Travels Through Greco-Roman Antiquity

The Travels Through Greco-Roman Antiquity website was a project of the Aurelius Digital Humanities Initiative at Falvey Memorial Library, and reviews the sources available in the special collection on ancient Greece and Rome. The main body of the site is a map, in which the user can explore ancient cities and battle sites, like Athens or the Battle of Plataea. On the descriptions of the city or battle, the website includes descriptions of the site/event, maps from the period, photographs of the site today, images of relevant statues, and more. Most of the pages also include a works cited section that lists relevant sources from the collection that were used to create the page.

This website would be an excellent primer into ancient Greek and Roman places and events. It provides references to other sources that students may look up and explore, as well as maps that may aid in reconstructions of the area. A good classroom activity would be to assign students one of the mentioned events or places and have them reconstruct how a person living in that period would have reacted to certain events or places. How would someone from the upper class have lived in Athens? What type of person would have participated in the Battle of Salamis? This website would serve as a starting point and contextual background for a student's project, and may even suggest some sources that would be useful to a student embarking on such a project.

This site is an excellent starting point for students to learn about ancient Greece and Rome, but doesn’t include many primary sources or present them in a very engaging way. It does a great job of putting events and places into context with one another as well as history, however, so it shouldn’t be counted out as a resource for teaching and learning about this time period.