Ancient History syllabus, dot point by dot point

Art, architecture, technology, and the economic basis of Spartan society, including the Eurotas sanctuaries, the Spartan austerity ideal, the iron currency, and the role of the Helots and Perioikoi in the economy

What do art, architecture, technology, and the economy reveal about Spartan society?

Athens' relationships with other societies, including the transformation of the Delian League into the Athenian empire, Periclean imperial policy, and the causes of the Peloponnesian War; ancient and modern evaluations of Athenian democracy and empire, and the problems involved in using the available evidence

How did Athens' relationship with other Greek states change under Pericles, and how do historians evaluate Athenian democracy and empire given the problems of the surviving evidence?

Minoan relations with and influence on the wider Aegean world, including the 'Minoanisation' of the Cyclades and Akrotiri on Thera, and contact with Egypt and the Levant; the Thera/Santorini eruption and the dating controversy between radiocarbon/ice-core and traditional archaeological chronologies, and its debated role in Minoan decline; the Late Minoan IB destructions across Crete; the Mycenaean takeover of Knossos evidenced by Linear B; and ancient and modern evaluations of 'Minoan' civilisation, including Evans's construct, the 'Pax Minoica'/matriarchy myth and its revisionist critique, and the limitations of an undeciphered script

How did Minoan Crete's relations with the wider Aegean, Egypt and the Levant develop, why did Minoan civilisation decline, and how should historians evaluate the evidence, including Evans's 'Minoan' construct and the limits of an undeciphered script?

Funerary customs, rituals and beliefs about the afterlife, including the ka, ba and akh and the weighing of the heart, and mummification; funerary texts including the Book of the Dead and the Amduat; and the architecture and decoration of royal and non-royal tombs

What did New Kingdom Egyptians believe about death and the afterlife, and how do funerary customs, mummification, funerary texts and tomb architecture reveal those beliefs down to the death of Amenhotep III?

Evaluation: the issues involved in using surviving written and archaeological evidence to reconstruct New Kingdom Egypt to the death of Amenhotep III, including the availability and survival bias of sources toward funerary, temple and royal monumental evidence over everyday life, the ideological and religious purpose of most surviving texts and images, and gaps in the evidence; and the differing modern interpretations of a feature of this society, in particular the extent of the 'obsession' with death and the afterlife, and the extent and role of slavery

What are the key issues in using ancient sources, and how do modern historians differ in their interpretations, when reconstructing New Kingdom Egypt to the death of Amenhotep III?

Religion, ritual, and festivals in Sparta, including the cults of Artemis Orthia and Apollo, the major festivals (Hyacinthia, Karneia, Gymnopaidiai), funerary rituals, and the role of religion in state and military life

What was the role of religion, ritual, and festivals in Spartan society?

The decline of Spartan power from Pausanias and the Persian Wars through the Peloponnesian War to the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC, including the rise of the Theban hegemony

How and why did Spartan power decline from the Persian Wars to the Battle of Leuctra 371 BC?

The geographical setting and natural features of Sparta, including the Eurotas valley, Mt Taygetus, the territory of Laconia and Messenia, and the relationship of geography to Spartan economy and military strategy

What was the geographical setting of Sparta and how did it shape Spartan society?

The geographical setting, natural features and resources of New Kingdom Egypt; the historical context of the early-to-mid Eighteenth Dynasty from Ahmose I to the death of Amenhotep III; and the nature, range and limitations of the sources for this period

What was the geographical setting and historical context of New Kingdom Egypt from Ahmose I to the death of Amenhotep III, and what range of sources allows historians to reconstruct it?

The geographical setting of the Iranian plateau and the extent of the Achaemenid empire; the historical context from the reigns of Cyrus II and Cambyses II to the accession of Darius I, including the Bisitun (Behistun) inscription; and the nature, range and limitations of the sources for this period

What was the geographical and historical context of Persia in the time of Darius and Xerxes, and what range of sources allows historians to reconstruct it?

The Spartan army and military training (the agoge), including its organisation, the hoplite phalanx, the syssitia, the role of the army in Spartan society, and the relationship to the Helot system

How was the Spartan army organised and how did the agoge produce its soldiers?

The political organisation of Sparta, including the dual kingship, the gerousia, the ephorate, and the apella, and their relationships in practice

How did the Spartan political system operate?

The Spartan social structure, including Spartiates (Homoioi), Perioikoi, and Helots, with the legal, economic, and military roles of each, and the historiographical debate over Spartan exceptionalism

What was the social structure of Spartan society?

The nature of Han government and administration, including the imperial bureaucracy and the Three Lords and Nine Ministers, the mixed commandery-and-kingdom (junguo) system and the reduction of the kingdoms after the Rebellion of the Seven States in 154 BC, recruitment by recommendation including the xiaolian (filial and incorrupt) system and the Imperial University (taixue, founded 124 BC), the adoption of Confucianism as state orthodoxy under Emperor Wu and Dong Zhongshu synthesised with Legalist administrative practice, and the tension between the emperor, the bureaucracy and the consort clans

How did the Han emperors build a centralised bureaucratic empire out of the mixed commandery-kingdom system, and how was that system tested by the rise of Confucianism as state doctrine and by recurring conflict between the bureaucracy and the consort clans?

Cultural life - art and architecture, including the Samaria ivories and Phoenician stylistic influence, ashlar masonry and proto-Aeolic capitals, the royal acropolis at Samaria built by Omri and Ahab, and the monumental gates of Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer; and writing and literature, including the Biblical narrative as literature and source, the Samaria Ostraca as administrative records, the Gezer Calendar, seals and bullae, and the Siloam Inscription of Judah for comparison

What does the surviving art, architecture and writing of Israel reveal about Omride kingship, and how do historians use this material alongside the Biblical narrative to reconstruct the Northern Kingdom?

Everyday life in Han China, including housing (from peasant dwellings to the multi-storey tomb-model house), food, dress, and health and medicine; the family and marriage; and the roles and status of women, including the Confucian ideal set out in Ban Zhao's Lessons for Women and the reality of powerful empresses, consort clans and women's role in textile production

How did everyday life differ between Han peasants and the elite, and what tension existed between the Confucian ideal of women's subordination and the reality of women's political, economic and social power?

Cultural life in Minoan Crete, including palace architecture (ashlar masonry, the distinctive down-tapering wooden column, light-wells, multi-storey construction and advanced drainage systems); wall painting and the problem of fresco reconstruction (the Knossos frescoes, including the Bull-Leaping fresco, the Prince of the Lilies and La Parisienne, and the Akrotiri frescoes on Thera); pottery (Kamares ware of the Protopalatial period and the Marine Style of the Neopalatial period); and other art forms, including faience (the Knossos snake goddess figurines), carved sealstones and gold metalwork (the Vaphio cups)

What does Minoan art and architecture reveal about the wealth, skill and beliefs of Bronze Age Cretan society, and how much of the surviving picture is genuinely ancient rather than early twentieth-century reconstruction?

Everyday life in Minoan Crete as revealed by settlement and palace evidence: housing, food and cooking practices, water supply and sanitation; dress and personal adornment; crafts and occupations; leisure and sport; and the role and status of women, including the debated 'Pax Minoica' matriarchy/gynocracy hypothesis and its revisionist critique

What can settlement, palace and artistic evidence reveal about everyday life in Minoan Crete, and how do historians debate the role and status of Minoan women?

The nature of the Minoan palace-based administrative system, including the evidence of Cretan hieroglyphic, Linear A and Linear B scripts, sealstones, sealings (roundels and noduli) and standardised weights and measures, and the significance of the Phaistos Disc and the undeciphered status of Linear A for what can be known about Minoan administration

What does the archaeological evidence for administration and writing reveal about how Minoan Crete was governed, and what are the limits of that evidence?

The nature of the Minoan palace as a multifunctional administrative, economic, religious and storage centre, illustrated by the layout of Knossos; the debate over Minoan political and social organisation, including Arthur Evans's 'priest-king' hypothesis and modern readings of a corporate or factional elite; the roles of officials, artisans and the wider population; and the hierarchy of Minoan settlement from palaces to villas and towns such as Gournia

How were Minoan palace complexes organised and administered, and what does the evidence suggest about the nature of political and social power in Minoan Crete?

Cultural life - the art and architecture of palace complexes, including Persepolis (the Apadana and the tribute-procession reliefs, and the Gate of All Nations begun by Xerxes), Pasargadae (the tomb and palace of Cyrus), Susa (the palace and Foundation Charter of Darius), the royal tombs at Naqsh-e Rustam, and glyptic art and metalwork including the Oxus Treasure

What does the art and architecture of the palace complexes reveal about Persian kingship and the unity of the empire?

Economic activities in Han dynasty China, including agriculture as the base (the well-field ideal, iron ploughs and ox-traction, the chain pump, and the 'ever-normal granary'), the state monopolies on salt, iron and, briefly, liquor under Emperor Wu and the Discourses on Salt and Iron (Yantie lun, 81 BC), coinage (the wuzhu coin, 118 BC), markets and the merchant class, taxation, the poll tax and corvee labour, and long-distance trade along the Silk Road, including silk exports

How did agriculture, state monopolies, coinage, taxation and long-distance trade sustain the economy of Han dynasty China?

Economic activities in Israel from Solomon to the fall of Samaria, including the role of agriculture (the Gezer calendar as evidence of the farming year), industry, crafts and occupations, economic exchange including trade with Judah and Assyria, and the features of fortified cities, including grain silos, water systems and six-chambered gates, and the debate over the function of structures such as the Megiddo 'stables'

How did agriculture, industry, trade and fortified-city infrastructure sustain the economy of the Kingdom of Israel from Solomon to the fall of Samaria in 722 BC?

Economic activities in Ramesside Egypt, including the importance of the Nile and agriculture, economic exchange through taxation, tribute and trade, the role of occupations, crafts and industries especially the temple estates, the impact of technology on building and irrigation, and the economic decline evidenced at Deir el-Medina

What economic activities sustained New Kingdom Egypt during the Ramesside period, and what evidence points to their decline?

The role and status of Spartan women, including their education, property, marriage, religious roles, and the historical debate over Spartan female exceptionalism

What was the role and status of Spartan women?

The social structure of Han China, including the emperor and imperial clan, the scholar-official (shi) gentry, landowners, peasants, artisans and merchants, and slaves; the Confucian family, filial piety (xiao) and ancestor reverence; and the roles and status of women

What was the social and political organisation of Han China, and how did the Confucian family order Han society?

The cultural life of the Ramesside period, including writing and literature (such as The Tale of Two Brothers and The Report of Wenamun) and art and architecture

What does the cultural life of Ramesside Egypt, in its writing and literature and its art and architecture, reveal about kingship, religion and society?

The roles and features of Israelite kingship and the Davidic dynasty; the Omride dynasty (Omri, Ahab and Jezebel) and the dynasty of Jehu; the roles and status of the bureaucracy, landowners, merchant class, workers, artisans and enslaved people; the roles and status of royal and non-royal women; and the nature and significance of the army

What were the roles and features of Israelite kingship, and the roles and status of the bureaucracy, social classes, women and the army in the northern kingdom of Israel?

The administration of the Persian Empire under Darius and Xerxes, including Darius I's reorganisation of the empire into satrapies, the role of the satrap, the hazarapatis (chiliarch, commander of the guard), the King's Eye, the standardisation of law, weights and measures, the Royal Road and the angareion royal courier system, and the administration of subject peoples

How did Darius I organise and administer the vast and diverse Persian Empire, and how was this system of control maintained under Xerxes?

Economic activities in the Persian Empire under Darius and Xerxes, including agriculture, occupations, crafts and industry, economic exchange throughout the empire (the satrapal tribute system recorded by Herodotus, the daric and siglos coinage, trade, and the royal treasuries at Susa, Persepolis and Ecbatana), and technology, including building techniques, qanat irrigation, and the Royal Road

How did agriculture, tribute, coinage, trade, and technology sustain the Persian Empire under Darius and Xerxes?

The roles and images of the Persian king, the roles and status of royal and non-royal women, the role of 'The Seven' and the Persian nobility, the operation of the bureaucracy, and the social hierarchy of Persian society down to the kurtash labourers

What were the roles and status of the king, women, nobility and labourers in Persian society under Darius and Xerxes?

The roles and images of the pharaoh and the concept of Ma'at; the roles of the vizier and the religious, administrative and military elites, including the increasingly powerful High Priesthood of Amun and the viziers of the north and south; and the nature and significance of the army in the age of Kadesh (c. 1274 BC) and the Sea Peoples

What were the roles and images of the Ramesside pharaoh, the vizier and the ruling elites, and how significant was the army in the age of Kadesh and the Sea Peoples?

The technology and inventions of Han China, including papermaking, the seismograph, the crossbow trigger, the wheelbarrow, water-powered bellows and cast iron, and the armillary sphere; the visual arts, including lacquerware, bronze and jade work, and tomb decoration; and the writing, literature, historiography, music and entertainment of the period

What were the major technological, artistic and literary achievements of Han China, and what do they reveal about Han society, the Han state and its historians?

