Travel/Exploration:Antiquity

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Travel in the ancient world was a problem: travel by land was tedious and dangerous, and travel by sea took somewhat less time but was even more dangerous. The original traveler and explorer, Odysseus, demonstrates just how hard it could be to get where you were going. But he also represents how the world could be opened up through exploration, as he encounters new lands and different societies. In addition to the Odyssey, we will read Herodotus’s Histories, built upon the author’s travels within Europe, Asia, and North Africa, and accounts of travel and exploration during the campaigns of Alexander the Great and under the Roman Empire.