I cannot emphasize enough that you should not take this course unless A. you have a passionate interest in Greek history or B. you have a sadistic urge to torture yourself. I'll admit that I realized what I was in for after the very first lecture but stubbornly refused to drop because I had already bought all the books (a rookie mistake, to be sure). Before I explain why you should exercise caution before taking this course, I want to emphasize that this has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of instruction. Professor Lendon is by far the best lecturer I have had during my time at UVA. He is deeply knowledgeable, entertaining, and makes fifty minutes feel like ten. I'm serious, he's an absolute gem of a professor. If you have the time in your schedule and any interest in the subject, I would highly recommend auditing this course (attending the lectures without having to do any of the work) because they are truly fascinating. I actually really enjoyed the content covered in this class and never missed one of Lendon's lectures. However. And this a big however! This class is extremely challenging. There are hundreds of pages of reading each week, composed of textbook reading and reading from original sources. The textbook reading is incredibly dry and the source readings are also hard to get through. There is a discussion each week to go over the source reading, which was sometimes less than helpful. There were quizzes in discussion about every other week, which consisted of anything from a map quiz of ancient Greece to a vocab quiz to a dissection of a passage from the reading. The overall theme of these quizzes (and all evaluations in the class for that matter) is that you will nearly kill yourself studying every detail that could possibly be tested and then only be quizzed on a small part of what you know. For example, for the map quiz in the first week of discussion, we were obliged to memorize the exact locations of forty cities and only quizzed on ten. The same was true with the vocab quiz; there were thirty-six terms that were fair game and the quiz only contained three. Moving on from quizzes, there are two seven-page papers during the semester, one on all of Herodotus and one on all of Thucydides. Yes, all! You have the option to either write both (and receive the better of the two grades) or choose one. I chose to skip the first one on Herodotus and only write the one on Thucydides. I did this because I thought Thucydides was easier to write on and felt that I had a better grasp on general course concepts at that point in the semester. It's worth noting that you don't actually have to read every single page of either author to do well on these papers. A well-balanced combination of a general comprehension of the author's main ideas supported by detailed explanations of specific events that prove your thesis should get you an A. Finally, the exams. There is a mid-term and a semi-cumulative final. These are absolutely grueling experiences. I would rather be dragged around the walls of Troy by my ankles like Hector or be a citizen of Melos in 416 B.C. than have to study for or take one of these exams ever again. Both exams are entirely hand-written and include term IDs, passage IDs from the original sources, and essays. The midterm is especially brutal because you are expected to cover all three sections in only fifty minutes. The final covered more material and contained more passage IDs and essays but was taken over three hours. Again, you will almost drive yourself mad studying every single term that could possibly appear on the exam. The final covered eight weeks of content and there were around 250-ish terms that were fair game. Of these 250, only 15 appeared on the exam so you really had to study every single thing in detail in case it happened to appear. There was no obvious correlation between the most important people/events and the terms that were chosen for either exam. The passage IDs were particularly brutal on the final. The essay prompts aren't difficult if you are a good writer and can pull in specific details and dates from memory to support your broader observations on the general themes of the class; however, by this point in the exam your hand is cramping and the room is starting to spin a little. So, in conclusion: this is an incredibly difficult but interesting course with an awesome professor. Only take it if you are ready to want to die a little bit every week and ready to want to die a lot in preparation for the exams. So, who should take this class? In the words of Alexander the Great, "the strongest!"

I took this class as an audit credit (meaning I have 0 requirements beyond attending lecture) and this was the best class I have ever taken. I took the class as an audit credit because I am an e-school student and I didn't have time (nor did I want to) read 100s of pages a week or write essays. But the lectures are AMAZING. Lendon is an incredible teacher. He knows so much about the history of Greece and is so excited to share his knowledge. The lectures are basically like a story time because of the way he lectures and his familiarity with the material. I 100% recommend this class.

What everyone else has written about this class is very accurate. To sum it up --- amazing lectures, you'll learn a lot, but you'll be miserable with the amount of reading and difficulty of the exams. The exams are grueling, with term IDs, passage IDs, and essays. The content is super interesting but the brute memorization of terms on top of hundreds of pages of reading each week is tough. I'd still recommend the class because Lendon is a really great, interesting lecturer, but be prepared to need a lot of serious studying time around exams. If you can have Hank Lanphier as a TA (in this class or any other) he is phenomenal --- the best TA I've had at UVA by far #tCFfall22

By far the best class I have taken at UVA to date. Yes, it's not an easy A and requires a good bit of reading and attention during lectures, but overall the effort is worth it. Discussions were great and went over and summarised lectures as well as the weekly readings quite well. The class does require A LOT of reading but not all of it is essential to the class and much of it can be skimmed over or skipped altogether. Lendons lectures are extremely interesting and are much of the reason I am majoring in history. Overall would most definitely recommend this class

This is the best course I’ve taken at UVA so far. While it was certainly a difficult course (the readings were 150 pgs a week on average), Professor Lendon is the most interesting lecturer I’ve had the pleasure of listening to. Provided you have any interest in ancient history, you’ll probably feel the same. He somehow had the ability to make a 50-minute lecture on exclusively ancient boats entertaining. The man knows his stuff, and is great at also getting you to know your stuff. The exams were pretty difficult, consisting of a section of IDs, which are different people, places, events, and things that were discussed throughout the course, passage IDs, which task you with identifying the author and context of a passage you previously read in the course, and then longer-form essays. There were also infrequent quizzes on the IDs of the week in section. So while this course is definitely a lot of work, you will come out of it with a great amount of knowledge of archaic and classical Greece and will have had a great time in lecture. I wholeheartedly recommend this class.

