Department of Classics

Classics is the original interdisciplinary academic field at the heart both of European/western civilization and today’s Liberal Arts education. We teach and research the languages (Greek, Latin), literature, history, philosophy, science, art, and material culture that survive from the worlds of ancient Greece, Rome, and Late Antiquity. Through archaeology and art history we investigate and analyze the material record and environment of these civilizations and their neighbors – accessing a past beyond the texts of the elite and their mostly male voices to explore fully this world from top to bottom.

Classics Resources

Undergraduate Program Bridge M.A. in Classics Ph.D. Program Classics Faculty

News from Classics

Statistical analysis aims to solve Greek volcano mystery

9/20/2022

Sturt Manning has zeroed in on a much narrower range of dates, approximately 1609–1560 BCE, for the eruption on Santorini, a pivotal event in the prehistory of the region.

Archaeological conference expands discussion beyond colonial roots

9/19/2022

'We saw this conference as a way to expand the conversation beyond Cornell.'

Lectures to unearth stories ‘that don’t get told’ in classical scholarship

9/01/2022

Oxford scholar Constanze Güthenke will bring to light untold stories of classical scholarship during the 2022 Townsend Lectures Sept. 7, 9, and 12.

The Great Separation: Why American Politics Is Coming Apart at the Seams

8/29/2022

Megan McArdle, opinion columnist for the Washington Post, will discuss increasingly divided American life and politics in a Sept. 14 lecture.

A&S opens application portal for Klarman postdoc fellowships

8/23/2022

Klarman Fellows pursue research in any discipline in the College, including natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and the creative arts as well as cross-disciplinary fields. The application deadline is October 14.

Academic boot camp boosts veterans’ higher ed mission

8/11/2022

Professors in physics and classics contributed to the Warrior-Scholar Project (WSP) hosted at Cornell for military veterans July 23 to Aug. 6.

Ice Age human footprints discovered in Utah desert

7/26/2022

Altogether 88 footprints were documented, including both adults and children, offering insight into family life in the time of the Pleistocene.

NATO decision on Finland, Sweden strong on paper, future unclear

6/29/2022

With NATO formally inviting Finland and Sweden to join its alliance after Turkey dropped its objections, classics and history professor Barry Strauss comments that history is full of alliances that amounted to little.

Classics is about learning Latin and Greek

Neither language is spoken today, but hundreds of world-historical masterpieces were written in those two languages. Ancient Greek is the key that unlocks Homer, philosophy, tragedy, comedy, history, particle physics, and half the Bible. Latin is the key that unlocks epic poetry, stage drama, fables, rhetoric, law, and the reawakening of the West in the Renaissance. The two languages together allow you to observe, like a firsthand witness, the downhill slide of Rome’s thousand-year civilization from an American-style democracy to an authoritarian empire. Studying them, and the voices of the women and men who spoke them, reveals more than just the mindset of a people that built the Coliseum and the catacombs. Those voices also reveal the foundations of the modern world order—from secular humanism to religious orthodoxy. They’re also a lot of fun!

A students poses in a small pit of an archaeological dig

Classics beyond the classroom

Classics doesn’t just involve learning your Latin principal parts (important though they are!). Our students and faculty engage with the Greco-Roman world in multiple ways, whether speaking “living Latin” in Rome, taking part in archaeological digs or traveling seminars to Europe, curating exhibitions, or putting on performances of ancient plays. From experiments with ancient technology to the use of myth in contemporary art, we celebrate and explore the enduring relevance and reinvention of the Classical past within the 21st century.