Mary Beard & John Henderson
Classics
A Very Short Introduction

Timelines

c.800–500 bce        Early Greece
c.800–700               Homer’s Epics, Iliad and Odyssey
                                First temple of Zeus built at Olympia
c.776                       First Olympic Games held
c.600–550               Sappho and Alcaeus’ lyrical poems
c.500–300 bce        Classical Greece
c.500–31bce           Republican Rome
c.500–450               Persian Wars between Greeks and Persians
490                          Greeks defeat Persians at Battle of Marathon
c.450–400               Period of radical Athenian Democracy
                                Tragic plays written by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides
                                Herodotus’ Histories
                                Parthenon built on Acropolis in Athens
                                Democritus’ Philosophy
c.430–400               Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta
                                Thucydides’ Histories
                                Aristophanes’ Comedies
                                Temple of Apollo Epikourios built at Bassae
399                          Death of Socrates
c.380–350               Plato’s philosophical Dialogues at Academy
c.335–322               Aristotle’s philosophical works
336–323                  Alexander the Great of Macedon’s empire stretches from Greece to India
c.320–270               Menander’s Comedies
                                Epicurus’ Philosophy
c.200–150               Roman conquest of Greek world
                                Plautus’ Comedies
                                Polybius’ History of Rome
c.60–55                   Catullus’ Love Poetry
                                Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things
44                            The dictator Julius Caesar assassinated
43                            Legalized murder of Cicero
c.40–35                   Gallus’ Elegies
                                Virgil’s Eclogues
                                Varro’s On Farming
31 bce–14 ce          Reign of Augustus
31 bce–c.500 ce     Imperial Rome
31                            Octavian’s defeat of Antony and Cleopatra
c.31–17 ce              Livy’s History of Rome
27–23                      Augustus’ ‘restoration’ of the Republic (= his Principate)
23                            Horace’s Odes
c.20                         Vitruvius’ treatise On Architecture
19                            Death of Virgil, his unfinished Aeneid published
c.12                         Horace’s Epistles II
c.1–17 ce                Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Fasti
100–20                    Tacitus’ Historical Works
                                Juvenal’s Satires
122–8                      Hadrian’s Wall built
c.160                       Pausanias’ Guidebook to Greece
c.500–600               Collapse of Roman Empire in Western Europe
c.1300–1600           Renaissance
c.1300–15               Dante Alighieri’s Italian epic, Divine Comedy
1502                        Jacopo Sannazaro’s romantic poem, Arcadia
1592                        Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet sequence, Arcadia
1599                        Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar first performed

Seventeenth Century

1600–69                  Life of Pope Clement IX (Papacy 1667–9)
1638–40                  Nicolas Poussin’s Arcadian Shepherds painted

Eighteenth Century

1748                        Pompeii rediscovered
1753                        British Museum founded
1765                        Bassae rediscovered by Joachim Bocher
1768                        Joshua Reynolds sets up Royal Academy
1769                        Reynolds’s Mrs Bouverie and Mrs Crewe painted
1770                        Dr Johnson becomes Professor at Royal Academy
1768–88                  Goethe’s Italian Travels; writes his Italian Journey
1783                        US Independence recognized
1789                        French Revolution
1795                        Goethe’s Roman Elegies
c.1750–1820           George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Founding Fathers establish USA

Nineteenth Century

c.1800–29               Napoleonic Wars and Greek War of Independence from Turkey
                                Keats’s poetry
                                Byron’s poetry
1806                        Edward Dodwell’s visit to Bassae
1811                        Sculptures from temple of Aphaia on Aegina excavated and taken to Munich
                                ‘Elgin’ marbles taken from Parthenon to British Museum
1811–15                  C.R. Cockerell and friends excavate temple at Bassae
                                Frieze taken to British Museum (welcomed by Benjamin Haydon)
1829                        Edgar Allan Poe’s poem ‘To Helen’
1847                        B.H. Kennedy’s The Child’s Latin Primer first published
1848                        Thomas de Quincey’s Modern Greece
                                Edward Lear visits Bassae
1859                        Edward Lear’s The Temple of Apollo at Bassae installed in Fitzwilliam Museum
1840–80                  Karl Marx’s political works written and published
c.1870–80               Heinrich Schliemann’s excavations; discovers sites of Troy and Mycenae
1872–9                   Friedrich Nietzsche elaborates philosophy and theory of Tragedy
1880                        (General) Lew(is) Wallace’s novel, Ben-Hur.
1890                        J.G. Frazer visits Bassae
1898                        J.G. Frazer’s Pausanias
1896–1909              Lewis Farnell’s Cults of the Greek States
c.1897–1939           Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic works

Twentieth Century

1910–15                  J.G. Frazer’s Golden Bough published (twelve volume edition)
1922–43                  Mussolini’s Fascist regime in Italy
1929                        J.G. Frazer’s Fasti
1933                        Erwin Panofsky to USA (refugee from Nazis)
                                H.D. Kitto’s In the Mountains of Greece
1934                        Claudette Colbert’s Cleopatra
                                Robert Graves’s I, Claudius and Claudius the God
1936                        Erwin Panofsky’s essay on Et in Arcadia Ego
1938                        Anthony Blunt’s essay on Poussin’s Et in Arcadia Ego
c.1925–60               Louis MacNeice’s poetry
                                T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land
1945                        Hermann Broch’s Death of Virgil
                                Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
1951                        E.R. Dodds’s Greeks and the Irrational
1954                        Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle’s How to be Topp
1956                        Mary Renault’s The Last of the Wine
1958                        Willans and Searle’s Down with Skool!
                                Mary Renault’s The King Must Die
1959                        Ben-Hur film starring Charlton Heston
1962                        Elizabeth Taylor stars in Cleopatra
Mary                        Renault’s The Bull from the Sea
1964                        R.Goscinny and A. Uderzo’s Asterix the Gladiator
1972                        Simon Raven’s Come Like Shadows
1980                        Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose
1981                        Charles Segal’s Tragedy and Civilisation
1987                        Temple of Apollo at Bassae enclosed in a tent
1991                        British Museum Conference tries out Frederick
                                A. Cooper and Brian C. Madigan’s reordering of the Bassae frieze
1994                        Fiona Pitt-Kethley’s The Pan Principle
1995                        Classics: A Very Short Introduction published