Lendon's a pretty damn cool professor, and especially an amazing lecturer. His lectures are 110% super fun and interesting -- he was the one lecturer whose lectures I didn't fall asleep in for the entire semester. But be warned: this man assigns SO. MUCH. READING. I'm talking about 100-200 pages a week, not including the "textbook's" (it's called AG in the syllabus) reading. Those 100-200 pages a week are straight from texts of Ancient Greece primary sources and they are so painful. With those, I'd recommend knowing what will be (and what won't be) on the exams. Skim everything, especially if you're on a time crunch, but I'd recommend reading speeches, certain battles, and the defining characteristics of military/political leaders that Lendon lectured about for your discussions and exams. I went the entire semester without reading the AG textbook -- it's basically a way for people who were absent to know what happened in lecture. Overall, I would recommend sitting in Lendon's lectures, but if you have a heavy semester ahead of you, you probably want to steer clear of this course.

This is a really, really, really good class but certainty not something most people can handle. If you cannot study for this about 8-10 hours on this per day leading up to the exam, you will most likely have a shit grade. Look at the grade distribution. The readings can be incredibly boring (Homer, Hesiod for example), but the generally topic is super interesting. The readings are not necessary to shine in discussion however, as I found out on some of my busier weeks. I would highly recommend to someone who is interested in investing time in a solid understanding of Ancient Greek History. You could probably convince someone you majored in Ancient Greek history by the end. This is why Mr. Lendon is fantastic, even if during exam prep time and term paper writing time your enthusiasm might dip some. I had Thomas Davidson for a TA, he was fantastic. I have similarly heard great things about Joshua Mackay, but there might be different TAs by the time you take it. Many people here saying it's too hard have crazy weak standards for difficulty. I am in the engineering school way out of my comfort zone in my first semester at UVA and I got an A. It is not impossible to do well in, just requires high time investment.

Do NOT take this class to fill a gen ed. The amount of work he requires you to do is ridiculous. I was reading about 100 pages a week for the discussion and another 70 for the class. He did not treat this at all like a 2000 level class. I learned a lot and the lectures were interesting but the amount of work you have to put into this class is completely not worth it. Along with reading the 100 pages for the discussion, you are also required to memorize approximately 40 definitions and map locations per week; you have to come up with your own definitions and you don't know if they are sufficient or not until you fail the pop quiz in the discussion section. The exams are extremely difficult. The only exams are a midterm and a final. You have to know the definitions of all of the words you studied during the semester. Also, you are required to remember every passage you read from any of the books throughout the semester. He provides a random passage and you have to identify the background, which book it was from, who the author was, and even more details. How are you supposed to remember all of this???? DO NOT LISTEN TO THE REVIEWS THAT SAY TAKE THIS COURSE YOU DO NOT WANT TO DO THAT. The people who wrote those reviews must have been crazy or this was their only difficult course they took that semester. I am in the e-school and this was my lowest grade that semester and I was pissed. The grading is crazy. I got a B on both papers I wrote, but for my second paper, the only comments were related to a spelling error in one of the names, even though I showed the TA that the name was spelled that way in the book. He merely chuckled and said "oh yah!" and I never got any points back even though there was nothing else wrong with my paper. Save yourself the time and energy and do not take this class.

Listen. WHOEVER likes this class and wrote all of these absolutely glowing reviews, you MUST be crazy. I read these courseforum reviews looking for a fun class to fill up my fourth year and I thought wow! This seems like a class I should NOT miss! But guess what. I am a fourth year and this is the first and only class I have WITHDRAWN from because it was so insane what Professor Lendon expected of you for a 2000 level history class. There was at least 70 pages of reading for lecture and then another 70 for discussion, not to mention he forces you to buy an out of print textbook, 10 other books, and a specific course packet from NK Print. I spent easily $100+ on the materials for this class, but during lecture he has nearly no powerpoint and refers little to the readings–instead giving a rambling lecture with his awful voice that was impossible to follow. The first day of classes, he pulled some of that classic jerky teacher stuff where he screamed and yelled about his syllabus and how NOT lenient (synonym- INHUMANE) he is regarding grading and assignments. He gave a lengthy speech about how him and SDAC aren't friends, and basically he is not at all accommodating to students with disabilities/need extra test time. Had I been an SDAC student listening to him berate his first day students about this point in particular, I would have been mortified! I would have walked out of the class immediately. How rude and disrespectful for a professor, who's job it is to help students learn and achieve, to make a joke of a very real program helping students with disabilities. He also said during this crazy tangent, and I quote, "I am the kind of person who, when they see a cute fluffy bunny on the side of the road, I just want to – *makes garish choking motion with his hands*". What the heck?? I should have dropped this class when I had the chance. Of course during the second class he quickly told us he was "running a fever" the first class, therefore excusing him from any blame for the crazy things he said. Oh yeah, not to mention pop quizzes during discussion that I failed even after doing the readings and attending lectures. I'm sure Professor Lendon will read this review and scoff, but please trust me. This class is not worth your time, and not worth your dollars. Don't take it unless you absolutely have to, and even then think really hard about it.

I learned SO much in this course! Mr. Lendon is an absolute blast, who knows a ton about ancient greece. He asks a lot of his students -- there's a lot of IDs, a good amount of writing, and a lot of reading -- so you shouldn't take this course as an easy A. If you have time, PLEASE put consistent effort into this course, DO NOT try and learn all the IDs right before the tests and quizzes. You will have two chances to write an essay -- take the first one if you have time. I didn't read all of Herodotus and Thuc but I still got a fairly good grade. Overall, I would definitely take this course again!