The role and status of groups in Ramesside society, including royal and non-royal women, scribes, artisans and agricultural workers, and the evidence for social breakdown in the workers' strikes, tomb robberies and official corruption of the later Ramesside period

What was the social structure of Ramesside Egypt, and what does the evidence for workers' strikes, tomb robbery and official corruption reveal about it?

Religious ideology and practice in Athens in the time of Pericles, including the Olympian gods and Athena Polias as patron of the city, the major festivals (the Great Panathenaia and the City Dionysia), the Eleusinian Mysteries, oracles, omens and priesthoods, and funerary customs including the demosion sema and the state funeral, with Pericles' Funeral Oration (Thucydides 2.34-46) as evidence

What was the significance of religious ideology and practice for the Athenian state in the age of Pericles?

Religious ideology and practice in Minoan Crete, including the nature of religion as it must be inferred from material remains in the absence of any deciphered sacred texts; household shrines, peak sanctuaries (including Mount Juktas) and sacred caves; the prominence of female figures and the debated 'Mother Goddess'/snake-goddess interpretation; the bull cult and bull-leaping, the horns of consecration and the double axe (labrys); sacred trees and pillars; the role of priestesses in cult; and the contested evidence for human sacrifice

What can the material remains of Minoan Crete tell historians about religious ideology and ritual practice, and what are the limits of that evidence?

The nature and significance of the army and navy: the levy system and the multi-ethnic army, the 10,000 Immortals, cavalry, and the imperial navy (Phoenician, Ionian, Egyptian and Cypriot contingents); military organisation and command; and the management of subject peoples in the empire, including satrapal levies, hostages and local elites

How were the Persian army and navy organised and commanded, and how did Darius and Xerxes manage the empire's subject peoples to sustain them?

The geographical setting of Attica, Athens and the Piraeus; the historical context of the Pentekontaetia following the Persian Wars and the age of Pericles (c. 461-429 BC); and the nature, range and limits of the sources for this period, including Thucydides, the Old Oligarch (Pseudo-Xenophon's Constitution of the Athenians), Aristotle's Athenaion Politeia, Plutarch's Life of Pericles, Aristophanes and other comic poets, inscriptions (including the tribute lists), and archaeological evidence (the Acropolis and the agora)

What was the geographical and historical context of Athens in the time of Pericles, and what are the nature, range and limits of the sources historians use to reconstruct it?

The economic activities that sustained Athens in the age of Pericles, including the Laurion silver mines and mining slavery, the Piraeus and maritime trade, Athens' dependence on imported Black Sea grain, the Athenian 'owl' tetradrachm coinage, the agora as a commercial centre, the liturgy system (the trierarchy and the choregia), and the contribution of imperial tribute (phoros) to Athens' finances

How did mining, coinage, maritime trade and empire combine to fund the Athenian economy in the age of Pericles?

Religious ideology and practice in the Ramesside period, including the dominance of Amun-Re and the growth of his priesthood, the promotion of other gods (Ptah, Ra, Seth) in the state pantheon, the distinctive rise of personal religion and magic, and the role of festivals

How was religious ideology and practice, including personal piety, expressed in New Kingdom Egypt during the Ramesside period?

The social and political organisation of Athens in the age of Pericles, including the institutions of radical democracy (the ekklesia, the boule of 500, the dikasteria and jury pay, and magistrates chosen by lot), the ten elected strategoi, ostracism and the graphe paranomon, Pericles' leadership and his pay reforms, and the ancient critique of Athenian democracy

How did the institutions of radical democracy operate in Athens in the age of Pericles?

The social and political organisation of Athens in the age of Pericles, including the citizen body and Pericles' citizenship law of 451/0 BC, the Cleisthenic tribes and demes, the residual Solonian property classes, the roles, rights and limits of metics, the scale and role of slavery (including at Laurion), and the extent of social mobility for non-citizens

What was the social structure of Athens in the age of Pericles, and who counted as a citizen?

The Helot system as the economic basis of Spartan society: the kleros and syssitia, the fixed-share/half-share rent tradition (Plutarch, Tyrtaeus), Helot numbers and the fear of revolt, the krypteia and the ephors' annual declaration of war as mechanisms of control, Helots in war, the Messenian revolts, and the economic impact of Messenia's liberation in 370/369 BC

How did the Helot economy and the krypteia underpin and threaten the Spartan state?

The roles and importance of the prophets in Israelite society, including Elijah, Elisha, Amos and Hosea, as religious reformers and as social and political critics; their opposition to the cult of Baal under Ahab and Jezebel; their condemnation of the exploitation of the poor by landowners and merchants; and the value and limitations of the prophetic books as historical sources for Israel from the divided kingdom to the fall of Samaria in 722 BC.

What was the role of the prophets in Israelite society between the Omride dynasty and the fall of Samaria, and how reliable are the prophetic books as historical evidence for it?

The roles and status of royal and non-royal women, scribes, artisans and agricultural workers in New Kingdom Egypt to the death of Amenhotep III, including the debated extent of slavery

What were the roles and status of royal and non-royal women, scribes, artisans and agricultural workers in New Kingdom Egyptian society?

The geographical setting and resources of ancient Israel; the historical context from the United Monarchy under Solomon, through the division of the kingdom into Israel (north, capital Samaria) and Judah (south) c. 930 BC and the Omride dynasty, to the Assyrian conquest and the fall of Samaria in 722 BC; and the nature, range and limits of the sources, including the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), archaeology (the Tel Dan Stele, the Mesha/Moabite Stele, the Samaria Ostraca, Lachish, Megiddo and Hazor) and Assyrian royal annals

What was the geographical setting and historical context of ancient Israel from the United Monarchy under Solomon to the fall of Samaria in 722 BC, and what are the nature, range and limits of the sources historians use to reconstruct it?

The legal status and seclusion of Athenian citizen women, the oikos and the wife's role within it, marriage and dowry, childbirth and the raising of children, the education of boys and girls, housing, food, the symposium and hetairai, and health and medicine

What was the role and status of women, and what did everyday life look like, in Athens in the time of Pericles?

The geographical context and historical framework of the Ramesside period (Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties, c. 1292-1069 BC) from Seti I to Ramesses XI, including the founding of Pi-Ramesses, and the nature, range and limitations of the surviving sources, particularly the Deir el-Medina papyri and ostraca

What was the geographical setting of New Kingdom Egypt during the Ramesside period, what is its historical framework, and what range of sources, with what limitations, can historians use to reconstruct it?

The traditional figure of Lycurgus, the Great Rhetra, and the reforms attributed to him, including the eunomia, the institutional changes, and the historiographical question of whether Lycurgus existed

What were the Lycurgan reforms and the Great Rhetra?

Social and political organisation: the roles and images of the pharaoh and the concept of Ma'at, including divine kingship, royal titulary and iconography; the role of the vizier (e.g. Rekhmire and the 'Duties of the Vizier') and the religious, administrative and military elites (the High Priest of Amun, the viceroy of Kush, treasury officials); and the nature and significance of the army in an imperial age

How was New Kingdom Egypt governed, and what part did the pharaoh, the concept of Ma'at, the vizier, the elites and the army play in ruling an imperial state down to the death of Amenhotep III?

The geographical setting of Crete in the Bronze Age Aegean; the chronology used to periodise Minoan Crete, including the Prepalatial, Protopalatial and Neopalatial periods and Sir Arthur Evans's Early, Middle and Late Minoan (EM, MM, LM) system, c. 3000-1100 BC; the major palace sites of Knossos, Phaistos, Malia and Zakros; the discovery and excavation of Bronze Age Crete by Sir Arthur Evans from 1900 and his coining of the term 'Minoan'; and the nature, range and limits of the available sources, including archaeological evidence, the undeciphered Linear A script, the later Linear B tablets, frescoes, sealstones, later Greek myth (Minos and the Minotaur) as evidence of reception rather than history, Egyptian references to Keftiu, and the problem posed by Evans's concrete reconstructions and the modern construction of 'Minoan' civilisation.

What is the geographical and historical context of Minoan Crete in the Bronze Age, and what are the nature, range and limits of the sources, archaeological, textual and legendary, available to reconstruct it?

Religious ideology and practice in New Kingdom Egypt to the death of Amenhotep III, including gods and goddesses, cults and priesthoods (the supremacy of Amun-Re at Thebes, the Theban triad, and the sun cults of Re), the role of festivals (including Opet, the Beautiful Feast of the Valley, and the Heb-Sed), and the architecture and function of temples (including Karnak and Luxor)

What was the role of religious ideology and practice, including the gods, priesthoods, festivals, and temples, in New Kingdom Egyptian society to the death of Amenhotep III?

Religious policy and the range of religious belief across the empire, including the worship of Ahura Mazda, Bel Marduk in Babylon and Yahweh in Judah; the Zoroaster/Zarathustra debate and Xerxes's daiva inscription (XPh); rituals and practice, including the role of the Magi and fire ritual; royal funerary customs and the rock-cut tombs at Naqsh-e Rustam; and the tolerance of local cults, including the Cyrus Cylinder and the restoration of the Jerusalem Temple

What was Persia's religious policy under Darius and Xerxes, and how far did it tolerate the range of beliefs across the empire?

Evaluation: the issues involved in using the Hebrew Bible and archaeological evidence to reconstruct Israel from Solomon to the fall of Samaria, including the reliability and limitations of the biblical text, the minimalist and maximalist debate over the dating of the 'Solomonic' monumental buildings, the differing modern interpretations of the emergence of monotheism and the extent of religious conflict, and the everyday life of family, agriculture and housing

What are the key issues in using ancient sources, and how do modern historians differ in their interpretations, when reconstructing the history of Israel from Solomon to the fall of Samaria?

Cultural life in the time of Pericles, including the Periclean building program on the Acropolis (the Parthenon 447-432 BC; architects Ictinus and Callicrates; Phidias and the Athena Parthenos; the frieze, metopes, and pediments), the Propylaea, the Erechtheion, and the Athena Promachos; sculpture and red-figure pottery; drama (tragedy and comedy) as cultural achievement; and the controversy over funding the building program from allied tribute (Plutarch, Pericles 12-14)

What does the Periclean building program reveal about the political power, religious devotion, and cultural life of Athens?

The range of religious beliefs and practices, including polytheism, the worship of Ba'al and of Yahweh, and the archaeological evidence for popular religion, including the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions 'Yahweh and his Asherah' and household figurines; the roles of priests and prophets; and the roles and importance of religious places, including the Jerusalem Temple (Solomon's Temple), the northern royal shrines at Bethel and Dan (the golden calves), and the high places (bamot)

What was the range of religious belief and practice in Israel from Solomon to the fall of Samaria, and how far, if at all, had it moved from polytheism toward monotheism by 722 BC?

Relations with other societies, including the nature of relations with the Xiongnu confederation from the heqin marriage-alliance policy of the early Han to Emperor Wu's offensive campaigns and the Battle of Mobei, Zhang Qian's missions to the Western Regions from 138 BC and the resulting Silk Road trade, the tributary system and the expansion of Han authority into Central Asia, Korea and the south; Evaluation: the problems involved in using Sima Qian's Shiji and Ban Gu's Hanshu as evidence for these relations, and the differing modern interpretations of the Han dynasty as a 'golden age' and in comparison with Rome

How did Han China's approach to the Xiongnu shift from marriage-alliance appeasement to offensive war and a tributary empire linked by the Silk Road, and how should historians evaluate the Confucian court histories that are the main evidence for this transformation?

China's geography and natural setting, including the North China Plain, the Wei and Yellow River valleys, and the northern steppe frontier; the historical context of the Han dynasty from the collapse of the Qin and the founding of the Han by Liu Bang (Emperor Gaozu) in 202 BC, through the Western Han, Wang Mang's interregnum and the pivotal reign of Emperor Wu (141-87 BC), to the Eastern Han and the dynasty's span of 206 BC to AD 220; and the nature, range and limitations of the sources for this period, including Sima Qian's Shiji, Ban Gu's Hanshu and archaeological evidence

What was the geographical and historical context of China during the Han dynasty, and what range of sources allows historians to reconstruct it?

Funerary customs and rituals, concepts of the afterlife and mummification; funerary texts including the Book of the Dead, the Amduat and the Book of Gates; and the architecture and decoration of tombs in the Ramesside period

What do funerary customs, texts and tomb architecture reveal about religion and society in Ramesside Egypt?

Cultural life: writing and literature (wisdom/instruction literature, hymns, tales and love poetry) and the Papyrus Ebers as evidence of science and medicine; the scribal culture and the Egyptian scripts (hieroglyphic and hieratic); and art and architecture, including the canon of proportion and conventions of Egyptian art, relief and painting, and the monumental temple and statuary art of Amenhotep III

What does the surviving writing, literature and art of New Kingdom Egypt reveal about its cultural life to the death of Amenhotep III?

Everyday and cultural life: daily life, dress, food and education; the status of women (royal and non-royal); court life and luxury. Evaluation: the reliability, usefulness and problems of the ancient sources, and the differing modern interpretations of Persian society

What was everyday and cultural life like in the Achaemenid Persian Empire, and how do modern historians evaluate the surviving evidence?

