Course descriptionThe Department of Classics at Furman offers courses in the languages and cultures of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. The department offers majors in Greek and Latin and participates in the Greek and Roman Studies concentration.
The ancient world is fascinating, and the languages of Greece and Rome are beautiful and difficult. The students who study Classics are, consequently, among the top scholars at Furman; they consistently earn top scores on such pre-graduate and professional exams as the GRE (for graduate school), the MCAT (for medical school), and the LSAT (for law school). And all our students are forever set apart from the crowd by their study of the Greek and Roman world.
Greek and Roman Studies refer to those disciplines that study the culture, civilization and heritage of Greece and Rome, from roughly the Bronze Age (3000-1000 BCE) to the fifth century CE, and of those parts of the Mediterranean basin, Europe, Africa and Asia where these ancient civilizations either originated or spread. It includes disciplines that deal with ideas and themes that originated in the classical world and profoundly influenced later thinkers and institutions.
Why Classics?
To Prepare Yourself for the World
“What do you do with a classical education?” This is a natural question, and the answer is, “Whatever you want, only better.”
There is a difference between education and training. Training teaches you to do a specific task well; education improves your life. You need both to be effective at any job and to have a good life.
A classical education can prepare you for the world of business by sharpening your ability to read and analyze information, by improving the clarity and persuasiveness of your speech and writing, and by making you a more interesting, flexible, cultured person.
Students interested in professional school — medical or law school in particular — should remember that their applications will be competing with thousands of others, most of which will look tediously similar. An undergraduate transcript that includes a number of Classics courses will show you to be an interesting, intelligent student, devoted to learning and unafraid of hard work.
To Make the Most of Your Education
Every discipline, every subject taught at Furman owes a debt to the civilizations of Greece and Rome. By studying Classical antiquity, you will get more out of your other courses.
Art, religion, music, philosophy, political science, health and exercise science, literature, drama, communications studies, the physical sciences and mathematics, as we study them today, are heavily influenced by ancient Greece and Rome. Take classics courses to understand those influences.
Students of non-Western cultures — Asian, Middle Eastern, Indian or African civilizations — can study classics to find shared origins and significant points of difference.