This week, I’m doing another course with Academus (I did an Ancient Greek one last week), this time on classical studies. I got to choose four different modules, not including the evening lectures, so I chose Latin Literature, Roman History, Mythology and Classical Culture.
Monday
I started off doing this course with my sister Matilda next to me, but she got bored and left! In fairness, the first lesson on Mythology was quite dull. There are two teachers; one seems to know what he’s talking about (he did one of the lectures in my Greek course last week!), and the other doesn’t. She’s only in the first year of her degree and I personally don’t think she’s qualified enough to be hosting a whole course on Ancient Greek mythology! Either way, we learnt about the Olympians, and for all the teachers were quite dry I did enjoy learning about the actual Greek stuff!
My Latin Literature lesson though… well! The professor is certainly very interesting. He’s a bit weird, and very overly enthusiastic to the point where it’s just quite funny listening to him, but he teaches the subject well and I do enjoy it! We were doing Livy today, whose works I haven’t read yet but our teacher really inspired me to find them and read more about Livy’s histories of Rome.
Livy’s real name was Titus Livius, and he born in Patavium to an affluent family. He had connections with very high-up people and even knew Emperor Augustus. His only surviving work is the Ab Urbe Condita, which is a huge history of Rome from the arrival of Aeneas after the fall of Troy to the Augustan Age in which Livy wrote the vast chronicle. For all its size, many volumes of Ab Urbe Condita are still lost today.
There was some confusion over the timetable as the wrong one had been sent out to the wrong people! But the Academus people soon got things sorted and I only had to miss the first half-hour of my Roman History lesson before they got the right timetable out to everyone 😕 Our History lesson was on the Punic Wars, which were a series of wars between the Carthaginians and the Romans over control of Sicily. The Second Punic War is perhaps the most well-known as it is then that Hannibal crossed the Alps with his many elephants – though he still ended up losing the various battles he fought in. In the Third Punic War, Rome completely destroyed Carthage, sacking and burning down the city to round off a decisive Roman victory.
After lunch, I had a Classical Culture lesson with a lady who’s probably my favourite teacher out of all the ones I’ve had! She’s very enthusiastic about her subject and isn’t boring or unqualified like some of my other tutors have been. She taught us today about classical art, a term which originated in the 17th century and is used to describe typically Ancient Greek and Roman artworks. We discussed Mycenean influences in classical art, and also those of Archaic Greece, which saw the first Olympic Games and consequently led to an increase in majestic statues of athletes and champions. But classical art mainly flourished in the Classical Period of 480-323 BCE, which was the Golden Age of philosophy and art and Ancient Greece as a whole. Philosophers from this period believed that art was an imitation of nature, aspiring to beauty and goodness, and should be brought into the Greek education system. Painters and sculptors thrived under the new reception and appreciation of their artwork, subsequently leaving us with the beautiful works that we most commonly associate with classical art today.
Tuesday
In our Mythology lesson today, we looked at heroes. The tutors decided to merge the junior and senior classes for the week, which basically means that everything is really dumbed-down and silly so that the juniors can understand! So we didn’t really cover anything particularly interesting; they talked about Cadmus, who went searching for the abducted Europa, and a few others that I had already heard about. They didn’t really give much of an opinion or analysis on any of it and basically it was just very dull!
In Latin Literature this morning, we did Catallus and other Roman love poetry. We spent a lot of the lesson talking about love and marriage in Ancient Roman society, and how the two often did not equate to the same thing. Women would be married off to grant her family financial status or a better social reputation (i.e., she would be married to a wealthy and well-regarded man in society).
Love poetry would most often be written by a man about a woman whom he was unable to see frequently, so it often surrounded an adulterous relationship between a man and an already married woman. The pretty much non-existent relationship between love and marriage was something that love poets often touched on, or seemed to strive for.
Catallus’ poems mainly centred on his affair with a woman called Lesbia. He went through periods of loving and hating this Lesbia, which makes for an interesting and slightly amusing set of poetry. This led to his rather remarkable talent when it came to invective poetry, or poems that were simply insults directed at people hated by the poet – in Catallus’ case, one of the victims of his invective poetry was Julius Caesar himself.
After Latin Literature, I had a lesson on Roman History, in which we were doing Roman Religion. I already knew a fair bit about this topic, and a lot of it was actually quiet simple and there wasn’t much to talk about; really, she just listed all the deities in Roman religion and then we all talked about our favourite god/goddess. It was a bit silly to be honest!
After history, I had my second lesson on Classical Culture, in which we learnt about Greeks and barbarians. In modern culture, we tend to think of barbarians as uncivilised savages, but in Ancient Greek culture it was quite the opposite: it simply meant not Greek, or a foreigner, or simply other.
