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10 Reasons to Study Classics

Almost 3,000 students every year study Classics with the Open University. Here are some of the reasons:

1. Classics is accessible
All you need is enthusiasm. The curriculum is vast, covering both modern films and ancient languages. There is more than one way in.
2. Classics is rewarding
It stretches, questions, stimulates, and brings intellectual satisfaction, whether this means reading Homer in his own words, making sense of the Acropolis, or thinking about how ancient empires operated and how they were justified.
3. Classics is useful
It gets you to make links between what you already know and what you need to find out (employers like those skills too).
4. Classics is all-encompassing
History, art, literature, archaeology, philosophy, linguistics, and more. Classics brings together many disciplines.
5. Classics gives perspectives
Use the ancient world to throw new light onto today's society, politics, drama, movies, sport, art, architecture or religions.
6. Classics is modern
As our own societies change, the questions we want to ask of the ancient world change too. Classics never stays the same.
7. Classics is culturally diverse
It gets you closer to the thoughts and beliefs of an enormous variety of civilisations and people, from 1500 BCE to 500 CE, from the British Isles to the Middle East, and from the Black Sea to North Africa.
8. Classics is glamorous
You will study some of the best-known people, texts, images, monuments and theories in cultural history.
9. Classics involves languages
You will have the opportunity to learn about how Greeks and Romans used words and about how those words and the ideas behind them have filtered into ways of writing, speaking and thinking today.
10. And finally.... Classics is fun
Exploring the classical world is a most enjoyable and intense experience.


Classical Studies