LC Classical Studies flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Cleisthenes

Athenian reformer (508/7 BCE) who reorganized Attica into demes, trittyes, and ten tribes, laying the foundation for Athenian democracy.

cursus honorum

The Roman sequence of public offices-quaestor, aedile, praetor, consul-that structured a senatorial career and political competition in the Republic.

Pax Romana

The period of relative peace and stability across the Roman Empire, conventionally dated from Augustus' reign (27 BCE) to the death of Marcus Aurelius (180 CE).

Constitutio Antoniniana

An edict issued in 212 CE by Emperor Caracalla granting Roman citizenship to nearly all free inhabitants of the empire.

Olympian gods

The twelve principal deities of Greek religion, including Zeus, Hera, Athena, Apollo, and Poseidon, who were believed to dwell on Mount Olympus.

Theogony

Hesiod's hexameter poem describing the origins of the gods and the succession of divine rulers from Chaos through Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus.

Vestal Virgins

Roman priestesses of Vesta who tended the sacred hearth fire, took a vow of chastity, and held unique legal privileges in Roman society.

Eleusinian Mysteries

Secret initiation rites at Eleusis in honor of Demeter and Persephone, promising initiates a better fate in the afterlife.

Doric order

The oldest Greek architectural order, characterized by columns without bases, simple capitals, and a frieze of triglyphs and metopes.

Pantheon

A Roman temple in Rome rebuilt under Hadrian (c. 125 CE), famous for its concrete dome with a central oculus, the largest unreinforced concrete dome.

Pompeian wall-painting styles

Four successive styles of Roman fresco decoration-incrustation, architectural, ornate, and fantastic-identified at Pompeii and described by Vitruvius.

red-figure pottery

An Athenian vase-painting technique invented around 530 BCE in which figures are reserved in red against a black background, allowing finer detail.

Iliad

Homer's epic poem in twenty-four books, set in the tenth year of the Trojan War, focusing on the wrath of Achilles and its consequences.

Oresteia

Aeschylus' trilogy (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides) dramatizing the murder of Agamemnon, Orestes' revenge, and the founding of the Areopagus court.

Aeneid

Virgil's twelve-book Latin epic (19 BCE) tracing Aeneas' journey from Troy to Italy and the mythical origins of Rome.

servus callidus

The clever slave, a stock character in Roman New Comedy (Plautus, Terence) who devises schemes to help young lovers outwit their elders.

Socratic method

A form of inquiry associated with Socrates in Plato's dialogues, using question and answer to expose contradictions and pursue definitions of ethical concepts.

theory of Forms

Plato's doctrine that abstract, eternal Forms (e.g., Beauty, Justice) are more real than their imperfect sensible instances.

Stoicism

A Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium, teaching that virtue consists in living according to reason and nature, and that emotions should be controlled.

eudaimonia

The Greek term for human flourishing or happiness, central to Aristotle's ethics, achieved through the exercise of virtue over a complete life.

Neoclassicism

An 18th-century artistic and architectural movement that drew inspiration from classical antiquity, influenced by Winckelmann and excavations at Pompeii.

Winckelmann

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768), German art historian whose History of Ancient Art (1764) shaped Neoclassical ideals of Greek beauty.

reception studies

An academic approach examining how later cultures interpret, adapt, and contest classical texts, images, and ideas.

Petrarch

Fourteenth-century Italian humanist and poet who collected classical manuscripts and imitated Ciceronian Latin, a key figure in the Renaissance revival of antiquity.

Res Gestae Divi Augusti

The autobiographical record of Augustus' achievements, inscribed on monuments and surviving in a copy from Ancyra (modern Ankara).

epigraphy

The study of inscriptions on stone, metal, or other durable materials, a major source for ancient history, law, and social life.

numismatics

The study of coins, used to date events, identify rulers, and analyze ancient propaganda and economic history.

stratigraphy

The archaeological principle that layers of deposition are superimposed over time, allowing relative dating of finds.

primary source

Evidence produced in the period under study, such as inscriptions, coins, papyri, or contemporary literary texts, as opposed to later interpretations.

apparatus criticus

The critical apparatus in a scholarly edition that records manuscript variants and editorial decisions about a classical text.

Pausanias

Second-century CE Greek traveler whose Description of Greece describes sanctuaries, monuments, and local traditions, a key source for art and topography.

Pompeii

Roman city buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, preserving buildings, frescoes, and everyday objects that inform Roman social and art history.