Scientists and psychologists have long researched the concept of the need for an other; an other not only identifies someone else, but oneself as well. Perhaps there being barbarians in Greek culture can be read as a need for barbarians on the Greeks’ part. Perhaps – as my teacher suggested (though I’m not so sure!) – the Ancient Greeks used barbarians as a method of making themselves feel more superior, as they were able to compare their own inventions and ideas with those of the barbarians, who comparatively didn’t have many. But the ‘other’ to the Greeks didn’t have to just be barbarians. They used monsters, mythical creatures and even deities as their other.
Wednesday
This morning’s mythology lesson was about monsters in mythology. Again, the junior and senior classes were merged, so it was really easy and quite dull. However, there was a chance for everyone to think of every monster they knew – both from antiquity and modern times – and it was quite interesting to see what everyone thought. I’m currently reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, so I suggested Frankenstein’s monster and Grendel from Beowulf.
In Latin Literature, we learnt about Cicero. We talked more about him as a person and his history and lifetime than his actual works. He was best known as a consul of Rome who wrote many speeches ranging from moving ones to plain amusing ones. A major event in his life was a large conspiracy to overthrow his consulship and kill many nobles including Cicero; however, he was warned of this by his bodyguards and the attack was stopped. While Caesar wanted the conspirators to simply be imprisoned, Cicero demanded the death penalty for all of them. The conspirators were executed without a proper trial, which would eventually come back to bite Cicero years later.
This morning’s Roman History lesson was on Roman social life, so we learnt about the patronage system and the role of mothers, fathers and slaves. Again, I already knew quite a bit of this stuff which I already knew quite a bit of from doing some Massolit and reading. However, I hadn’t heard of the satirical Roman writer Patronius. It was a hilarious passage about a freedman who had become very vulgar and disgusting and was greatly abusing the power which came with his freedom.
However, reading about and discussing the extract took a lot longer than it needed. I imagine this is what it’s like in school – spending fifty minutes talking about something that could have been touched on in five! But it was still interesting to read some more ancient texts.
In Classical Culture, we learnt about Alexander the Great, one of my favourite figures in history. His father was Philip II, king of Macedon, and his mother was the daughter of Neoptolemus, a king of Egypt. She was most commonly called Olympias, but she changed her name several times, which perhaps indicates her involvement in some kind of cult.
In 357 BCE, Alexander’s father married his mother, and a year later Alexander was born in Pella. When he was ten years old, he (according to legend) tamed the horse Bucephalus by realising what the horse was afraid of: his own shadow. In 343 BCE, Alexander began his education under Aristotle, and in 338 BCE at just eighteen years old he commanded a flank in the Battle of Chaeronea, ensuring Macedonian victory. In 336, Philip II was assassinated and Alexander succeeded the throne at age 20. One of his first campaigns was to completely destroy Thebes; he then won many battles against Darius, expanding his already huge empire even more, and then famously burnt and sacked Persepolis.
The lecture tonight was on decolonisation, and it was given by two UCL undergraduates called The Classicists of Colour. They annoyed me beyond expression. They didn’t argue their points well; they had no evidence to support their claims; and they made hugely unsupported and unexplained statements such as “the racist scholars of the 1800s who excavated X” and “the reign of white supremacy in Western countries today.” For example, one of the students showed us a poll taken from the Classicists of Colour Instagram account which showed that such-and-such overwhelming majority who believed that classics needs to be decolonised, among other things. But… this is their Instagram account. The people following their account and voting in their polls are going to already agree with their ideology, or they wouldn’t be following them! They should have put the survey on some kind of public group that wasn’t specifically set up for people who want to decolonise classics.
Thursday
In Mythology this morning, we were talking about the political uses of myth in the Ancient World. I was looking forward to this as I thought it would be much more challenging and interesting, but sadly it wasn’t. The beginning focused on Greek politics, specifically systems such as oligarchies, monarchies and democracies, but the rest was mainly just activities such as anagrams on key words, etc. I’m very annoyed that they merged the junior and senior classes; I think that the senior one was going to be taught by Myles, so we wouldn’t have had that annoying woman and all those silly activities.
In Latin Literature, we were doing Virgil and the Aeneid. I haven’t read the Aeneid so unfortunately a lot of the things that he said went completely over my head! However, I could easily understand everything he was saying about Virgil’s personal lifetime. He was born in northern Italy in 70 BCE; his father was a freedman turned potter; and Virgil originally studied Law before becoming a poet. He was famous for not only the posthumously published Aeneid, but also the Eclogues, a collection of works about a utopian world in which farming and economics flourish and political figures are ideal. He also wrote the Georgics in 29 BCE, which was a didactic poem on farming. A didactic poem is a non-fiction work designed to teach someone something; I noticed how ‘didactic’ must come from ‘didasko’, the Greek word for ‘I teach’!
