Ancient Greek Language and Literature

The study of the ancient Greek language and literature allows students to obtain firm linguistic competences in ancient Greek and introduces them to the world of ancient Greece, whose brightest minds set foundations of the European literature, established Western philosophical and scientific tradition, and entrusted the future generations with the heritage of first democratic principles and values of the civic society. The minor degree of the programme focuses on the ancient Greek language. As such, it primarily serves to satisfy the needs of the students of those study programmes, in which ancient Greek is potentially one of the source languages (e.g., philosophy, history of the antiquity, Latin language and literature, modern Greek, classical archaeology, religious studies, general and Indo-European linguistics etc.). The major and the completus of the programme lead to the in-depth knowledge of all important historical and socio-cultural aspects of the world of Greek Antiquity via courses on Greek literature, philosophy, mythology, history, art and religions. The study of the language whose morphology ranks among the most difficult in the domain of the Indo-European languages will deepen the general linguistic competences and facilitate the understanding of a wide range of technical terminology in various fields of study, which is largely built on the ancient Greek foundations. The knowledge acquired by the study of the ancient Greek world will lead to a better orientation in most domains of European culture and scholarship.

After successfully completing his/her studies the graduate is able to:

• describe morphological and syntactic structures of the Attic dialect of ancient Greek;
• read, translate and interpret ancient Greek texts written in the Attic dialect;
• characterize respective developmental stages of ancient Greek literature and their most important figures.
• work with scholarly literature and to have a good overview of the most important study aids, both in print and online (electronic databases, specialized lexicons, basic handbooks and encyclopaedic works);
• write an academic text based on sound scholarship that substantiates the graduate’s ability to work autonomously;
• demonstrate the basic knowledge of the Ancient Greek history;
• provide an overview of the history of Classical philology, especially Greek philology;
• display a sound command of the most important methodological approaches in the fields of linguistics and literary theory;
• connect the knowledge of Ancient Greek literature and lignuistic competenced in Ancient Greek with consilient scientific domains.

Following the successful completion of the bachelor’s degree, the graduate will have all the necessary philological competences for self-dependent reading and translation of the ancient Greek texts written in the Attic dialects, which he/she will be able to interpret on the wider socio-cultural background of the world of the Antiquity. Graduates that successfully completed the study of ancient Greek in combination with another professionally related field of study (e.g., religious studies, history, archaeology, philosophy) will be able to work with the primary source materials in their original format. The graduate may continue to further his/her knowledge of the ancient Greece in the Master’s study programme, successful completion of which makes the graduate eligible for the teaching of ancient Greek at classical colleges and universities. Graduate will find further work opportunities in various humanities departments of the Academy of the Sciences, in museums, libraries or in archives and in all professions requiring wider socio-cultural formation and dignified expression in word and writing.

A standard scope of a Bachelor's thesis ranges from 72,000 to 90,000 characters including footnotes, cover sheet, content, index, list of literature, and annotations. Student chooses the subject of the thesis according to his/her own preferences, either from the set of subjects already available in the Information system or in discussion with the potential supervisor. The Bachelor's thesis demonstrates the ability of the student to orientate himself/herself in the basic scholarly literature written on the subject, both domestic and foreign, to evaluate critically the state of scholarship and to formulate and defend his/her own hypotheses.

Following the completion of the Bachelor's studies and subject to satisfying the admission requirements, graduates may continue their studies in the Master's degree programme of ancient Greek language and literature.