Economic activities: agriculture and the Mediterranean triad, craft specialisation (pottery, metalwork, seal-carving, textiles), the palace redistributive economy (the great magazines and pithoi, the pillar crypts), overseas trade and contacts (Egypt/Keftiu, the Cyclades, the Levant, Kythera), and the tradition of a Minoan thalassocracy

How did agriculture, craft specialisation and palace-controlled storage sustain Minoan Crete, and how far does the evidence for overseas trade support the ancient tradition of a Minoan sea-empire?

Economic activities in New Kingdom Egypt to the death of Amenhotep III, including the importance of the Nile (the inundation, agriculture and the farming year), economic exchange including taxation, booty and tribute (the imperial income from Nubia and the Levant) and trade (the Punt tradition, Mediterranean trade and Nubian trade), the role of occupations, crafts and industry (the redistributive temple and state economy, with no coinage - a barter and grain economy), and technology, including building techniques and irrigation works (shadufs, canals)

How did the Nile, imperial income and trade sustain the economy of New Kingdom Egypt to the death of Amenhotep III?

Evaluation: the issues involved in using the available sources to investigate this society, including the nature, reliability and representativeness of the Deir el-Medina evidence, the problem of gaps in the archaeological and documentary record, and the use of royal monuments such as the Kadesh reliefs for propaganda purposes; and the differing modern interpretations of particular features of this society, including the extent of the 'obsession with death and the afterlife', the extent and role of slavery, and the extent to which the Ramesside period should be characterised as an age of decline

What are the key issues in using the sources for New Kingdom Egypt during the Ramesside period, and how do modern historians differ in their interpretation of its distinctive features?

Religious ideology and practice, including ancestor worship and filial piety at the centre of family religion; the Mandate of Heaven (Tianming), the emperor as Son of Heaven, and state sacrifices to Heaven and Earth; Confucianism as state ideology; Daoism, including philosophical Daoism and the cults of immortality; cosmology, including yin-yang and the Five Phases (wuxing), and the political use of portents and omens; the quest for immortality under Emperor Wu and the role of the fangshi; funerary beliefs, including the hun and po souls, jade burial suits, the Mawangdui tomb of Lady Dai, and tomb models; and the arrival of Buddhism in the Eastern Han

What was the place of religious ideology and practice in Han China, and how did ancestor worship, the Mandate of Heaven, Confucian orthodoxy, Daoism and cosmology, the quest for immortality, and funerary belief together shape political and social life?

Section I (Core Study): Cities of Vesuvius - Pompeii and Herculaneum

Everyday life in Pompeii and Herculaneum, including leisure activities, food, housing, water supply and sanitation, and the evidence from frescoes, archaeology, and inscriptions

What evidence remains for everyday life in Pompeii and Herculaneum?

Investigating and interpreting the sources from Pompeii and Herculaneum, including the history of excavation from 1748, the methodologies of Fiorelli, Maiuri, and Wallace-Hadrill, conservation issues, and ethical debates about display

How have Pompeii and Herculaneum been investigated and interpreted from 1748 to today?

Local political life in Pompeii and Herculaneum, including magistracies, the decurional council, electoral campaigns, and the evidence from electoral programmata

How did local political life operate in Pompeii and Herculaneum?

Religion in Pompeii and Herculaneum, including Roman state cult, the imperial cult, household religion (the lararium), death and burial practices (the Street of Tombs), and foreign cults including Isis, Dionysus/Bacchus, the Capitoline Triad, and Sabazius

What is the evidence for religion in Pompeii and Herculaneum?

The economy of Pompeii and Herculaneum, including trade, commerce, industries, occupations, and the archaeological and inscriptional evidence for them

What evidence does the archaeology reveal about the economy of Pompeii and Herculaneum?

The eruption of Mt Vesuvius in AD 79 and the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, including the literary evidence (Pliny the Younger), the volcanological evidence, the human evidence (body casts and skeletons), and the date controversy

What happened in the AD 79 eruption and what does the evidence reveal?

The geographical setting and physical environment of Pompeii and Herculaneum, including the Bay of Naples, the role of Mt Vesuvius, the natural features, resources, and the historical development of the two cities from Oscan settlement to Roman colony

What is the geographical and historical context of Pompeii and Herculaneum?

The public buildings of Pompeii and Herculaneum, including the Forum and its surrounding temples, basilica, macellum and Eumachia building, the public baths (Stabian, Forum, the unfinished Central Baths, and the Suburban Baths at Herculaneum), the amphitheatre of c. 70 BC, the theatres and the palaestra, and the private buildings, including the atrium-peristyle domus (e.g. the House of the Faun and the House of the Vettii), insulae and upper-floor apartments, and the Villa of the Mysteries and Villa of Papyri, and what they reveal about urban life

What do the public and private buildings reveal about urban life in Pompeii and Herculaneum?

The social structure of Pompeii and Herculaneum, including men, women, freedmen, and slaves, with archaeological, inscriptional, and skeletal evidence

How did the social structure of Pompeii and Herculaneum operate, and what evidence remains?

The ethical issues in the study, conservation, display and ownership of the sites and the human remains of Pompeii and Herculaneum, including the display of body casts and skeletons, tourism pressure versus conservation, looting and the antiquities trade, ownership questions, and responsible reconstruction and virtual display

What ethical issues arise from the study, display and ownership of Pompeii, Herculaneum and their human remains?

Section IV (Historical Periods): Greece from 404 BC to the death of Philip II

Survey and sources for the Greek world from 404 BC to the death of Philip II in 336 BC, the shifting hegemonies of Sparta and then Thebes and the rise of Macedon, and the nature, range and limitations of the evidence, from Xenophon's participant but pro-Spartan Hellenica and the later, derivative narrative of Diodorus Siculus drawn from Ephorus, to the Attic orators Demosthenes, Isocrates and Aeschines, Aristotle, the much later Plutarch, and the inscriptions

What was the shape of the Greek world from the fall of Athens in 404 BC to the death of Philip II in 336 BC, and what range of sources survives to reconstruct this age of shifting hegemonies?

Survey and sources: the geographical and historical setting of the late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties from Amenhotep III to the death of Ramesses II (c. 1390-1213 BC); the sequence of reigns across the golden age, the Amarna revolution, the restoration and the Ramesside recovery; and the nature, range and limitations of the sources, from temple reliefs and royal stelae to the Amarna Letters, the tomb evidence, the Kadesh accounts, the Egyptian-Hittite treaty and the later king-lists

What was the geographical and historical setting of New Kingdom Egypt from Amenhotep III to the death of Ramesses II, and what range of sources, with what limitations, allows historians to reconstruct the golden age, the Amarna revolution and the Ramesside recovery?

Survey and sources: the geographical and historical setting of the early-to-mid Eighteenth Dynasty from the expulsion of the Hyksos to the death of Thutmose IV (c. 1550-1390 BC); the sequence of reigns from Ahmose I to Thutmose IV; and the nature, range and limitations of the sources for the period

What was the geographical and historical setting of New Kingdom Egypt from Ahmose I to the death of Thutmose IV, and what range of sources allows historians to reconstruct the period?

Survey and sources for Persia from Cyrus II to the death of Darius III, the geographical and historical extent of the Achaemenid empire from its foundation c. 550 BC to its fall in 330 BC, the diversity of its subject peoples, and the nature, range and limitations of the evidence, from the Persian royal inscriptions, Persepolis reliefs and administrative tablets and the Babylonian and Egyptian records to the dominant but hostile Greek literary tradition of Herodotus, Ctesias, Xenophon and Arrian

What was the geographical extent and character of the Achaemenid empire from its foundation to its fall, and what range of sources survives to reconstruct its history?

Survey and sources for imperial China from the accession of the future First Emperor as King of Qin in 247 BC to the death of Emperor Wu of Han in 87 BC, the geographical setting and the historical arc from the Warring States through Qin unification in 221 BC and the fall of Qin to the founding and consolidation of the Han empire, and the nature, range and limitations of the evidence, above all Sima Qian's Shiji and Ban Gu's Hanshu, both Han-era grand histories, corrected by the contemporary archaeology of the terracotta army, the Qin legal and administrative slips and the Mawangdui Han tombs

What was the geographical and historical shape of imperial China from the accession of the future First Emperor as King of Qin in 247 BC to the death of Emperor Wu of Han in 87 BC, and what range of sources survives to reconstruct it?

Survey of the Greek world and the Persian Empire c. 500 BC, the geographical setting, the polis system, the Spartan and Athenian constitutions, the Cleisthenic reforms, and the rise of Achaemenid Persia under Darius I

What were the geographical, social, political and economic features of the Greek mainland and the Persian Empire at the start of the fifth century BC?

Survey and sources for the Levant c. 869-586 BC, the geographical setting of the southern Levant and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah among their neighbours (Aram-Damascus, Phoenicia, Philistia, Moab, Ammon and Edom), caught between the great powers of Assyria, then Babylon, and Egypt, and the nature, range and limitations of the evidence, from the Hebrew Bible (the Deuteronomistic History of Kings, Chronicles and the prophets, handled critically as theological literature) to the Assyrian and Babylonian royal annals and chronicles and the archaeological and epigraphic record (the Mesha Stele, the Tel Dan Stele, the Samaria Ostraca, the Siloam inscription, the Lachish reliefs and the Lachish Letters), and the problem of reconciling biblical and extra-biblical evidence

What was the geographical and historical shape of the Levant from about 869 to 586 BC, and what is the nature, range and reliability of the sources historians use to reconstruct it?

Survey and sources for the fall of the Roman Republic from the death of Sulla in 78 BC to the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, the workings of the Republican constitution (Senate, magistrates, assemblies and the optimates-populares divide) as background, the historical arc from the aftermath of Sulla through the rise of the army-backed dynasts, the civil wars of 49 to 45 BC and the assassination of Caesar to the Second Triumvirate and Philippi, and the nature, range and limitations of the evidence, above all the contemporary but partisan testimony of Cicero, Caesar and Sallust and the later narratives of Plutarch, Appian, Cassius Dio, Suetonius and Velleius, and the distorting pull of the inevitable-decline narrative

What was the political and constitutional shape of Rome from the death of Sulla in 78 BC to the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, and what range of sources survives to reconstruct the terminal crisis of the Republic?

Augustus and the principate, including the political reforms, the administration of the provinces, the relationship with the senate and the equestrians, the army reforms, and the consilium principis

How did Augustus organise the principate and the administration of the empire?

Athens in the fourth century BC, its recovery after defeat in 404 BC and its attempt to rebuild power, the rebuilding of the Long Walls under Conon after the Battle of Cnidus in 394 BC, the foundation of the Second Athenian Confederacy in 378 BC and its charter renouncing the abuses of the fifth-century empire, the Confederacy's successes and its collapse in the Social War of 357 to 355 BC, the fourth-century democracy and the theoric fund, the professionalisation of politics and generalship, Athenian finances under Eubulus and then Lycurgus, and the great debate over Macedon between Demosthenes and Isocrates, set against Athens' relative decline

How did Athens attempt to recover and rebuild its power in the fourth century BC, from the rebuilding of the Long Walls to the collapse of the Second Athenian Confederacy and the debate over Philip II of Macedon?

Spartan hegemony and the King's Peace - Spartan supremacy after 404 BC and its unpopularity (harmosts, decarchies, tribute); the reign and Asian campaigns of Agesilaus II; the Persian-funded backlash and the Corinthian War (395-387 BC), including the naval defeat at Cnidus (394 BC); the King's Peace / Peace of Antalcidas (387/386 BC); and Spartan high-handedness culminating in the seizure of the Theban Cadmea (382 BC)

How did Sparta use, and abuse, the supremacy it won in 404 BC, and why did the King's Peace and the seizure of the Cadmea turn its hegemony into overreach?

Julio-Claudian administration, including the imperial bureaucracy, provincial governance, the army, the Praetorian Guard, and the financial structure

How was the Roman Empire administered under the Julio-Claudians, and what changes did the period see?

Julio-Claudian society and culture, and the emperors' relations with the Senate, the army and the provinces

How did Julio-Claudian society and culture develop, and how did the emperors manage relations with the Senate, the army and the provinces?

Tiberius's accession and reign (AD 14-37), the role of Sejanus, the treason trials, Tiberius's retirement to Capri, and the historiographical assessment of Tiberius

How did Tiberius rule from AD 14 to 37, and how is his reign assessed?

Judah under Assyrian domination after the fall of Samaria; the reign of Hezekiah (c. 715-687 BC), his centralising religious reforms and his preparations for revolt (the Siloam tunnel and inscription, the Broad Wall, the LMLK storage jars); the revolt against Sennacherib and the campaign of 701 BC, the devastation of Judah and the siege of Lachish; the siege of Jerusalem and the discrepancy between Sennacherib's annals and 2 Kings 18-19

How did Judah survive as an Assyrian vassal under Hezekiah, and how do historians reconcile the Assyrian and biblical accounts of Sennacherib's campaign of 701 BC?