In Roman History this morning, we learnt about the geography and infrastructure of the Roman Empire, in which we talked about engineering feats such as aqueducts, the Colosseum, roads, coins and metals. Then we did some activities like anagrams and things which was a bit silly, but I guess she had to make something up as we got through her lesson too fast!
After lunch, I had my penultimate lesson Classical Culture, which was on gender in the Ancient World. I was kind of expecting this to be some kind of big “woke” thing but really she was just talking about the role of women and men in history and literature. She did make a few comments at the beginning such as, “Nowadays, we think of the two biological sexes as being male or female; but gender is a social construct, and we now view it as a diverse spectrum.” But apart from that, she didn’t really touch on any kind of crazy woke stuff!
We discussed how women in Ancient Greek society were often depicted in literature and artwork as being submissive, docile housewives who weren’t allowed to vote or even make their opinions known at all. They had far fewer rights than men, and had to live up to men’s expectations nonetheless. After looking at various different sources, we saw that oftentimes the men couldn’t even make their minds up on what these expectations were exactly, so we saw a lot of contradiction in Greek law relating to women’s rights that some of the less easily intimidated women would often take advantage of! We also talked about Artemis, the goddess of virginity and hunting, and how her personality didn’t at all conform to the expected character of an Ancient Greek woman. Women in antiquity were not allowed to have adventures, as it were; Artemis was nothing but an adventure. Women were not skilled in hunting or shooting arrows and would never have dreamt of dirtying their dresses in the woods; Artemis was the very opposite. She was probably seen as a role model for some Greek women, though they would never have been allowed to live out their adventurous aspirations.
Friday
This was my last day doing the Senior Classics course! I started off the morning with my Mythology lesson, which was sadly really quite dull as they were looking into things like the Nike and Starbucks logo, and doing ‘guess the logo’ quizzes, looking at the Percy Jackson books and various video games and that sort of thing. Unfortunately I learnt nothing in this lesson! :/
Afterwards, I had Latin Literature with my weirdest teacher, in which we were looking at Ovid and his Metamorphoses. Ovid lived from 43 BC – 17 AD, and was famous for not only the Metamorphoses but also the Fasti, Ars Armatoria, Heroides. During his lifetime he was exiled by Alexander for unknown reasons, though Ovid claimed that it was due to ‘a poem and a mistake.’ The Metamorphoses, as the name suggests, describes a series of stories about physical changes, from girls into spiders to nymphs into trees. We read some extracts from Ovid about Arachne & Athene and Apollo & Daphne and then discussed how we thought they were portrayed, etc.
In the afternoon, I had a certainly very interesting lesson on “the representation of LGBTQ+ in the Ancient World”. Though the teacher seemed very open-minded to the idea that some people would disagree with her, she did make sure to put out a quick disclaimer saying that anyone who ‘offended anyone else’ would be removed from the course! That didn’t stop me from politely asking at the end why exactly “LGBTQ+ people” needed to be represented in antiquity (as she was claiming that it did); can LGBTQ+ people only enjoy a piece of literature and artwork if it contains other LGBTQ+ people in it? She actually said that she agreed that it didn’t need to be represented but that it’s “comforting” to know that there were LGBTQ+ people in those times. 🤨
In the lesson, she talked about Artemis and how her chastity must apparently show that she is asexual; that various figures throughout mythology, artwork and literature must be either gay or bisexual; and that although little evidence claims that Sappho or many other individuals throughout antiquity were lesbian, our teacher thinks that she was because “that would be nice.” While for some of the time she did have a point, other moments were just plain laughable and I struggled to see how the wild conclusions she was jumping to could have been made in seriousness.
Overall, I did quite enjoy this course. The Mythology lessons were my least favourite, simply because they merged the two classes, making everything a lot easier and more dumbed down, and also the teaching quality. While the man was quite good, the woman clearly knew nothing about the subject. She just read off text-packed slides, pronouncing things wrong, talking about gods and heroes and myths in a way that made it obvious that this was the first time she’d ever heard of them! Which isn’t exactly what you’d expect from someone who’s apparently studying a Masters in Mythology at the University of Nottingham. The other subjects were all expertly taught, but the whole course in itself seemed to be quite disorganised; there was that huge timetable mix-up, no one knew where they were supposed to be going, emails weren’t sent out until a couple of hours before it all started, and everything was just very hectic on the first day.
Though I found much of the content very interesting, I don’t think I would’ve liked to continue on another course that follows on. Maybe that’s because I just did a Greek week, so I’m a bit sick of them now. I know a lot of the people who were on the Greek course with me weren’t able to do the classics one because they were away on a residential, in-person camp; maybe that’s something that would be more interesting than staring at a virtual teacher for hours and hours every day for a week.
Overall, I give this course 3 out of 5 stars!