Radar, AI identify Alaska Native Spanish flu victims burial site
The finding helps clarify the historical record for the Indigenous communities devastated by the 1918-19 pandemic.
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Accessing the past
Department of Classics
Classics is the original interdisciplinary academic field at the heart of both 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
Department of Classics Events
Apr
27
Goldwin Smith Hall
News from Classics
‘Destroy the Copy’: Essay collection rethinks the history of plaster casts
The destruction of replicated European sculpture collections can tell us as much as their creation.
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Support Arts & Sciences on Giving Day March 16
On Thursday, March 16, join the Cornell community to make a difference for students on Cornell Giving Day.
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Juniors selected for Caplan travel fellowships
Kim Montpelier ‘24, Austin Manning ‘24 and Shanzai Ikhlas ‘24 won fellowships through the classics department.
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Sparks and COIL facility contribute to new study about collapse of Hittite Empire
Arts College team combines capabilities of the Cornell Tree-Ring Laboratory and the Cornell Stable Isotope Laboratory, to scrutinize samples from Ankara, Türkiye. This interdisciplinary collaboration used tree ring and isotope records to pinpoint a likely cause of the collapse of the Hittite Empire:...
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The unexpected importance of the sea sponge in classical history
In the Society for the Humanities Invitational Lecture Feb. 15, art historian Verity Platt will present her research on the humble sea sponge.
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Humanities Impact Grant supports virtual modeling of Roman house and garden at Pompeii
The Society for the Humanities has recently awarded Caitlín Barrett a Humanities Impact Grant to support the 3D and virtual modeling of the Casa della Regina Carolina Project at Pompeii.
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A&S Klarman Fellows program renewed and expanded
Thanks to additional significant support from Seth Klarman ’79 and Beth Schultz Klarman, the Klarman Postdoctoral Fellowship program has been expanded to support 10 fellows per cohort.
Read MoreWhat is Classics?
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!
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.