Greek

The Classics Department at Carthage offers courses in Ancient Greek, from elementary Greek to advanced Greek prose and poetry.

Greek was the language of Homer's great epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, Herodotus and Thucydides, Plato and Aristotle. From its earliest beginnings in ancient Greek and through the Byzantine Empire (The Roman East), people spoke, argued and wrote in Greek in many parts of the ancient Mediterranean world, from Southern Italy and Sicily to Greece and throughout the Middle East.

Modern Greek is a direct descendent of ancient Greek. Many words in Latin actually derive from Greek and are have found their way into English.

The study of Greek opens a window onto some greatest works of western literature, philosophy, history, rhetoric, math, science and theology ever written, and offers a special insight into the minds that produced them: an ability to enter into unmediated conversation with Plato or Sophocles or Thucydides or the Greek New Testament. Educated Romans were bilingual; they spoke both Latin and Greek. Greek allows us to understand the language and culture of a different world, and thus our own.

The discipline and analytical skills acquired in the study of Greek, as well as the knowledge of the roots of words, help students to excel on tests such as the GRE, LSAT and MCAT. And students of Greek and the Classics have been successful in a variety of fields, such as:

Ted Turner, founder of CNN and TBS
Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993
James Baker, former Secretary of State
J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter novels
Teller, of Penn & Teller

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Classicist digs into lifestyles of the (ancient) rich and famous in Rome. Read more.