HIEU 2031

I took this class as an audit credit (meaning I have 0 requirements beyond attending lecture) and this was the best class I have ever taken. I took the class as an audit credit because I am an e-school student and I didn't have time (nor did I want to) read 100s of pages a week or write essays. But the lectures are AMAZING. Lendon is an incredible teacher. He knows so much about the history of Greece and is so excited to share his knowledge. The lectures are basically like a story time because of the way he lectures and his familiarity with the material. I 100% recommend this class.

I cannot emphasize enough that you should not take this course unless A. you have a passionate interest in Greek history or B. you have a sadistic urge to torture yourself. I'll admit that I realized what I was in for after the very first lecture but stubbornly refused to drop because I had already bought all the books (a rookie mistake, to be sure). Before I explain why you should exercise caution before taking this course, I want to emphasize that this has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of instruction. Professor Lendon is by far the best lecturer I have had during my time at UVA. He is deeply knowledgeable, entertaining, and makes fifty minutes feel like ten. I'm serious, he's an absolute gem of a professor. If you have the time in your schedule and any interest in the subject, I would highly recommend auditing this course (attending the lectures without having to do any of the work) because they are truly fascinating. I actually really enjoyed the content covered in this class and never missed one of Lendon's lectures. However. And this a big however! This class is extremely challenging. There are hundreds of pages of reading each week, composed of textbook reading and reading from original sources. The textbook reading is incredibly dry and the source readings are also hard to get through. There is a discussion each week to go over the source reading, which was sometimes less than helpful. There were quizzes in discussion about every other week, which consisted of anything from a map quiz of ancient Greece to a vocab quiz to a dissection of a passage from the reading. The overall theme of these quizzes (and all evaluations in the class for that matter) is that you will nearly kill yourself studying every detail that could possibly be tested and then only be quizzed on a small part of what you know. For example, for the map quiz in the first week of discussion, we were obliged to memorize the exact locations of forty cities and only quizzed on ten. The same was true with the vocab quiz; there were thirty-six terms that were fair game and the quiz only contained three. Moving on from quizzes, there are two seven-page papers during the semester, one on all of Herodotus and one on all of Thucydides. Yes, all! You have the option to either write both (and receive the better of the two grades) or choose one. I chose to skip the first one on Herodotus and only write the one on Thucydides. I did this because I thought Thucydides was easier to write on and felt that I had a better grasp on general course concepts at that point in the semester. It's worth noting that you don't actually have to read every single page of either author to do well on these papers. A well-balanced combination of a general comprehension of the author's main ideas supported by detailed explanations of specific events that prove your thesis should get you an A. Finally, the exams. There is a mid-term and a semi-cumulative final. These are absolutely grueling experiences. I would rather be dragged around the walls of Troy by my ankles like Hector or be a citizen of Melos in 416 B.C. than have to study for or take one of these exams ever again. Both exams are entirely hand-written and include term IDs, passage IDs from the original sources, and essays. The midterm is especially brutal because you are expected to cover all three sections in only fifty minutes. The final covered more material and contained more passage IDs and essays but was taken over three hours. Again, you will almost drive yourself mad studying every single term that could possibly appear on the exam. The final covered eight weeks of content and there were around 250-ish terms that were fair game. Of these 250, only 15 appeared on the exam so you really had to study every single thing in detail in case it happened to appear. There was no obvious correlation between the most important people/events and the terms that were chosen for either exam. The passage IDs were particularly brutal on the final. The essay prompts aren't difficult if you are a good writer and can pull in specific details and dates from memory to support your broader observations on the general themes of the class; however, by this point in the exam your hand is cramping and the room is starting to spin a little. So, in conclusion: this is an incredibly difficult but interesting course with an awesome professor. Only take it if you are ready to want to die a little bit every week and ready to want to die a lot in preparation for the exams. So, who should take this class? In the words of Alexander the Great, "the strongest!"