This course looks at Ancient Greco-Roman sport, spectacle entertainment and games; its origin in myth, its place in religious festivals, and the increasing institutional outlay on entertainment in the Roman empire. Areas of competition include: chariot, horse and foot-races, boxing, wrestling, dance, gladiatorial fights, beast-hunts, public executions and more. We will also consider leisure activities (swimming, hunting, board games), magic and curses, sport medicine and diet, and gambling. We close with the direct interaction of Christianity with Roman spectacle entertainment and the after-life of the games in this new world order.

The social, political, and cultural history of ancient Greece from ca.750 B.C. through the time of the Peloponnesian War (404 B.C.). Special attention is paid to the emergence of the distinctively Greek form of political organization, the city state, and to democracy, imperialism, social practices, and cultural developments. Emphasis is placed on study of the ancient sources, methods of source analysis, and historical reasoning.

What are the features of persuasive political speech? The reliance of democratic politics on memorable oratory stems from traditions dating back to ancient Greece and Rome which were revived in the modern era of parliamentary debates and stump speeches. This course will analyze the rhetorical structure of famous political speeches over time in a bid to better understand the potent mixture of aesthetics and ideology that characterizes political rhetoric, as well as the equally long tradition of regarding political rhetoric as insincere and unscrupulous. Students will try their hand at political speech-writing and oratory in class.