Amenhotep III, the golden age: the wealth, power and international standing of Egypt at its imperial height; the peaceful empire sustained by Amarna diplomacy and marriage alliances; the commemorative scarabs; the building programme from Malkata to the Colossi of Memnon, Luxor and Soleb; the prominence of Queen Tiye; the rise of solar theology, self-deification and the royal jubilees; and the powerful officials of the reign

Why is the reign of Amenhotep III (c. 1390 to 1352 BC) regarded as the golden age of New Kingdom Egypt, and how far did its wealth, art and religious ideas set the stage for the upheaval that followed?

Amenhotep II and Thutmose IV, the consolidation of the Syrian empire, the warrior-athlete kingship and the seven princes of Takhsy, and the shift from military expansion to international diplomacy marked by Thutmose IV's Dream Stele and the first marriage alliance with Mitanni

How did Amenhotep II and Thutmose IV consolidate the empire of Thutmose III, and how did the period close with a shift from military conquest to international diplomacy?

Religion and the cult of Amun in New Kingdom Egypt to the death of Thutmose IV, including the rise of Amun-Re of Thebes to supreme state god through royal military success, the enrichment and power of the Amun priesthood at Karnak (temple estates, the god's oracle, the Opet and Valley festivals), royal building at Karnak and the mortuary temples of western Thebes, the beginnings of the Valley of the Kings and the separation of tomb and mortuary temple, and the ideology of divine kingship

How did religion and the cult of Amun shape royal power in New Kingdom Egypt to the death of Thutmose IV?

Cambyses II and the conquest of Egypt: the campaign and the Battle of Pelusium 525 BC, the defeat of Psamtik III and the establishment of Egypt as the 27th Dynasty and a Persian satrapy; the clash between the hostile Greek and Egyptian tradition in Herodotus Book 3 (the killing of the Apis bull, madness and sacrilege) and the contemporary Egyptian evidence of the Udjahorresnet statue; the death of Cambyses in 522 BC and the succession crisis of the false Smerdis, Gaumata and Bardiya that opened the way for Darius I

How did Cambyses II conquer Egypt and add it to the Achaemenid empire, why do the Greek and Egyptian sources give such different portraits of his rule there, and how did his death in 522 BC produce the succession crisis that brought Darius I to power?

Cyrus II the Great and the foundation of the Achaemenid empire c. 559 to 530 BC: the revolt against the Medes and the overthrow of Astyages c. 550 BC; the conquest of Lydia and the fall of Sardis c. 547 to 546 BC; the conquest of Babylon in 539 BC and the propaganda of liberation in the Cyrus Cylinder and the Nabonidus Chronicle; the return of the Jews; Cyrus' model of tolerant imperial rule; the foundation of Pasargadae; and his death campaigning against the Massagetae c. 530 BC

How did Cyrus II the Great overthrow the Medes and conquer Lydia and Babylon to found the Achaemenid empire, and how do the surviving sources present his model of imperial rule?

Darius I, accession and organisation: the seizure of power in 522 BC and the killing of Gaumata/Bardiya, the Behistun Inscription as Darius's own justificatory account, the suppression of the empire-wide revolts of 522-521 BC, the great reorganisation into about 20 satrapies with fixed tribute, the Royal Road and postal relay, the daric coinage, the King's Eye, the Nile to Red Sea canal, the building of Persepolis and Susa, and the campaigns in Scythia and on the north-west frontier

How did Darius I seize and justify the Persian throne in 522 BC, and how did his reorganisation of the empire mark the Achaemenid state at its administrative height?

Darius III and the conquest by Alexander: the accession of Darius III in 336 BC amid the court murders of Bagoas; the Macedonian invasion of 334 BC; the three defeats at Granicus (334 BC), Issus (333 BC) and Gaugamela (331 BC) assessed from the Persian side; the fall of Babylon, Susa and Persepolis (burned 330 BC); the flight and murder of Darius III by Bessus in 330 BC; the end of the Achaemenid empire and the debate over why it fell; and the Persian legacy under Alexander and the Successors

Why did the Achaemenid empire fall to Alexander of Macedon between 334 and 330 BC, and how far can the Persian side of that collapse be recovered from hostile Greek and Roman sources?

Emperor Wu of Han (141-87 BC) as the climax of the period, including the shift from the heqin marriage-alliance policy to offensive war against the Xiongnu under Wei Qing and Huo Qubing, expansion into the Hexi (Gansu) corridor and the Western Regions (Zhang Qian's missions and the War of the Heavenly Horses), the annexation of Nanyue and northern Vietnam and the conquest of Gojoseon (Korea), the fiscal reforms that paid for the wars (the salt and iron monopolies, the equable-transport and price-stabilisation systems, and the wuzhu currency reform), the adoption of Confucianism as state orthodoxy under Dong Zhongshu and the imperial academy (Taixue, 124 BC), the mounting costs of expansion and Emperor Wu's later self-criticism, and his death in 87 BC

How did the long reign of Emperor Wu turn the Han from a consolidating dynasty into an expansionist empire, and at what fiscal and human cost did his wars, monopolies and Confucian settlement come?

Qin Shi Huangdi and the Legalist state, 221 to 210 BC: the abolition of the feudal fiefs and the commandery-county (jun-xian) bureaucracy, Legalism (Li Si and Han Feizi) as state doctrine and rule by reward and punishment, the standardisation of script, weights, measures, coinage and cart axle-widths, the great public works, and the coercion of the reign (the burning of the books in 213 BC and the alleged burying of the scholars in 212 BC), assessed through the Shiji and the Shuihudi legal slips, with a judgement on why the system was both effective and short-lived

How did the Qin imperial system of 221 to 210 BC, built on the commandery-county bureaucracy, Legalist law and the standardisation of the empire, make the First Emperor's state so effective and yet so brittle, and how far can the hostile Han tradition be trusted on its coercion?

Religion, propaganda, and the Pax Romana, including the Ara Pacis, the Res Gestae, the imperial cult, the religious revival, the Augustan poets, and the visual program of the new Rome

How did religion and propaganda support the Augustan regime?

The rise of Macedon and Philip II, the weakness of the kingdom before 359 BC, Philip's accession and his reform of the army into the sarissa phalanx and Companion cavalry, the seizure of the Thracian mines that funded his rise, and his expansion into Thessaly, the Chalcidice and central Greece down to 338 BC

How did Philip II transform Macedon from a weak border kingdom into the master of Greece between 359 and 338 BC?

The First Peloponnesian War (460 to 446 BC), the long walls, the Egyptian disaster, the Five Years' Truce (451 BC), the Peace of Callias (around 449 BC), the Thirty Years' Peace (446 BC), and the significance of the period

What was the First Peloponnesian War, and how did the Greek world look at the end of the period in 440 BC?

The Ionian Revolt (499 to 494 BC), the burning of Sardis, the Battle of Lade, Darius's first invasion of Greece in 490 BC, and the Battle of Marathon

What were the causes and course of the Ionian Revolt and the first Persian invasion of Greece culminating at Marathon?

The transformation of the Delian League into the Athenian Empire, the suppression of revolts (Naxos, Thasos, Samos), the Egyptian disaster, the transfer of the treasury to Athens (454 BC), Athenian imperialism, and the methods of control over the allies

How was the Delian League transformed into the Athenian Empire between 478 and 440 BC?

The Levant c. 869 to 586 BC, the divided monarchy of the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah, the Omride dynasty in Israel under Omri and Ahab (c. 874 to 853 BC), Samaria as capital, the marriage to Jezebel of Tyre and the Baal cult, the conflict with the prophets and the wars with Aram-Damascus, the extra-biblical evidence for Omride power (the Mesha Stele, the Kurkh Monolith and the Tel Dan stele) set against the hostile Biblical account, and the dynasty of Jehu

How did the divided monarchy of Israel and Judah develop, and how far does the hostile Biblical portrayal of the Omride dynasty match the extra-biblical evidence for its power?

The Amarna period (Akhenaten, c. 1352-1336 BC) as the great disruption of the period - the religious revolution and the Aten, the move to Akhetaten, the new art and the royal family, the neglect-versus-continuity debate over the empire in the Amarna letters, and the end of the reign and the setting for restoration

How far did the Amarna period under Akhenaten disrupt the religious, cultural and imperial order of New Kingdom Egypt?

The Ionian Revolt (499 to 494 BC), the burning of Sardis and the involvement of Athens and Eretria, the Persian reconquest and the sack of Miletus in 494 BC, Darius I's punitive response, the first invasion of Greece under Mardonius (492 BC) and Datis and Artaphernes (490 BC), the sack of Eretria and the defeat at Marathon, assessed from the imperial perspective

How did the Achaemenid empire under Darius I manage the Ionian Revolt and the first invasion of Greece, and how far does the largely Greek evidence let us reconstruct the imperial view of Marathon?

The later Achaemenids from Artaxerxes I to Artaxerxes III (465-338 BC): the Peace of Callias question; Persian gold as the arbiter of Greek politics from the Peloponnesian War to the King's Peace of 387/386 BC; the satraps' revolts and the loss and reconquest of Egypt (404-343 BC); court intrigue, succession and Cyrus the Younger's revolt (Cunaxa 401 BC); the reassertion under Artaxerxes III Ochus; and a critical assessment of the 'decline' thesis

How formidable was the Achaemenid empire between the accession of Artaxerxes I and the reign of Artaxerxes III, and is the traditional narrative of decline sustained by the evidence?

The fall of the Qin and the Chu-Han contention: the death of the First Emperor in 210 BC and the concealed succession under Zhao Gao and Li Si; the reign of the weak Second Emperor Qin Er Shi (Huhai); the Chen Sheng and Wu Guang uprising of 209 BC and the empire-wide rebellion; the fall of the Qin by 207 to 206 BC; the Chu-Han contention (206 to 202 BC) between Xiang Yu, the aristocratic warrior of Chu, and Liu Bang, the commoner who became Emperor Gaozu of Han, including the Feast at Hong Gate and the Battle of Gaixia in 202 BC; the Han explanation of the fall in Jia Yi's essay 'The Faults of Qin'; and the historiography of Sima Qian's Shiji as dramatic narrative

How and why did the Qin dynasty collapse so rapidly after 210 BC, and how did the Chu-Han contention between Xiang Yu and Liu Bang end in the founding of the Han?

The founding of the Han dynasty in 202 BC by Liu Bang, Emperor Gaozu, and the early Han settlement, the retention of the Qin commandery bureaucracy alongside a tempering of Legalism through lighter laws, lower taxes and Huang-Lao government, the compromise between centralisation and feudalism in the re-granting and later suppression of the kingdoms, the Xiongnu problem and the heqin marriage-alliance policy, and the consolidation under Empress Lu and the Rule of Wen and Jing down to the eve of Emperor Wu

How did Liu Bang found and stabilise the Han dynasty after the collapse of Qin, and how far did the early Han settlement, tempering the Qin system rather than abandoning it, consolidate the empire before the reign of Emperor Wu?

The rise of the state of Qin and the unification of China, the Legalist reforms of Shang Yang from about 356 BC that made Qin a militarised meritocratic state, the geographical and material advantages of the western state, the accession of the young King Zheng in 246 BC under the regency of Lu Buwei, the systematic conquest of the six warring states from 230 to 221 BC and the strategy behind it, and the proclamation of the First Emperor Shi Huangdi in 221 BC, reconstructed critically from Sima Qian

How did the western state of Qin rise to conquer the six rival warring states and unify China by 221 BC, and why did Qin, rather than any of its rivals, achieve it?

The aftermath of Sulla and the 70s BC, the fragility of the Sullan constitution (the strengthened Senate and the crippled tribunate), the revolt of Lepidus in 78-77 BC, the long war against Sertorius in Spain and Pompey's command, the war against Spartacus and the slave revolt of 73-71 BC, the consulship of Pompey and Crassus in 70 BC and their dismantling of the Sullan settlement through the restoration of the tribunate, and the emergence of Pompey and Crassus as the great men standing outside the normal cursus honorum

How stable was the Republic that Sulla left behind at his death in 78 BC, and how far had his settlement been undone by the consulship of Pompey and Crassus in 70 BC?

The Second Triumvirate (43 to 33 BC), the Battle of Philippi (42 BC), Antony's Eastern policy and his alliance with Cleopatra, the propaganda war, and the Battle of Actium (31 BC)

How did Octavian defeat Antony and Cleopatra to become master of the Roman world?

The succession problem under Augustus, including the candidates (Marcellus, Agrippa, Gaius and Lucius Caesar, Tiberius, Agrippa Postumus), the role of Livia, and the death of Augustus in AD 14

How did Augustus manage the succession and what was the impact of his death?

Caesar's Gallic command (58-50 BC) as a source of glory, wealth and a loyal veteran army; the breakdown of the First Triumvirate after the deaths of Julia (54 BC) and Crassus at Carrhae (53 BC); Pompey's drift to the optimates and his sole consulship (52 BC); the political struggle of 51-49 BC over Caesar's command and his demand to stand for the consulship in absentia; the polarisation between Pompey and Caesar, the failure of compromise, the flight of the tribunes and the crossing of the Rubicon (January 49 BC)

How did Caesar's Gallic command and the breakdown of the First Triumvirate bring the Roman Republic to civil war in 49 BC?

