm 137 here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%20137&version=NIV

Class Two:  The Persians

Readings:

-Sekunda, N. V. “Achaemenid colonization in Lydia” Revue des Études Anciennes. 87. 1-2. (1986): 7-30.

-Herodotus (selections)

-Video:  Colburn, H. “Achaemenid Egypt: The Archaeology of a Colonial   Encounter” here

Week 7: The Athenian Empire

Class One:

The class will be divided into groups. Each group will read the assigned article and summarize it for the class in a 10 minute presentation. Each group must provide the historical background for each article (specific terminology, specific places/events) as necessary for comprehension by the class. As a group, you must generate discussion questions based on your case for a final conversation as a class.

Readings:

         Everyone:

Thucydides (selections)

1)    Moreno, A. ‘The Attic neighbour’: the cleruchy in the Athenian empire” John Ma, Nikolaos Papazarkadas, Robert Parker, Interpreting the Athenian Empire. London: Duckworth, 2009: 212-225

2)    Brock, R. “Did the Athenian empire promote democracy?” John Ma, Nikolaos Papazarkadas, Robert Parker, Interpreting the Athenian Empire. London: Duckworth, 2009: 149-166

3)    Raaflaub, K.A. “Learning from the enemy: Athens and Persian ‘instruments of Empire’ John Ma, Nikolaos Papazarkadas, Robert Parker, Interpreting the Athenian Empire. London: Duckworth, 2009:

Class Two: Approaches to historical inquiry in Classics

         In-class research and writing project

         Readings:

-Thucydides, 5.17 (The Melian Dialogue)

-Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes

-Bakewell, G. “Seven Against Thebes, City laments and Athenian history” 106-126

Week 8: The Hellenistic World

Class One: Introduction to Alexander

Readings:

Gruen, E. “Greeks and Non-Greeks” in the Cambridge Companion to the Hellenistic World, 2007: 295-314.

Class Two: Hellenistic Colonization and Urbanism

Readings:

Reger, G. “City foundations and urbanism in the Hellenistic world” In A Companion to Cities in the Greco-Roman World, 2024.        

Week 9: Hellenistic Asia

Class One: The Seleucids

Readings:

Austin, A. “The Seleucids and Asia” in A Companion to the Hellenistic World. 2005

Class Two: Bactria

Readings:

Mairs, R. “Greek Identity and the Settler Community in Hellenistic Bactria and Arachosia”

Bernard, P. “Ai-Khanoum: An Ancient Greek City in Central Asia.” In Scientific America, 1982, 148-159.

Week 10:  Roman Colonies, Greek Precedents

Annotated Bibliography Due

Class 1: Greek Models and Roman Colonization Myth     

Readings:

Vergil, Aeneid, Books 3-6

Horsfall, N. “Aeneas the Colonist”

Class 2:

Vergil, Aeneid, Books 7-8

Fletch, KFB. “Setting the Colonization Narrative in Motion” in Finding Italy: Travel, Nation and Colonization in Vergil's 'Aeneid'. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014: 81-140

Week 11

Research presentations and discussion

Week 12

Research presentations and discussion

Week 13

Research presentations and discussion

Week 14: