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History of the Department

Ancient Classics has had a long and distinguished history at Maynooth, and both Greek and Latin were among the subjects taught when St Patrick's College (the forerunner for NUI Maynooth) was founded in 1795. Since then, the Classical environment at Maynooth has been graced by  professors such as John F. D'Alton (later Cardinal D'Alton), author of Horace and His Age (1917) and Roman Literary Theory and Criticism (1931); and more recently Gerard Watson, author of many books on Greek philosophy, including Phantasia in Classical Thought (1988), Greek Philosophy and the Christian Notion of God (1994), and a translation of, and commentary on, Augustine's Soliloquies and treatise On the Immortality of the Soul (1990).

What is Classics?

Classics is the term given to the study of the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome in all their aspects: language, literature, history, philosophy, art, and archaeology. Traditionally, the study of Classics focused on Greek and Latin language and literature. In recent decades, however, there has been a great flourishing of courses on Greek and Roman civilization in which the literature is studied in translation, and in which consideration is also given to the non-literary achievements of the ancient world, such as its art, architecture, and society. At Maynooth, Ancient Classics may be studied either through the ancient languages or through our hugely popular Greek and Roman Civilization course.