The First Settlement (27 BC) and the Second Settlement (23 BC), the constitutional powers granted to Octavian (now Augustus), the political theory of the principate, and the verdicts of Syme, Goldsworthy, and Eck

What was the Augustan Settlement and how did it establish the principate?

Augustus's foreign policy and the imperial frontiers, including expansion in Spain, the Alps, the Balkans, Germany, the Parthian settlement, the Teutoburg disaster (AD 9), and the recommendation to keep the empire within its frontiers

What was Augustus's foreign policy and how did he organise the imperial frontiers?

Augustus's social and moral legislation, including the Leges Juliae of 18 BC, the Lex Papia Poppaea of AD 9, the marriage and adultery laws, the slavery laws, and the question of their effectiveness

What were Augustus's social and moral reforms?

The reign of Gaius (Caligula) AD 37-41 and the accession of Claudius

How did Gaius (Caligula) rule from AD 37 to 41, and how reliable is the ancient tradition that condemns him?

The reign of Ramesses II (c. 1279-1213 BC) as the climax of the period, the Battle of Kadesh against Muwatalli II (c. 1274 BC, Year 5) and its commemoration in the Poem and Bulletin, the Egyptian-Hittite peace treaty with Hattusili III (c. 1259 BC, Year 21) and the diplomatic marriage, and the great building program at Abu Simbel, the Ramesseum, Pi-Ramesses, Karnak and Luxor

How did Ramesses II fight the Hittites at Kadesh, turn a near-disaster into a monument of self-glorification, and then secure the ancient world's first surviving peace treaty, and how far can the evidence he left behind be trusted?

The reign of Tutankhamun c. 1336 to 1327 BC: his accession as a child under the name Tutankhaten; the abandonment of Akhetaten and the return of the court to Thebes and Memphis; the Restoration Stela and the reversal of the Aten revolution through the restoration of Amun and the traditional cults; the roles of the powerful officials Ay and the general Horemheb; the continued difficulties on the Syrian frontier against the Hittites; his early death; the significance of the near-intact tomb KV62, discovered by Howard Carter in 1922, as an archaeological source; and the Dakhamunzu or Zannanza affair recorded in the Deeds of Suppiluliuma

How did the reign of Tutankhamun reverse the Aten revolution and restore the traditional cults, and how do the Restoration Stela, the near-intact tomb KV62 and the Hittite records let us reconstruct a short reign dominated by powerful officials?

Persia under Xerxes (486 to 465 BC): his accession and the suppression of the Egyptian and Babylonian revolts, the great invasion of Greece in 480 to 479 BC and its course, the significance of the campaign for the empire and the western frontier, the later reign and the assassination of 465 BC, and the debate over whether the reign began Persian decline

How did Xerxes secure and rule the Achaemenid Empire between 486 and 465 BC, and did the failed invasion of Greece mark a turning point in the history of Persia?

The nature of power and authority in Greece from 404 BC to the death of Philip II, the failure of the polis to sustain a stable hegemony, the successive collapse of the Spartan, Theban and Athenian bids for supremacy, the new Macedonian model of centralised monarchical power, the fourth-century crisis of the polis, and the historiography from the source problems to the debate over whether Philip's conquest was the death of Greek freedom or its necessary unification

What was the nature of power and authority in Greece from 404 BC to the death of Philip II, and how have ancient and modern historians interpreted the fall of the polis and the rise of Macedon?

The nature of power and authority across New Kingdom Egypt from Amenhotep III to the death of Ramesses II - the ideology of divine kingship taken to its extremes (the self-deification of Amenhotep III and Ramesses II, and Akhenaten's reformulation of the king as the sole intermediary of the Aten), the practical instruments of rule (the army, the bureaucracy, and the wealthy priesthood of Amun as both a support and a rival to the crown), and how the Amarna episode tested and reshaped royal authority; and the historiography of the period, including the propaganda-versus-reality gap epitomised by Kadesh, the deliberate erasure of the Amarna kings, the Amarna Letters as a rare unofficial window, chronological controversy, and the differing interpretations of modern Egyptologists

How was power and authority constructed and exercised across New Kingdom Egypt from Amenhotep III to Ramesses II, and how do historians reconstruct the period from its propaganda, its deliberate erasures and its rare unofficial sources?

The reigns of Amenhotep I and Thutmose I, the consolidation of the early Eighteenth Dynasty, campaigns in Nubia and Syria, the expansion of the empire to the Euphrates and Kurgus, the founding of the Deir el-Medina workmen's village, the first royal burial in the Valley of the Kings, and building at Karnak

How did Amenhotep I and Thutmose I consolidate the early Eighteenth Dynasty and transform Egypt from a recovering Nile kingdom into an empire reaching from the Euphrates to deep Nubia?

The nature of power and authority in early New Kingdom Egypt - divine kingship and Ma'at, the smiting-pharaoh image and royal titulary, the practical instruments of rule (the professional army, the bureaucracy and viziers, the priesthood of Amun and the royal women, including the God's Wife of Amun), and the crown's relationship with the emerging Amun establishment; and the historiography of the period, including the problems of propagandistic official sources, monument erasure and usurpation, chronological uncertainty and the tomb-biography perspective, and the interpretations of modern Egyptologists

How did the early New Kingdom pharaohs construct and exercise power and authority, and how do historians reconstruct the period from its propagandistic and fragmentary sources?

The nature of power and authority in the Achaemenid Persian empire, the ideology of the King of Kings under Ahura Mazda, the practical instruments of imperial rule, the use of local elites and religions as a governing strategy, and the historiography from the older Greek-derived decline thesis to the modern Achaemenid-studies rehabilitation

What was the nature of power and authority in the Achaemenid empire from Cyrus II to Darius III, and how have ancient and modern historians interpreted it?

The nature of power and authority across the Qin and Han period, the invention of the huangdi and the emperor as Son of Heaven, the rival theories of legitimate rule from the Qin's Legalist coercion to the Han's Mandate of Heaven and Confucian moral kingship, the bureaucracy as the instrument of imperial power and the recurring tension between centralised administration and regional feudal power, and the historiography from the Han-court Shiji and Hanshu and Jia Yi's Faults of Qin to the archaeological correction and the modern reassessment of Qin as founder of the imperial system

What was the nature of power and authority across the Qin and Han from 247 to 87 BC, and how have the Han-court sources and the archaeological record shaped the way that power has been interpreted?

The co-regency and Hatshepsut's assumption of kingship (c. 1473-1458 BC), her legitimation through the divine birth, the Deir el-Bahri temple, the Punt expedition, the obelisks and the role of Senenmut; the sole reign of Thutmose III (to c. 1425 BC), his seventeen campaigns in Syria-Palestine, the Battle of Megiddo and the Karnak Annals, the crossing of the Euphrates and the empire at its height; and the later erasure of Hatshepsut's monuments

How did Hatshepsut legitimise her assumption of full kingship, and how did the sole reign of Thutmose III build the Egyptian empire to its height?

The foundation of the Delian League in 478 BC, its original aims and organisation, the role of Aristides, the recall of Pausanias, and the early campaigns under Cimon (Eurymedon)

How was the Delian League founded in 478 BC, what were its aims and organisation, and what did Athenian leadership of the League mean in practice?

The careers and significance of Themistocles, Pausanias, and Cimon, including the naval policy, the long walls, the regent's medism, the campaigns at Eurymedon and Thasos, and the ostracism of 461 BC

What were the careers and significance of Themistocles, Pausanias, and Cimon in the Greek world 500 to 440 BC?

The preparations and invasion of Xerxes (480 BC), the Hellenic League, the battles of Thermopylae, Artemisium, and Salamis, and the strategic role of Themistocles' naval policy

What were the course and significance of Xerxes' invasion of Greece in 480 BC, including Thermopylae, Artemisium, and Salamis?

The westward expansion of the Neo-Assyrian empire under Tiglath-pileser III (745 to 727 BC) and its system of vassalage, tribute and mass deportation; the decline of Israel after Jeroboam II, the Syro-Ephraimite War (735 to 732 BC) and Ahaz of Judah's appeal to Assyria; the revolt of Hoshea, the siege and fall of Samaria in 722 to 721 BC (Shalmaneser V and the rival claim of Sargon II), the deportation of the northern tribes and the end of the kingdom of Israel

How did the westward expansion of the Neo-Assyrian empire under Tiglath-pileser III destroy the kingdom of Israel, and how far do the biblical and Assyrian sources let us reconstruct the fall of Samaria in 722 BC?

The nature of the early New Kingdom empire: the professional army (chariotry, the composite bow, the divisions and the decorated elite); the administration of empire (the two viziers, the Viceroy of Kush, the garrisons and vassal princes of Syria-Palestine, tribute and inw); the economic basis (Nubian gold, Levantine tribute, temple estates); and the impact of empire on Egyptian society and the monarchy

How did the early New Kingdom build, run and pay for an empire, and how did that empire reshape Egyptian society and the crown to the death of Thutmose IV?

The nature of power and authority in the Levantine kingdoms of Israel and Judah - kingship (the Davidic dynastic ideology in Judah and the more unstable, prophetically designated kingship of the northern kingdom), the covenant and the Jerusalem Temple as sources of royal legitimacy, the prophets as a check on royal power, and the constraint of imperial overlordship under Assyria and then Babylon; and the historiography of the period - the problem of using the Hebrew Bible as a historical source (its theological purpose, the Deuteronomistic History, late editing and the history-versus-faith question), the need to test it against Assyrian and Babylonian records and archaeology, and the modern maximalist and minimalist debate over how much of the biblical narrative is historical

What was the nature of power and authority in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah from the Omride ascendancy to the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC, and how do historians reconstruct this period from the Hebrew Bible, Assyrian and Babylonian records and archaeology?

The final confrontation and settlement of Greece: Demosthenes and the Athenian-Theban alliance against Philip II; the decisive Macedonian victory at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC and the destruction of the Theban Sacred Band by the cavalry of the eighteen-year-old Alexander; the League of Corinth of 337 BC, a common peace under Macedonian hegemony with garrisons at key points and Sparta alone excluded; the proclamation of the panhellenic war of revenge against Persia with Philip as hegemon; and Philip's assassination at Aegae in 336 BC and the accession of Alexander, which closes the period on the threshold of the Hellenistic age

How did Philip II bring the Greek states under Macedonian control at Chaeronea and through the League of Corinth, and how did the period end with his assassination and the accession of Alexander?

Han foreign relations and the opening of the Silk Road under Emperor Wu, the long struggle with the Xiongnu confederation and the shift from heqin appeasement to offensive war, Zhang Qian's missions to the Western Regions from 138 BC, the establishment of the Hexi Corridor commanderies and the westward trade in silk and Ferghana horses toward Central Asia and the Mediterranean, the tributary system, and the significance of these contacts down to the death of Emperor Wu in 87 BC

How and why did Han foreign relations move from the heqin appeasement of the Xiongnu to Emperor Wu's offensive wars and the opening of the Silk Road, and how significant were the Central Asian contacts that Zhang Qian's missions began?

The nature of power and authority in the late Roman Republic and the causes of its fall from 78 to 42 BC, the structural tension between a city-state constitution and the demands of a Mediterranean empire, the professionalised client-armies loyal to their generals after the Marian reforms, the breakdown of senatorial collegiality into dynastic competition, extraordinary commands, the optimates and populares struggle, mob violence, provincial wealth and electoral bribery, and the great historiographical debate from the ancient moral-decline reading of Sallust and the biographical great-man tradition to Syme's prosopographical Roman Revolution, Gruen's argument that the Republic was not doomed, and the modern debate over inevitability

What was the nature of power and authority in the late Roman Republic, why did a constitution built for a city-state collapse under the demands of a Mediterranean empire, and how have ancient and modern historians disagreed over whether that collapse was inevitable?

The internal political development of Athens, the reforms of Ephialtes (462 BC), the leadership of Pericles, the introduction of state pay for jurors and officials, the Periclean building program, and the cultural achievements of the period

How did Athenian democracy develop between 478 and 440 BC, and what were the reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles?

The thematic cross-section of the period - the development of religion from the worship of Yahweh alongside Baal and Asherah toward the centralising, monotheising reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah and the role of the prophets; the social structure of monarchy, elite and peasantry and the tension between rich and poor; the agrarian economy of oil and wine, trade routes, and the impact of tribute and war; and how religion, society and economy interacted across the period

How did religion, society and economy interact across the Levant from the Omride kingdom to the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC, and how far do the prophetic books, archaeology and Assyrian records let us reconstruct that world?

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How did society, culture and economy interact in the Greek world from 404 BC to the death of Philip II, and how far do the orators, Xenophon and Aristotle let us reconstruct an age of political fragmentation?

The thematic cross-section of the fourth-century Greek world - society under the strain of continuous warfare, the rise of mercenary service (the Ten Thousand and the professional soldier) and social and economic dislocation; culture in a golden age of thought and rhetoric (Plato and the Academy, Aristotle and the Lyceum, Isocrates and the schools of rhetoric, the great orators, and the development of prose history); the economy of banking, the Black Sea grain trade, Athenian dependence on imported grain and Laurion silver; and the panhellenic idea that unity and the conquest of Persia could solve Greece's problems

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How did Athens experience the oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants after its defeat in 404 BC, how was the democracy restored in 403 BC under the amnesty, and how did that charged post-war climate shape the trial of Socrates in 399 BC?

