• This is a nine-month taught course that can be taken as a free-standing degree, or as the first step towards doctoral research.
  • You have the option of selecting a focus of study dependant on your knowledge of languages or on your primary interests in the field. Two basic pathways lead into each field of study, and you are expected to choose between them at the beginning of the course.
  • The second pathway, offering training in auxiliary disciplines, is designed for those who already have considerable competence in their chosen language and whose principal interests lie in history, art and archaeology or religion. You will receive instruction in one or two of a range of specialist auxiliary disciplines of papyrology, epigraphy, palaeography, numismatics, sigillography, or artefact studies (choosing to study either ceramics, metalware, ivories, codices or carved marbles) and you will choose a special subject from a list in your preferred subject area, ie in either history, art and archaeology, literature or religion.
    • Teaching and examination in this programme comprises three compulsory elements:
    • a core paper on history, art and archaeology or history and Byzantine literature comprising two sets of weekly classes taken in the first two academic terms and examined on the basis of two 5,000-word essays on topics of your choosing, subject to the approval of your supervisor, submitted at the end of Trinity term; and
    • two courses on special subjects of your choice. These subjects may include topics in ancient and medieval languages, epigraphy, numismatics, artefact studies, literature, history and religion. Language and literature as well as auxiliary disciplines will normally be examined by unseen examinations at the end of Trinity term, while attainment in other subjects are assessed on the basis of submitted essays or dissertations submitted at the end of Trinity term.
    • Although the two components of the course, Late Antiquity and Byzantium, have been designed to the same specification and are conjoined in a single course, you are expected to concentrate on one or other of the fields. If you wish to proceed to a research programme you will be encouraged to develop your doctoral proposal during the first few months of the programme, so that you will be well placed to make doctoral applications in the spring.