Greek/ History

Ancient Greek is one of the most intellectually demanding and rewarding languages a person can study, the language in which Homer composed the Iliad and the Odyssey, in which the Athenian tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides explored human suffering and moral complexity, in which Plato developed his philosophy and Thucydides his history of the Peloponnesian War. Pairing Greek with history gives you both the linguistic tools to engage with these texts in the original and the historical framework to understand the society that produced them.

At the University of Glasgow this four-year full-time programme includes a year abroad and offers considerable scope in the options you pursue across both disciplines. Glasgow's description of the Greek strand gives a vivid sense of what you will engage with: Homer and other Greek poets, Athenian tragedies and comedies, orators and historians, philosophers such as Plato, and the political, social, religious and artistic history of the ancient Greek world. Alongside this textual and cultural study, your history studies will develop your skills in research, source analysis and historical argument across a range of periods and geographical contexts, depending on the options you choose.

The skills developed through studying Greek are among the most rigorous available in a humanities degree: the precision required to translate accurately, the close attention to linguistic form and its implications for meaning, and the engagement with some of the most profound texts ever written all contribute to an unusual intellectual formation.

Graduates pursue careers in academic research, education, the civil service, law, journalism, publishing, heritage and cultural organisations. Many go on to postgraduate study in classics, ancient history, philosophy or related fields. The combination of Greek and history is also excellent preparation for postgraduate legal and professional training where the ability to reason carefully and write precisely is at a premium.