Athens after its defeat in 404 BC, the Spartan-imposed oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants under Critias and Theramenes, the reign of terror and the killing of metics and democrats, the resistance of Thrasybulus from Phyle and the Piraeus, the civil war and the restoration of the democracy in 403 BC, the amnesty, the trial and execution of Socrates in 399 BC in this charged climate, and Athens' partial recovery

The Ides of March 44 BC and its aftermath as the closing act in the fall of the Roman Republic: Caesar as dictator perpetuo and the monarchy question; the conspiracy of the Liberators and the assassination on 15 March 44 BC; the failure of the Liberators to restore the Republic - the Senate's amnesty, the reading of Caesar's will, Antony's funeral oration and the turning of the mob; the rise of the young Octavian as Caesar's heir; the confused politics of 44-43 BC (Cicero's Philippics, the war of Mutina, Octavian's march on Rome and first consulship); and why the Republic could not be revived after Caesar's death

Why did the killing of Caesar on the Ides of March 44 BC fail to restore the Republic, and why could the Republic no longer be revived once he was dead?

The founding of the nineteenth dynasty under Ramesses I (c. 1295-1294 BC); the reign of Seti I (c. 1294-1279 BC) as restorer of imperial power - the campaigns in the Levant, the first clashes with the Hittites over Syria and the recapture of Kadesh and Amurru, and the campaigns in Nubia and against the Libyans, recorded in the Karnak war reliefs; the building program (the Abydos temple and king list, the Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, and tomb KV17); and the training and possible co-regency of the young Ramesses II

How did Ramesses I and Seti I found the nineteenth dynasty and restore Egyptian imperial power, and how did Seti I's reign set up the reign of Ramesses II?

The rise of the dynasts in the period after Sulla, the extraordinary commands granted to Pompey by the lex Gabinia against the pirates in 67 BC and the lex Manilia against Mithridates in 66 BC and Pompey's settlement of the East, the wealth and ambition of Crassus, the politics of the consular decade at Rome including the Catilinarian Conspiracy of 63 BC and the rise of Caesar, and the Senate's short-sighted refusal to ratify Pompey's eastern settlement, to grant land to his veterans and to relieve Crassus's publicani, the blunder that drove the three men into a coalition

How did the extraordinary commands of Pompey, the wealth of Crassus and the political crises of the 60s BC raise a new kind of dynast whose ambitions the Republic's constitution could no longer contain?

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How did the Han fuse a Legalist administrative machine inherited from Qin with Confucian ethics and cosmology to build a bureaucratic Confucian empire, and why did that synthesis become the template for imperial China?

How the Han state was governed and how imperial ideology shifted from Qin Legalism to Han Confucianism - the Han synthesis of Confucian ethics over a Legalist administrative skeleton, the bureaucracy of the Three Excellencies and Nine Ministers and the commanderies and kingdoms, recruitment by recommendation and merit and the Imperial Academy, Dong Zhongshu and the cosmology of the Mandate of Heaven, the Confucian social order, and how this model became the template for imperial China

The Augustan settlement and its legacy at AD 14; the constitutional position of the princeps; the family dynamics of the Julio-Claudian dynasty; the succession question

What was the political and constitutional context of Rome at the death of Augustus in AD 14?

The campaigns of 479 BC at Plataea and Mycale, the role of Pausanias, the end of the Persian invasion, the reasons for the Greek victory, and the immediate consequences for Greek leadership

How was the Persian invasion finally defeated in 479 BC, and what were the reasons for the Greek victory?

Judah's last decades as a Babylonian vassal under Nebuchadnezzar II, from the establishment of Babylonian supremacy in the Levant after Carchemish in 605 BC, through Jehoiakim's revolt, the first capture of Jerusalem and the first deportation of 597 BC (the removal of Jehoiachin to Babylon, confirmed by the Babylonian Chronicle and the Jehoiachin ration tablets), Zedekiah's fatal revolt in reliance on Egypt and against Jeremiah's warnings, and the siege, destruction of the city and Temple and the second and major deportation of 587 or 586 BC (the Babylonian Exile); the fate of the survivors under Gedaliah and the flight to Egypt; and the significance of the Exile for Judaism, reconstructed from 2 Kings, Jeremiah, the Babylonian Chronicle, the Lachish letters and the archaeology of the destruction

How and why did the kingdom of Judah fall to Neo-Babylonian power between 605 and 586 BC, and what range of written and archaeological evidence allows historians to reconstruct the siege, destruction and exile that ended it?

The end of the 18th Dynasty and the transition to the 19th - the brief reign of Ay (c. 1327-1323 BC), the reign of the general Horemheb (c. 1323-1295 BC), the completion of the restoration, the erasure of the Amarna kings from the king lists, Horemheb's administrative and legal reforms including the Great Edict, his rebuilding of the army and administration and his building at Karnak, and his childless choice of the vizier Paramessu, the future Ramesses I, as successor

How did the reigns of Ay and Horemheb end the 18th Dynasty, complete the restoration after Amarna and rebuild Egypt's order and military strength, and how did Horemheb's choice of successor found the 19th Dynasty?

The political and military situation in Rome from the Ides of March (44 BC) to the formation of the Second Triumvirate (43 BC), including Octavian's claim as Caesar's heir, his manoeuvres against Antony, and the Battle of Mutina

How did Octavian emerge as Caesar's heir after the Ides of March?

The Second Intermediate Period and Hyksos rule in the north from Avaris; the Theban wars of liberation under Seqenenre Tao and Kamose; Ahmose I's expulsion of the Hyksos and the capture of Avaris and Sharuhen; the reunification and foundation of the Eighteenth Dynasty and New Kingdom; Ahmose's Nubian campaigns and early administration; and the tomb biography of Ahmose son of Ibana as a source

How did the Theban rulers expel the Hyksos and how did Ahmose I found the Eighteenth Dynasty and the New Kingdom?

Judah in the seventh century BC, the long Assyrian vassalage of Manasseh, the decline of Assyria and the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC to the Medes and Babylonians, the reign of Josiah c. 640 to 609 BC and his religious reform of 622 BC centred on the finding of the book of the Law and the centralisation of worship in Jerusalem, the Deuteronomic reform and its relationship to the composition of the biblical text, the death of Josiah at Megiddo in 609 BC, and the brief Egyptian and then Babylonian domination as Nebuchadnezzar II defeated Egypt at Carchemish in 605 BC, with Judah caught between the great powers

How did the collapse of Assyria, Josiah's Deuteronomic reform and the rise of Babylon reshape the kingdom of Judah in the seventh and early sixth centuries BC?

The reigns of Claudius (AD 41-54) and Nero (AD 54-68), the dynastic crisis of AD 68-69, the historiographical assessment of each, and the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty

How did Claudius and Nero rule, and how is their legacy assessed?

The liberation of Thebes in 379 BC and the rise of Boeotia, Epaminondas and Pelopidas and the Sacred Band, the tactical revolution and the defeat of Sparta at Leuctra in 371 BC, the liberation of Messenia and the founding of Megalopolis, the brief Theban hegemony, and the Battle of Mantinea in 362 BC

How did Thebes rise to break Spartan power at Leuctra, and why did its hegemony collapse at Mantinea in 362 BC?

The formation of the First Triumvirate in 60 BC as a private compact between Caesar, Pompey and Crassus; Caesar's consulship of 59 BC and its legislation; the sidelining of Bibulus and the Senate; the marriage alliance and the conference of Luca (56 BC); and the significance of the pact for the constitution of the Republic

How did the informal pact of 60 BC and Caesar's consulship of 59 BC weaken the constitutional government of the Roman Republic?

The reconciliation of Octavian, Antony and Lepidus and the formation of the Second Triumvirate by the lex Titia (27 November 43 BC); the proscriptions and the killing of Cicero; the deification of Caesar as Divus Iulius (42 BC); the campaign against the Liberators and the two battles of Philippi (October 42 BC) with the suicides of Cassius and Brutus; and the triumvirs' division of the Roman world that set up the eventual clash of Octavian and Antony

How did the Second Triumvirate and the defeat of the Liberators at Philippi in 42 BC bring the Roman Republic to its effective end?

The thematic cross-section of the period - the administration of the mature empire (the two viziers, the Viceroy of Kush, the army as a route to the throne, the growth of the Amun priesthood and its temple estates); the religious swing from Amun-centred orthodoxy, through the Aten of Akhenaten, to the Ramesside restoration, the rise of personal piety and the cult of the deified king; and society (the workmen of Deir el-Medina, royal women, scribes and officials, and the shift of the capital north to Pi-Ramesse), c. 1390-1213 BC

How did society, religion and administration develop across New Kingdom Egypt from Amenhotep III to the death of Ramesses II?

The civil war 49 to 45 BC, Caesar's seizure of Italy and Pompey's withdrawal to Greece, the Spanish campaign at Ilerda, the decisive battle of Pharsalus (48 BC) and Pompey's murder in Egypt, the Alexandrian War and Cleopatra, the defeat of the Pompeians and optimates at Zela (47 BC), Thapsus (46 BC) and Munda (45 BC), Caesar's accumulating dictatorships and clementia, and the replacement of the Republic in practice by the rule of one man

How did the great civil war of 49 to 45 BC destroy the Roman Republic in practice and leave Caesar the master of the Roman world?

Section III (Personalities): Agrippina the Younger

Agrippina the Younger's death in AD 59, including the role of Poppaea Sabina, the collapsing boat at Baiae, the murder at the Lucrine villa, Nero's justification to the Senate, and the consequences for Nero's reign

How and why did Agrippina the Younger die, and what was the impact of her death?

Agrippina the Younger's marriage to Claudius and her role as Augusta, including her political influence, public honours, adoption of Nero, and elimination of rivals

What was Agrippina the Younger's role and influence as the wife of Claudius?

Agrippina the Younger's background and rise to prominence, including her marriages to Cnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and Gaius Sallustius Passienus Crispus, her exile under Caligula, and her return under Claudius

How did Agrippina the Younger rise to prominence before her marriage to Claudius?

Agrippina the Younger's role and influence as the mother of Nero, including the accession of AD 54, her early dominance in his reign, the rivalry with Burrus and Seneca, and the loss of influence by AD 55

What was Agrippina the Younger's role and influence as the mother of Nero?

Agrippina the Younger's political influence and her use of officials, including the imperial freedmen (Pallas, Narcissus), the Praetorian Prefect Burrus, the tutor Seneca, and provincial appointments

How did Agrippina the Younger exercise political influence through officials and the imperial household?

Agrippina the Younger's public image and propaganda, including her coinage, statuary, public titles, religious offices, and ideological representation as wife of Claudius and mother of Nero

How did Agrippina the Younger construct and project her public image?

Agrippina the Younger's role in religion and foreign policy, including the deification of Claudius, the priesthood of the Divine Claudius, the founding of Colonia Agrippinensis, the British and Parthian-Armenian dimensions, and the Bosporan and client kingdom appointments

How did Agrippina the Younger influence religious policy and foreign affairs?

Akhenaten's family background and early years, including his parents Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, his birth name Amenhotep IV, the obscurity of his youth, the death of his elder brother Thutmose, his marriage to Nefertiti and the debate over her origins, the secondary wife Kiya, the six daughters, and the unresolved debate over a possible co-regency with Amenhotep III

What was Akhenaten's family background, and how do his marriages, children and the co-regency debate shape our understanding of his early years?

Akhenaten's foreign policy towards Nubia and the Levant, including the evidence of the Amarna letters, the Year 12 Nubian campaign and durbar, and the debate over imperial neglect versus continuity

How did Akhenaten manage Egypt's empire in Nubia and the Levant, and how far does the evidence support the charge that he neglected it?

Alexander the Great's background, accession and securing of power: his birth in 356 BC to Philip II of Macedon and Olympias of Epirus; his education by Aristotle at Mieza and early promise (the taming of Bucephalus, the regency at 16, and the command of the Companion cavalry at Chaeronea in 338 BC); the estrangement from Philip (the Pixodarus affair and Philip's marriage to Cleopatra-Eurydice); the assassination of Philip II in 336 BC and the debated question of Alexander's and Olympias' complicity; and the accession and ruthless securing of power in 336 to 335 BC, including the elimination of Attalus, Amyntas and Cleopatra-Eurydice, and the destruction of Thebes

What was Alexander's background and upbringing, and how did he accede to the Macedonian throne in 336 BC and secure his power against rivals at home and in Greece?

Alexander in Egypt 332 to 331 BC (welcomed as liberator, the foundation of Alexandria, the pilgrimage to the oracle of Ammon at Siwah and the son of Zeus-Ammon claim), the settlement of the empire's administration, the campaigns in Bactria and Sogdiana 329 to 327 BC (Spitamenes, the Sogdian Rock, guerrilla war), the marriage to Roxane, the founding of cities as garrisons and Hellenising centres, and the growing tensions with the Macedonians, handled through the critical use of Arrian, Plutarch and Curtius

How did Alexander's time in Egypt and his campaigns in the far east of the Persian empire shape his kingship, his image and his relationship with the Macedonians, and how do the ancient sources let us reconstruct them?

