King's College London

This Ancient History BA allows you to explore a wide range of diverse periods, places, and cultures thanks to a broad syllabus that gives you the freedom to follow your interests. As well as history you could also choose to study topics in literature, art, archaeology, and philosophy, and learn ancient languages. Your studies can cover a vast geographical area, from Roman Britain to the Black Sea, Persia, and North Africa.

You’ll also learn how to work with primary and documentary sources, such as literary texts, and ancient inscriptions. This will help you to engage with the various types of history you’ll encounter, including social, cultural, political, military, economic, and religious history, and to scrutinise current debates in scholarship.

You’ll join the best department for Classics research in the UK (REF 2021) and benefit from a unique range of teaching from the Bronze Age to Modern Greece. And you’ll get to build your experience beyond your ancient history course with a wealth of extracurricular opportunities that can include an expenses-paid field trip to an ancient site in the Mediterranean and an active Classics Society.

This Ancient History BA degree offers a broad curriculum. This gives you the freedom to explore your interests, with modules ranging from earliest Greece, Rome and beyond to the impact of antiquity on the modern world. You can stretch your studies across a vast geographical area, from Roman Britain to the Black Sea, Persia and North Africa, and cover other topics including literature, art, archaeology and philosophy alongside history.

Your ancient history degree will start with a required module that covers the period from 1200 BC to AD 600. Designed to give you a foundation in ancient history, this module will introduce you to the subject and give you a taste of what you could research further during your course.

During this required module, you will begin to study ancient history by looking across three continents, from the fall of Bronze Age empires to the formation of the classical Greek world, the rise of the Roman Empire and its influence after its fall. You will also acquaint yourself with the textual and material evidence on which this history is based and examine recent interpretations of the period.

The rest of the first year of your degree will be decided by your optional modules. You’ll choose from introductory modules that will familiarise you with topics such as art and archaeology in Greece and Rome, Greek and Latin literature and thought, and the reception of the Greek world in later periods.

You’ll also have the opportunity to study an ancient language as part of your Ancient History BA. It’s possible to start Ancient Greek or Latin or when available Hittite as a total beginner or to continue your previous study of Ancient Greek or Latin at an intermediate or advanced level. If you don’t want to learn an ancient language, you’ll be able to study in translation.

The second and third years of your Ancient History BA will be split in half. Each year, you’ll choose at least 50% of your modules from a list of ancient history subjects and the rest from a wider list of optional modules.

During the second year, you could choose ancient history modules that specialise in ancient Greece, for example examining the early period from Troy to Marathon, democracy, empire, and war or Hellenistic art. You might prefer to centre your second-year studies on Rome, for example with modules exploring the fall of the Roman Republic, Pompeii, Roman Britain and Constantinople. It’s also possible to develop a broader understanding of ancient history with the study of worlds beyond Greece and Rome, like ancient Western Asia.

In the third year of your Ancient History BA you will specialise further. Your varied history options might range from Persian kings and their territories during the Achaemenid Empire, the world of Herodotus, and Alexander the Great. You could investigate more closely the classical art of the body, Rome in the age of Cicero, the power and propaganda of Augustus or pagans, Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire.

The remainder of your second and third years will be spent on optional modules from all areas of classics. As well as being able to take further history modules, you can choose whether to take modules in archaeology, art history, philosophy, literature, and the influence of the ancient world on later cultures. If you wish you can also continue with ancient languages including Greek, Latin, and Hittite. It’s also possible to take optional modules from another department to complement your ancient history studies.

In the third year if you wish you can also write a dissertation on a research topic of your own choice, for which you’ll receive individual supervision from a member of staff in the department.

There are many ways to enhance your education beyond your ancient history course. For example, you could travel on an expenses-paid field trip to ancient sites in the Mediterranean during your second or third year. You could boost your CV by volunteering with the Iris Project and helping to promote Latin teaching in disadvantaged primary schools.

Other extracurricular activities include the King’s Greek Play, performed every year since 1953, and involvement in the Classics Society with its lectures, theatre outings, private museum tours, international trips, and more.

And if you want to study abroad, you’ll get the opportunity to do so during the second semester of your second year with partner universities in the US, Australia, and New Zealand.