Mission of the Department of Classics

This department intends to enhance and to transmit to its students a knowledge and understanding of the Greco-Roman classical world. The study of Classics is a serious, balanced investigation into two of the most enduring and influential societies in the western world. The program embraces the languages (Classical Latin and Classical Greek, occasionally Sanskrit), the literatures, the history and the archaeology, art, law, medicine, philosophy and politics of classical antiquity. It offers --as no single other discipline does-- insights into the perplexing problems which continue to face any society and every individual. The Greeks and the Romans addressed the same dilemmas which we face today and in most cases their answers to society's pressing problems have not been bettered in the two millennia which have passed since then. To study classical antiquity is to begin to know ourselves.

The goal of the study of Classics is to create broadly educated citizens; not narrowly trained specialists. The best final products of studying the Classics are persons who can learn, function successfully and excel in today's world thanks to personal knowledge, standards for judgement and resources provided by their study of the ancient classical world. Classics is not valuable merely because its subject matter is old; it is valuable because the subject matter is timeless.