Alexander the Great in India and the return: the invasion of India from 327 BC; the battle of the Hydaspes against Porus in 326 BC, the war elephants, the death of Bucephalus and the founding of Bucephala; the mutiny of the army at the Hyphasis in 326 BC; the descent of the Indus and the Mallian wound; the disastrous march through the Gedrosian desert in 325 BC and the voyage of Nearchus' fleet; the return to the heartland; and the limits of conquest and the cost to the army, assessed through Arrian (and Nearchus) against the vulgate tradition

How did the campaign in India and the long march home expose the limits and the human cost of Alexander's conquests, and how far can Arrian and the vulgate be trusted to reconstruct them?

Caesar's family background, including the political position of the gens Julia and its connections to Marius and Cinna; his early years, including his defiance of Sulla; his military start and the corona civica; his capture by pirates; and his early career through the cursus honorum to the propraetorship of Further Spain in 61 BC

What was Julius Caesar's family background, and how did his early career shape his later rise?

Caesar's civil war and the defeat of Pompey: the breakdown of the First Triumvirate following the deaths of Julia (54 BC) and Crassus at Carrhae (53 BC), and Pompey's drift to the optimates and sole consulship in 52 BC; the political crisis of 50-49 BC over Caesar's command and his demand to stand for the consulship in absentia; the crossing of the Rubicon (10 January 49 BC) and the outbreak of civil war; the campaigns - the swift seizure of Italy, Spain (Ilerda), the decisive defeat of Pompey at Pharsalus (48 BC) and Pompey's murder in Egypt; the Alexandrian War and Cleopatra; Zela (47 BC); and the defeat of the remaining Pompeians at Thapsus (46 BC) and Munda (45 BC)

How did the breakdown of the First Triumvirate lead to civil war in 49 BC, and how did Caesar defeat Pompey and the Pompeians to become master of the Roman world?

Caesar's dictatorship and reforms: the escalating grants of power from the first dictatorship in 49 BC to dictator perpetuo in February 44 BC; the reforms - the Julian calendar (46 BC), debt and land legislation, colonisation and veteran settlement, the extension of citizenship, the enlargement of the Senate, public works, and the curbing of the corn dole; clementia as a policy; and the accumulation of honours and the monarchy question (the diadem, the Lupercalia offer of 44 BC, and divine honours), which set the stage for his assassination

How did Caesar accumulate power between 49 and 44 BC, what did he do with it as dictator, and how did his reforms and honours turn the Roman elite against him?

Hatshepsut's building program, including the mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri, the obelisks at Karnak, the Speos Artemidos, and the political and religious purposes of the construction projects

What was the purpose and significance of Hatshepsut's building program?

Hatshepsut's foreign policy and trade, including the expedition to Punt, the campaigns in Nubia, the management of Sinai mining, and the wider question of whether her reign was militarily peaceful

What was Hatshepsut's foreign policy and trade activity?

Hatshepsut's religious policy and propaganda, including the cult of Amun-Re, the divine birth narrative, the office of God's Wife of Amun, the Opet and Valley festivals, and the role of religious legitimation

What was Hatshepsut's religious policy and how did it legitimise her reign?

Hatshepsut's rise from Great Royal Wife to regent to pharaoh, including the political and religious basis of her authority, the chronology of her coronation, and the iconographic shift to male royal regalia

How and why did Hatshepsut rise from regent to pharaoh?

Pericles' family background and rise to prominence, including his birth c. 495 BC into the Alcmaeonid family through his mother Agariste, niece of the reformer Cleisthenes, and his father Xanthippus, victor of Mycale; the inherited curse of the Alcmaeonids; his early career as choregos for Aeschylus' Persae in 472 BC; his alliance with Ephialtes and the attack on the Areopagus in 462/1 BC; the ostracism of Cimon in 461 BC; the assassination of Ephialtes; and his emergence as leader

What was Pericles' family background, and how did his Alcmaeonid inheritance and early career shape his rise to political leadership at Athens?

Pericles' political reforms and radical democracy: state pay for jurors and other public office (misthophoria) opening participation to poorer citizens; the citizenship law of 451/450 BC; the completion of the Ephialtic reduction of the Areopagus; his repeated election as strategos; and the ancient debate over whether he led or followed the demos

What were Pericles' political reforms, and did they make him the leader or the servant of Athens's radical democracy?

Pericles and the Acropolis building program from 447 BC: the Parthenon (447-432 BC; Ictinus and Callicrates; Phidias and the chryselephantine Athena Parthenos), the Propylaea (437-432 BC; Mnesicles), the Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena Nike; Phidias as general overseer; the controversy over funding the program from imperial tribute (Plutarch, Pericles 12-14) and the political attack led by Thucydides, son of Melesias; the program as employment, imperial propaganda and the visual expression of Athenian imperial democracy; and the trials of Phidias, Anaxagoras and Aspasia as attacks on Pericles

How did Pericles use the Acropolis building program as an instrument of employment, imperial propaganda and personal political power, and how did his enemies use it and his associates against him?

Qin Shi Huangdi's background and rise to King of Qin, including his birth as Ying Zheng in 259 BC at Handan, the merchant Lu Buwei and the paternity question in Sima Qian's Shiji, his accession as King of Qin in 246 BC aged about thirteen with Lu Buwei as regent and chancellor, the Lao Ai revolt of 238 BC and its suppression, the fall of Lu Buwei, the young king's assumption of personal control, and the roles of Li Si and the Legalist court

What was Qin Shi Huangdi's background, and how did Ying Zheng rise from a hostage prince's son at Handan to King of Qin in personal control of the Legalist court?

Qin Shi Huangdi's standardisation and public works: the standardisation of the script (small seal script under Li Si), weights, measures, the round banliang coinage and cart axle-widths; the great public works, including the network of imperial highways and the 'straight road' (zhidao), the Lingqu canal, the linking of the northern walls into the 'Great Wall' under Meng Tian, and the Epang Palace; and the human cost of conscript and convict labour, handled through the archaeological evidence and a critical reading of Sima Qian

How did Qin Shi Huangdi use standardisation and vast public works to weld the conquered Warring States into a single empire, and how far can the sources be trusted on their achievement and their cost?

Qin Shi Huangdi and the unification of China in 221 BC: the conquest of the six warring states in sequence (Han 230, Zhao 228, Wei 225, Chu 223, Yan 222, Qi 221 BC); the strategy of diplomacy, bribery and overwhelming force directed by Li Si, Wei Liao and the generals Wang Jian and Wang Ben; the failed assassination attempt by Jing Ke in 227 BC; the proclamation of the new imperial title Shi Huangdi and its ideological meaning; and the scale of the achievement, assessed through the critical use of Sima Qian and the archaeological record

How did the King of Qin conquer the six rival warring states between 230 and 221 BC, and why did he mark that unification by inventing the new title Shi Huangdi?

Xerxes and the building program at Persepolis: his completion of the Apadana begun by Darius I, the Gate of All Nations (inscription XPa), the Hundred-Column Throne Hall, the Palace of Xerxes (Hadish) and the Tripylon, the Apadana tribute-bearer reliefs as imperial ideology, his continued building at Susa, and the propaganda function of the royal building inscriptions and reliefs

How did Xerxes I use the building program at Persepolis to express Achaemenid kingship and the ideology of a unified empire?

Xerxes' background, family and accession, including his descent from Darius I and Atossa (daughter of Cyrus the Great), his upbringing as crown prince, the legitimacy dispute with his elder half-brother Artobazanes reported by Herodotus (7.2-3), the death of Darius I in 486 BC, the smooth accession, and the early consolidation of his reign against the revolts in Egypt and Babylon

What were Xerxes' family background and lineage, and how did the succession dispute with Artobazanes and the death of Darius I in 486 BC shape his accession?

Xerxes and the revolts in Egypt and Babylon: the Egyptian revolt of 486 to 485 BC inherited from the end of Darius' reign and its suppression; the Babylonian revolts under Bel-shimanni and Shamash-eriba around 484 BC and Xerxes' response; and the disputed destruction of the Esagila, the removal of the statue of Marduk-Bel and the dropping of the title King of Babylon, weighing the Greek tradition against the modern revisionist critique

How did Xerxes respond to the revolts in Egypt and Babylon early in his reign, and how far can the tradition that he sacked Babylon's great temple and removed the statue of Marduk be trusted?

Xerxes and the invasion of Greece 480 to 479 BC: his motives for the campaign; the preparations, including the Hellespont bridges, the Athos canal and the muster at Doriscus; the course of the campaign - Thermopylae and Artemisium, the sack of Athens, the decisive naval defeat at Salamis, the withdrawal to Asia leaving Mardonius, and the final defeats at Plataea and Mycale in 479 BC; an assessment of Xerxes as a commander; and the problems of the largely Greek and victor-authored sources, especially Herodotus and Aeschylus

Why did Xerxes invade Greece in 480 BC, how was the campaign fought and lost, and how far can we reconstruct it from the largely Greek and victor-authored sources?

The death of Akhenaten in his seventeenth regnal year, the mystery of his burial and the KV55 debate, the succession through Neferneferuaten, Smenkhkare and Tutankhamun, the counter-revolution and proscription of Akhenaten's memory, and ancient and modern evaluations of his reign, including the problems of evidence

How did Akhenaten's reign end, and how have ancient and modern historians evaluated his impact and legacy?

The death of Hatshepsut, the identification of her mummy (KV 60), and the proscription (damnatio memoriae) by Thutmose III, including the timing, scope, and proposed motivations

How did Hatshepsut die and what was the proscription under Thutmose III?

The last year of Alexander the Great: the death of Hephaestion in 324 BC and Alexander's grief; the final plans, including the Arabian expedition and the 'last plans'; his death at Babylon in June 323 BC aged 32 and the debate over its cause (fever versus the poisoning tradition); the succession crisis ('to the strongest' and the ring of Perdiccas); the settlement at Babylon under Philip III Arrhidaeus and the infant Alexander IV; the outbreak of the Wars of the Diadochi and the fragmentation of the empire; and the destruction of the royal family

How did the death of Hephaestion, Alexander's own death at Babylon in 323 BC and the succession crisis that followed shape the fate of his empire, and how have ancient and modern historians explained his death and the collapse of his settlement?

The evolution of Alexander the Great's kingship: the adoption of Persian dress and court ceremonial; the attempt to introduce proskynesis in 327 BC and Callisthenes' resistance; the debate over a policy of fusion; the tensions with the Macedonians (the murder of Cleitus the Black, the Philotas affair and the execution of Parmenio, the Pages' Conspiracy); the mass marriages at Susa in 324 BC; the integration of Persians into the army; the Opis mutiny and the banquet of reconciliation; and Alexander's deification and divine honours, assessed through Arrian, Plutarch and Curtius

How did Alexander's kingship evolve as he took over the Persian empire, and how far did his adoption of Persian custom, his treatment of the Macedonians and his claim to divine honours amount to a coherent policy?

The officials of Hatshepsut's court, including Senenmut, Hapuseneb, Nehesi, Ineni, Useramen, and Senimen, their roles and influence, and their relationship to Hatshepsut

Who were the key officials of Hatshepsut's court?

An evaluation of Qin Shi Huangdi's reign and legacy: the problem that almost the entire literary tradition descends from Sima Qian's Han-era Shiji; the hostile-successor and Confucian condemnation of the First Emperor as tyrant and book-burner against the archaeological record; the modern reassessment of him as founder of a unified China whose institutions later dynasties inherited; and the caution offered by ideological readings such as the Mao-era rehabilitation

How have ancient and modern historians evaluated Qin Shi Huangdi, and what problems of evidence shape that debate?

The final years of Pericles: the opening of the Peloponnesian War and the defensive strategy under strain; the plague of Athens 430 to 429 BC and its social, moral and personal effects, including the deaths of his legitimate sons; his deposition, fine and re-election as strategos; the citizenship grant to his son by Aspasia; his death in 429 BC; the failure of his strategy under his successors; and ancient and modern evaluations of the Periclean Age

How did the first years of the Peloponnesian War, the plague of Athens and Pericles' death shape his reputation, and how have ancient and modern historians evaluated his legacy?

The assassination of Caesar and its aftermath: the conspiracy of the Liberators (Marcus Brutus, Cassius and Decimus Brutus) and the mixture of ideological and personal motives that drew more than sixty senators into it; the assassination in the Curia of Pompey on 15 March 44 BC; the immediate aftermath - the Senate's amnesty debate, the reading of Caesar's will, Antony's funeral oration and the fury of the mob; the failure of the Liberators; the rise of Octavian, the formation of the Second Triumvirate in 43 BC and the proscriptions; the deification of Caesar and the sidus Iulium; and the road to the defeat of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in 42 BC

Why did the conspirators assassinate Caesar on the Ides of March 44 BC, and why did the killing destroy the Liberators rather than restore the Republic?

