Greek

A-level Course

It's not all about dusty textbooks: studying Greek at A-level promotes intellectual rigour and cultural sensitivity towards our social, literary and historical beginnings. As in Latin, A-level Greek involves a focus on translation skills and an increased appreciation of influential texts within their contexts. Such texts, concerning grief, deception, fate and personal enlightenment arguably shaped the subsequent 2,000 years of Western literature. We find that the majority of our A-level Hellenists also take Latin at A-level, but as part of Brighton College Sixth Form, you can choose either Greek, or Latin, or both.

Lower 6^th (Year 12)

OCR AS Greek H040: Both units are worth 25% of the total A-level.       

• F371 Greek Language
• F372 Greek Literature: The texts for examination are currently Priam's pleas to Achilles for the return of Hector's body in Homer's Iliad XXIV, alongside excerpts from Xenophon's Anabasis¸ a vivid eyewitness account of the expedition and remarkable adventures of ten thousand Greek mercenaries who lost to the Iranians.

Upper 6^th (Year 13)

OCR A2 Greek H440 Both units are worth 25% of the total A-level.

• F373 Greek Verse: As unseen material, you will read the iambic triameters of a great tragedian, Euripides. Alongside this you will study a tale of guilt, innocence and the realisation of fate and prophecy, Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus, deemed by Aristotle as 'a perfect play'.
• F374 Greek Prose: You will study the Persian Wars as recorded by Herodotus, arguably the father of historiography. Your preparations for the unseen translation aspects of the Greek examination will involve the historical texts of Thucydides.

Trips and Extra-curricular

All our sixth form Classicists are invited to attend lectures given by visiting speakers. For further details, please see our 13+ pages. We arrange a full programme of trips to museums and theatrical productions, recently visiting Bath and London, and seeing Clytemnestra at The Oxford Playhouse, Racine's Britannicus at Wilton's Music Hall, and even Ben Hur LIVE at the O₂ arena. Further afield, we have always found that the sixth form classicists enjoy trips abroad and are extremely pleasant company. In 2010-2011, as separate excursions, we visited both Rome and Florence. Rome saw five days of unbroken, autumn, sunshine, as the classicists experienced all the major Classical sites in the centre of The Eternal City, and even the superb treasuries of Renaissance art in the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel. In collaboration with the RS and Philosophy department, we concluded our academic year with a quick "city break" to Florence in the final week of June.

Classical Reading Competition

This year's Classical Reading Competition will take place on Tuesday 6^th March at 6pm. Please contact Becky Miller for further details.