Classics
The Classics papers are taught by the Faculty of Classics. The learning of Latin language and literature is central to the teaching you will receive, and is complemented by options to study ancient history, art and archaeology, linguistics, philosophy and post-Renaissance responses to classical antiquity.
The object of studying Classics is to put crucial questions to the test. What can we understand of human culture? What are civilised values? What achievements are of lasting significance? What kinds of arguments can be constructed on the basis of what kinds of evidence? What kinds of materials can provide us with evidence? What areas of human experience are hidden, or get hidden with time? In trying to see ancient experience for what it was, we discover again and again the hold which ancient categories, ideas, practices and institutions have over those which we have taken to be our own. Classics involves the study of the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology, linguistics and culture of the ancient world.
Preliminary Examination to Part I
In the first year the papers you will study are Latin translation with reading and language classes supporting your work, and Classical Questions covering art and archaeology, philosophy, history, and linguistics.
Part I
In your second year it is compulsory to study Passages for Translation from Latin Authors and Latin Literature. You will study authors such as Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Tacitus, Tibullus, Propertius, and Seneca, some of whom you will have come across in your first year. If you choose to take three Classics papers you can choose from options that include Philosophy, History and Philology.
Part II
If you choose to study Classics in your final year you can take up to two papers from those on offer as part of the final year (Part II) Classics options. which provides an extensive choice of topics including Apuleius Metamorphoses, Aristotle's Moral and Political Thought, Money in the Ancient World, Mediterranean Landscapes, The Classical Body, and The Latin Language: The Origins and Early History of Latin.
Classics Website
More information specific papers on offer can be found here.
Colleges that offer Education with Classics
Christ's, Churchill, Clare, Downing, Emmanuel, Fitzwilliam, Gonville and Caius, Homerton, Hughes Hall, Jesus, Lucy Cavendish, St Edmund's, St John's, Selwyn, Trinity Hall and Wolfson.