The foreign policy of Pericles and the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War: the First Peloponnesian War and the Thirty Years' Peace of 446/5 BC; the grievances over Corcyra (433 BC), Potidaea (432 BC) and above all the Megarian Decree; Pericles' refusal to compromise and his defensive grand strategy of abandoning Attica and relying on the Long Walls and the fleet; and ancient and modern assessments of whether his policy caused the war

How did Pericles' foreign policy and grand strategy shape the outbreak and early conduct of the Peloponnesian War, and how do ancient and modern historians judge his responsibility for it?

The nature and impact of Akhenaten's religious policies, including the elevation of the Aten, the change of name from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten, the nature of Atenism and the monotheism debate, the suppression of the cult of Amun, and the impact on traditional religious life

What was the nature and impact of Akhenaten's religious revolution?

The historical context of Caesar's career: the crisis of the late Roman Republic, including the legacy of the Gracchi, Marius and Sulla, the optimates versus populares divide, the rise of army-backed dynasts such as Pompey and Crassus, senatorial politics, and the mos maiorum under strain; and the nature and range of the ancient sources available for studying Caesar, including his own Commentarii, Cicero's letters and speeches, and the later accounts of Suetonius, Plutarch, Appian and Cassius Dio

What crisis in Roman politics and society produced Julius Caesar, and what range of ancient sources do we have for studying his career?

The career and policies of Pericles in the context of the Athenian empire: the transformation of the Delian League into empire; the transfer of the treasury from Delos to Athens in 454 BC; tribute (phoros) and the tribute quota lists as epigraphic evidence; the use of imperial revenue for the building program; the coercion of allies, cleruchies and the coinage decree; the Congress Decree and the panhellenic claim; and ancient and modern interpretations of Athenian imperialism

How did Pericles transform the Delian League into the Athenian empire, what were the aims and instruments of his imperial policy, and how have ancient and modern historians judged that policy given the problems of the evidence?

The nature and significance of Xerxes' religious policy, including his devotion to Ahura Mazda and Achaemenid royal ideology, the daiva inscription (XPh) and the debate over whether it records a real religious campaign, his treatment of local cults at Babylon, Egypt and the Greek temples burned in 480 BC, and the royal fire cult

What was the nature of Xerxes' religious policy, and how far does the evidence support the idea of a deliberate campaign of religious persecution?

The terracotta army and the tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi: the Mount Li necropolis begun c. 246 BC and escalating after the unification of 221 BC; the 1974 discovery near Xi'an; the three main pits and the estimated 8,000 figures; the individualised faces, functional bronze weapons, chariots, assembly-line production and workshop marks; the unexcavated tomb-mound and Sima Qian's description of the mercury rivers; and what the site reveals about afterlife belief, imperial ideology and Qin organisation, including the way the archaeology both corroborates and corrects the written sources

What does the Mount Li necropolis, its terracotta army and its unexcavated tomb reveal about Qin Shi Huangdi's beliefs, imperial ideology and the organisation of his state, and how does this archaeological evidence corroborate and correct the written account of Sima Qian?

The ancient and modern evaluation of Alexander the Great: the problem of evidence that no contemporary narrative survives and that every surviving account descends from later writers using lost sources (Arrian from Ptolemy and Aristobulus; the vulgate from Cleitarchus; the propaganda of Callisthenes and the hostile Peripatetic tradition); the ancient images of the invincible hero against the drunken tyrant; the modern debate between the romantic idealising tradition of W.W. Tarn's chivalrous visionary with a dream of the 'unity of mankind' and the revisionist tradition of Ernst Badian and Brian Bosworth's ruthless, paranoid autocrat; the more recent balanced and reception scholarship; and the assessment of his achievement and legacy

How have ancient and modern historians evaluated Alexander the Great, and how do the problems of the surviving evidence shape that debate?

The ancient and modern evaluation of Pericles: the dominant pro-Periclean tradition of Thucydides against the hostile contemporary comedy of Cratinus and Aristophanes and the much later anecdotal Plutarch; ancient assessments of his role; the modern debate between Pericles as the visionary architect of Athenian democracy and greatness and Pericles as a populist demagogue and imperialist whose policies led to the Peloponnesian War and the plague; the 'Periclean Age' as a construct; and the problems of evidence

How have ancient and modern historians evaluated Pericles, and how do the problems of the surviving evidence shape that debate?

Ancient and modern interpretations of Agrippina the Younger, including Tacitus, Suetonius, Cassius Dio, Pliny the Elder, the senatorial tradition, and modern reassessments by Barrett, Ginsburg, Wood, and others

How have ancient and modern historians interpreted Agrippina the Younger?

The administration of the empire under Xerxes: his continuation of Darius I's satrapy system, tribute and the Royal Road; the ideology of kingship expressed in his royal inscriptions (King of Kings, the favour of Ahuramazda, order against the Lie); the court at Persepolis; royal women and eunuchs; and the continuity-versus-change and 'decline' debate, drawing on the Persepolis tablets, royal inscriptions and Herodotus

How did Xerxes I govern the Persian Empire, and how far did his administration continue the system built by Darius I?

The historical context for the study of Akhenaten: the geography of Egypt and its neighbours; the roles and images of Egyptian kingship, including divine kingship and the concept of Ma'at; the historical setting of the mid-18th Dynasty at its height under Amenhotep III; the wealth and power of the Amun priesthood at Thebes; and the nature, range and limitations of the sources for Akhenaten's reign

What geographic, religious and political context shaped Egypt on the eve of Akhenaten's reign, and what range of sources survives to reconstruct it?

The historical context for the study of Alexander the Great: the geography and situation of the kingdom of Macedon and the Argead monarchy; the transformation of Macedon under Philip II through his army reforms and the sarissa phalanx; the unification of Greece by force at Chaeronea and through the League of Corinth in 337 BC and the planned invasion of Persia; the Achaemenid Persian empire that Alexander would attack; and the nature, range and limitations of the sources, given that no contemporary narrative survives and our accounts (the vulgate of Diodorus, Curtius Rufus and Justin, Arrian, and Plutarch) are all centuries later

What kind of kingdom produced Alexander the Great, what empire did he set out to attack, and what range of much later sources survives to reconstruct his reign?

The historical context for the study of Pericles: the geography and situation of Athens in the fifth century BC; post-Persian-War Athens and the foundation of the Delian League; the transformation of the League into an Athenian empire; the rise of radical democracy through the reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles; and the nature, range and limitations of the sources, including Thucydides, Plutarch's Life of Pericles, Aristotle's Athenaion Politeia, Old Comedy, and the tribute and building inscriptions

What kind of Athens produced Pericles, and what range of ancient sources survives to reconstruct his world and career?

The last years and the assassination of Xerxes in 465 BC, the court conspiracy of Artabanus the chiliarch, the accession of Artaxerxes I, an assessment of the reign and the empire's condition, and the problem of evidence: the hostile Greek tradition, Persian royal self-presentation, and modern revisionist interpretations

How did Xerxes' reign end, and how have ancient and modern historians evaluated his reign and image?

The historical context for the study of Xerxes: the geography and extent of the Achaemenid empire inherited from Darius I; the ideology of Persian kingship under Ahura Mazda; the administrative structure of the empire c. 486 BC; an overview of the reign c. 486 to 465 BC; and the nature, range and limitations of the sources, from Herodotus and Aeschylus' Persae to the Persian royal inscriptions and the archaeology of Persepolis, with the problem of a Greek-dominated tradition

What geographic, political and ideological context shaped the Achaemenid empire Xerxes inherited, and what range of sources survives to reconstruct it?

The early building program of Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten at Thebes, including the Aten temples of East Karnak and the talatat blocks as an evidence source, and the officials of the court, including Ay, Horemheb, Nakht, Meryre, Huya and Bek, their roles, and the evidence of their rock-cut tombs at Amarna

What was the nature of Akhenaten's early building program at Thebes, and who were the key officials who rose with him?

The administration and Legalist reforms of Qin Shi Huangdi, including the abolition of the feudal fiefs and the commandery-county (jun-xian) system of centralised bureaucracy, Legalism (fa) as state ideology under Han Feizi and Li Si with its primacy of law, reward and punishment over Confucian virtue, the burning of the books in 213 BC and the alleged burying of the scholars in 212 BC, the relocation of the aristocracy to Xianyang, the census, mutual-responsibility groups and universal law, and the historiographical contrast between Confucian condemnation and modern reassessment

How did Qin Shi Huangdi and his chancellor Li Si use Legalist ideas and a new commandery-county bureaucracy to replace the old feudal order with a centralised state, and how far should the Confucian tradition's condemnation of that state, above all the burning of the books and the burying of the scholars, be trusted?

The historical context and family background of Hatshepsut, including the early 18th Dynasty, the reigns of Ahmose I, Amenhotep I, Thutmose I, and Thutmose II, and the political and religious landscape of New Kingdom Egypt

What was the historical context of Hatshepsut's reign?

The historiography and modern interpretations of Hatshepsut, including the ancient sources, the early Egyptologists (Naville, Maspero), the 'usurper queen' view, and the modern revisions of Tyldesley, Dorman, and Roehrig

How has Hatshepsut been interpreted by ancient and modern historians?

The images, interpretations and evaluation of Julius Caesar: the problem of the sources, including Caesar's own Commentarii as self-fashioning and the hostile and favourable ancient traditions (Cicero, Sallust, Suetonius, Plutarch, Appian, Cassius Dio); Caesar's self-image in coinage, clementia and the cult of Divus Iulius; ancient assessments of his career; and the modern historiographical debate over whether Caesar was a constructive reformer or an opportunistic destroyer of the Republic, from the great-man tradition of Mommsen and Gelzer to the revisionist prosopography of Syme, Meier's crisis without alternative, and Goldsworthy

How did Caesar shape his own image, how did ancient and modern writers interpret him, and was he a constructive reformer or an opportunist who destroyed the Republic?

artistic innovations and representations of the Aten, Akhenaten and the royal family; the role of Nefertiti and the issue of the co-regency

What do Amarna art and the role of Nefertiti reveal about Akhenaten's religious revolution and the possibility of a female co-regent?

The historical and geographical context for the study of Qin Shi Huangdi: the Warring States period and the rise of the western state of Qin; the Legalist reforms of Shang Yang under Duke Xiao; the world Ying Zheng was born into in 259 BC; an overview of the reign from king of Qin in 246 BC to First Emperor 221 to 210 BC; and the nature, range and limitations of the sources, from Sima Qian's Shiji to the archaeology of the tomb complex

What geographical and historical context shaped the state of Qin and the world Ying Zheng was born into, and what sources survive to reconstruct it?

The historical, geographical, social, and political context of Agrippina the Younger, including the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the status of imperial women, and her family background as the daughter of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder

What was the historical context of Agrippina the Younger's life?

The political and religious motives for the transfer of the capital to Akhetaten; the function and layout of Akhetaten

Why did Akhenaten transfer the capital to Akhetaten, and how did the function and layout of the new city express his political and religious aims?

the formation of the First Triumvirate in 60 BC, cemented by the marriage of Pompey to Caesar's daughter Julia; Caesar's consulship of 59 BC, including the agrarian law for Pompey's veterans, the ratification of Pompey's eastern settlement, tax relief for Crassus's publicani, and the lex Vatinia; and the securing of allies through the tribune Clodius and the marriage to Calpurnia

How did Caesar form the First Triumvirate and use his consulship of 59 BC to advance his own and his allies' interests?

The conquest of Gaul (58-50 BC): the campaigns against the Helvetii and Ariovistus (58 BC), the Belgae (57 BC), the Veneti and the naval war (56 BC), the two expeditions to Britain (55, 54 BC), the crossing of the Rhine, and the great revolt of Vercingetorix crushed at the siege of Alesia (52 BC); the significance of the conquest for Caesar's wealth and his veteran army; the Commentarii de Bello Gallico as both the main source and a work of political self-promotion

How did the conquest of Gaul (58-50 BC) transform Caesar's wealth, army and political position, and how far can his own account of it be trusted?

The conquest of the Persian empire: the invasion of Asia in 334 BC (the crossing of the Hellespont and the visit to Troy); the three great set-piece battles of Granicus (334 BC), Issus (333 BC) and Gaugamela (331 BC); the sieges of Tyre and Gaza (332 BC); the seizure of the sinews of empire at Sardis, Babylon, Susa and Persepolis (burned 330 BC); the pursuit and death of Darius III (330 BC); Alexander's generalship; and the nature of the sources, especially Arrian's account drawn from Ptolemy against the vulgate tradition

How did Alexander conquer the Persian empire between 334 and 330 BC, and how far can we reconstruct that conquest from Arrian and the vulgate tradition?

The First Emperor's search for immortality and his death: the imperial tours and the stone inscriptions, including the feng and shan sacrifices at Mount Tai and the Langya inscription; the fangshi and Xu Fu's expeditions to find the isles of the immortals; the immortality elixirs and the mercury irony; the assassination attempts and growing paranoia; the death at Shaqiu in 210 BC and its concealment by Zhao Gao and Li Si; the forged succession and the rapid collapse of the Qin by 207 to 206 BC; and the historiography of Sima Qian and the hostile-successor tradition

How did Qin Shi Huangdi's search for immortality end, how was his death concealed, and how have ancient and modern historians explained the rapid collapse of his dynasty?