King's College London

This BA in Classics and the Ancient World will empower you to take the burning questions of today and apply them to some of the most celebrated and debated cultures of ancient Europe, Asia, and North Africa.

You’ll get to explore themes such as people versus elites, minority rights, sexual diversity and gender politics, empire and multiculturalism, ethnicity and race, religious identity and experience, consensus and conflict, art, philosophy, the meaning of justice, and much more.

Thanks to a curriculum built entirely with multidisciplinary optional modules, you’ll be free to follow your own interests as you study Classics within the broader context of the ancient world, whether that’s through literature, philosophy, history, archaeology, global and social issues, politics, art, culture, and beyond.

You don’t have to learn Ancient Greek and Latin during this Classics degree, but an optional accelerated language route is available. If you have previous Ancient Greek and Latin experience, you can also continue to develop this during your studies.

This Classics and the Ancient World BA is an exciting Classics degree that will teach you the skills and knowledge to apply contemporary questions to ancient cultures.

You’ll get the space to explore Greece and Rome, Persia, the Near East and North Africa, as well as the influence of the ancient world on later history and culture, including the contemporary world.

You also get to decide whether you want to learn an ancient language or to study ancient sources in translation.

If you decide to learn Ancient Greek or Latin, you can either start as a beginner, with the possibility to join the accelerated language pathway at the end of your first year, reaching an advanced level in both Ancient Greek and Latin by the end of your final year, or continue your ancient language studies at an intermediate or advanced level, You may also have the option to learn other ancient languages, such as Hittite, during your degree.

There are no compulsory modules if you don’t choose the accelerated language route. This gives you the freedom to follow your interests and shape your own curriculum with a series of multidisciplinary modules.

The first year of your Classics and Ancient World degree is designed to give you a general background to the subject, with more advanced modules in later years that allow you to focus further and specialise your studies.


You may choose to start your Classics and the Ancient World BA with an introduction to ancient history. You could also select modules that introduce you to the art and archaeology of Greece and Rome, the Byzantine world, Greek and Latin literature and thought, or how the Hellenic world has been received and interpreted from antiquity to today.

The second year of your degree could see you tackling, for example, early Greece, the ancient history of western Asia, or Athenian democracy of the classical era in historical modules. You may also choose to explore the fall of the Roman Republic, the rise of imperial Rome as a superpower, or the society and history of Pompeii, among other topics.

At the same time, you could also select literature modules that explore in depth the great epic poems of classical antiquity, for example, or ancient theatre, or less known literary forms like the ancient novel or love poetry. You could also discover the role of myth in ancient thought, the development of philosophical thought in classical Greece, the cultural dimensions of ancient sexuality, or female voices in Greek and Latin literature.

In archaeology and art history, you could study the material remains and imagery of the Greek symposium, the world of spectacle in the Roman Empire, Roman Britain, or medieval Constantinople.

Your final year of this Classics and The Ancient World BA offers a wide range of modules across various topics. In historical terms, for example, you could consider ancient Persia and Alexander the Great, or learn more about Rome in the age of Cicero or the power and propaganda of Augustus. You could also expand on your interests in art and archaeology by delving into Greek sculpture, the frontiers of the Roman Empire, or medieval Venice. At the same time you could continue your explorations in ancient literature and thought, by studying the performative contexts of literature in antiquity, the culture of Neronian Rome, the everyday city in classical texts, ancient political philosophy and much more. You can investigate the echoes of antiquity for later cultures in modules on Black Classicisms and the uses of the past in the modern Greek world.

While not compulsory, you will also have the opportunity to complete a research project in the form of a dissertation in your third year. You will be able to design a topic of your choice to research under one-to-one supervision from a member of staff in the department.

There are plenty of extracurricular activities to enhance your classical studies, ranging from an expenses-paid field trip in a classical land to volunteering opportunities with the Iris Project, which promotes teaching Latin in disadvantaged primary schools.

You could also join the student-run Classics Society, which publishes the Satyrica newsletter and organises regular lectures, theatre outings, themed parties, private tours around museums and nights out. They’ve even arranged trips abroad, with recent group expeditions to Italy and Turkey.

Students of this Classics degree can also participate in the King’s Greek Play. It creatively combines lines in English and Ancient Greek and has brought playwrights from Aeschylus to Aristophanes to the stage since 1953.