Classics

Classics at Cambridge is the study of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds in their full richness: their languages, literatures, histories, philosophies, art, and archaeology. It is one of the oldest of all university subjects and one of the most intellectually demanding, requiring you to engage with primary texts in Latin and Greek, to think across the full breadth of ancient culture, and to bring to bear the methodological resources of history, philosophy, literary criticism, and material culture studies. The ancient world is the foundation on which European intellectual and cultural life was built, and studying it directly in the original languages is a distinctive and irreplaceable experience.

The four-year course at Cambridge is designed for students who have little or no experience of Latin. If you come without A-level Latin or equivalent, the first year brings your language skills up to the standard needed to engage with the main course, which covers both Latin and Greek language and literature, ancient history, ancient philosophy, classical archaeology, and the reception and influence of classical antiquity in later periods. The typical entry tariff of 200 points reflects Cambridge's extremely competitive admissions.

The tutorial and supervision system means your learning is close, rigorous, and individualised in a way that is distinctive to Oxford and Cambridge.

Classics graduates are among the most valued in the graduate employment market across many fields, precisely because the combination of linguistic precision, interpretive sophistication, and wide cultural knowledge the degree develops is unusual and transferable. Law, finance, consulting, the civil service, journalism, publishing, and academia are all well-populated with classics graduates. Postgraduate study in classics, ancient history, philosophy, or archaeology is a natural route for those with academic ambitions.

The depth of intellectual formation that four years of Cambridge Classics provides is difficult to replicate in any other programme.