Please enjoy these student-created guides to written primary sources that pertain to race and antiquity. These guides are meant to help you understand these texts and their contexts — never as a substitute for doing the work yourself!
Many thanks to students in Nandini Pandey’s Spring 2024 classics lab at Johns Hopkins for creating these guides. Books are arranged by culture/period.
Archaic and Classical Greece
HOMER: ODYSSEY
The Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus – the king of a small island, Ithaca – and his ten-year attempt to return home after the Trojan War in Anatolia. During his journey, Odysseus must contend with wrathful gods, monsters, and the loss of his crew. Meanwhile, Odysseus’s wife, Penelope, and son, Telemachus, are attempting to fight off a hoard of suitors vying for Penelope’s hand in marriage in a bid to ascend the throne.
By Yasmina Mansour and Jordan Rocha.
AESCHYLUS: PERSIANS
The Persians depicts the aftermath of the Greco-Persian War in the fifth century BCE. Readers are introduced to the Persian Court, which includes several high-ranking members of their government that make up the Chorus and Atossa, the queen and Xerxes' mother. Throughout the play, messengers tell the court of the failed campaign against Greece and see the despair that enveloped all the characters, including King Xerxes, when he returns crestfallen.
By Lizzy Stamper
AESCHYLUS: SUPPLIANTS
The Suppliants (also known as the Supplices or The Suppliant Women) is a tragic play originally written in Greek by the Athenian playwright Aeschylus (525 - 456 BCE). Notably, Aeschylus also served as a soldier for the city-state of Athens in the Persian Wars, which may have influenced his writing on themes of war, its aftermath and violence.
By Lauren Cook.
HIPPOCRATES: ON AIRS, WATERS, PLACES
On Airs, Waters, and Places is part of the Hippocratic Corpus, a collection of around 60 medical texts traditionally attributed to the Greek physician Hippocrates (460 - 375 BCE). Hippocrates lived during the Classical Period and is widely recognized as “the father of medicine”. His Corpus continues to influence the field of medicine today.
By Mrigaanka Sharma.
HERODOTUS: HISTORIES
Herodotus (c.484-c.425 BC) was a Greek historian whom the ancient Roman orator Cicero described as “the Father of History.” Born in the Greek city of Halicarnassus (current day Bodrum, Turkey) and later a citizen of Thurii (current day Calabria, Italy), Herodotus is best known for writing the Histories, one of the earliest examples of historical writing, with rich ethnographic details and focus on the Greco-Persian Wars.
By Jennifer Marks and Marie Wei.
Ancient Rome
VERGIL: AENEID
The Aeneid, written in the first century BCE by the Latin poet Vergil, tells the story of Aeneas, a survivor of the Siege of Troy and leader of the Trojans. Tasked by the gods to found Rome, a new homeland for his people, Aeneas faces shipwreck, a passionate love, and a great war on his journey.
By Madeleine Grabarczyk and Virankha Peter.
TACITUS: GERMANIA
Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus’s (c. 57 CE - death date unknown) Germania is an ancient ethnography, written in 98 CE, about the Germanic peoples outside of the Roman Empire. Tacitus aims to familiarize his readers with the Germani – a group the Romans had been long exposed to via conflict and commercial exchange – as a whole, as well as with each group’s characteristic variations.
By Hilary Gallito and Jacqueline Rosenkranz.
Other texts, before and after…
We would love volunteers to create resources reflecting the ethnic, cultural, and temporal diversity of the ancient world!
The Amarna Letters
Field Guide by Yasmina Mansour